At 01:05 PM 3/31/99 -0500, you wrote:
>As far as summarizing an article in the lit review, I tell my students to
>take a little from the introduction section of the article (what was the
>study about, what was the hypothesis), a little from the methods section
>(briefly describe the method used to investigate the hypothesis), a little
>from the results section (what did they find?) and a little from the
>discussion section (what did they conclude?). The result (when well
>written) is about a paragraph that makes me feel comfortable that the
>student actually read the article and can explain it.
May I respectfully suggest that by using the expression "take a little" from
here and there, what you may be inadvertently doing is encouraging your
students to simply paraphrase, instead of summarize, from each section without
necessarily leading to the desired level of understanding of the material. I
am sure this is not what you mean by the above description but, just in case,
I'll use my reading of it as an excuse to throw my 2 cents.
As it turns out, I had suggested a similar approach (of taking a little from
here and there) to my students in experimental psych. at one point. To my
dismay, that semester I received too many papers with introductions that read
like a meaningless collection of disjointed paraphrases from each article.
Could I blame them? (sure I could; they should have known better, but ....)
They did exactly as I told them!
As we all know, summarizing (and I realize that you do use that word) entails
the true understanding of the material to be summarized. However, mere
paraphrasing does not necessarily require such degree of understanding.
Unfortunately, a decent paraphrase can sometimes lead the professor to falsely
believe that the student has a acquired a thorough understanding of the
material. I find that many students are not always aware of the difference
between paraphrasing and summarizing and that some often rely almost
exclusively on the former, rather than the latter, with disastrous results.
I hope this is helpful.
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Miguel Roig, Ph.D. Voice: (718) 390-4513
Assoc. Prof. of Psychology Fax: (718) 442-3612
Division of Social Sciences [EMAIL PROTECTED]
St. John's University [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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