Miguel Roig wrote:
> Until just a few years ago, I treated both processes
> interchangeably as the APA Manual apparently does. Because students'
paraphrasings can
> often result in plagiarism, I used to focus primarily on proper
paraphrasing
> and not enough, or not at all, on summarizing. Increasingly, however, I
have
> found it very useful to distinguish between both activities when I go over
writing
> papers with my students. I now think it is very important to focus on
both
> processes, as I believe that the type of writing that we want from our
> students in advanced courses demands a thorough understanding and use of
proper
> paraphrasing and summarizing strategies.
>
> In this regard, I would say to my students that, when
> writing, say a review of a literature, we typically _condense_ a lengthy
description of a study
> (hypotheses, rationale, method and results) into a couple of sentences.
And certainly this is the far more important skill. I agree.
-----------------
I just read the assessments turned in by the "stragglers" in my class. One
was fairly remarkable. Here is the to-be-paraphrased original:
"Historians differ on when the consumer culture came to dominate American
culture. Some say it was in the twenties, when advertising became a major
industry and the middle class bought radios to hear the ads and cars to get
to the stores. Some say it was in the late nineteenth century, when the
first department stores appeared in American cities and a class of wealthy,
idle women arose to shop in them. But there is no question that the consumer
culture had begun to crowd out all other cultural possibilities by the years
following World War II" (Ehrenreich, 1989, p.35).
One of the students "paraphrased" it as follows:
"Historians differ on when the consumer culture came to dominate American
culture. But there is no question that the consumer culture had begun to
crowd out all other cultural possibilities by the years following World War
II" (Ehrenreich, 1989, p. 35).
Now, if this were to appear in a student's paper, it would simply be a
clear case of plagiarism (obviously unintentional, though, in light of the
citation). But this was her response on an assignment specifically about
learning to proper paraphrase sources in order to _avoid_ plagiarism. And
the assessment is attached to a handout explaining the task, and the
impropriety of plagiarism in some detail.
She is obviously going to have to rewrite this. But what intrigues me is
the question of what she believed her task was. What is it in her past
educational experience that made her think that this might be an acceptable
response to the assignment? (she did this twice on the assessment, by the
way). It's a remarkable confusion, and I don't think it's an accident. I
suspect that she was (unintentionally) taught this by something in her
earlier writing instruction, and I'd love to know what.
> when we are describing a very specific and complex procedure found in a
> method section, we probably want to resort to more paraphrasing than to
> summarizing. Thus, when writing papers we probably rely on both
processes.
This makes me think that there's a wide gray area between the two
processes. I think of myself as doing something more like summarizing when I
describe the methods used in an earlier study, though it's certainly closer
to paraphrasing than what I do when I summarize a study's results. I guess
my failure to distinguish the two processes comes from the fact that I
essentially NEVER paraphrase in the traditional sense as part of my work.
> In another post, Paul wrote:
>
> >I also suspect that from the student's point of view, the
> >problem is almost entirely in the nature of the assignment. He is
thinking,
> >"well, I don't understand these articles, so how can I put them into my
own
> >words?". I'm starting to question the value of the "summarize a published
> >article" assignment that so many of us give to our students. But
> >that's another issue...
>
> On the contrary, Paul. I think such exercises can have the
> potential of building up very useful writing skills.
(snip)
> My response would be that if students are serious about
> becoming professionals in our discipline, they have to be made to
understand that
> _they_ need to build a certain degree of knowledge structure and
familiarity with
> the language and issues in the field. Such knowledge base will, in turn,
> allow them to better understand those types of articles. As far as I can
tell,
> the acquisition of that knowledge structure only comes in three ways:
Practice, practice,
> practice. I mean practice reading and writing (summarizing
> and paraphrasing) in that area.
Good point. As I said, I've only just started having my doubts about the
worth of this kind of assignment. Maybe you've headed off those doubts. I'll
have to think about it some more (I think there'll be time to think about it
sometime in 2001 or 2002...).
> >This is a much more complicated task for students than we
> >tend to believe it is.
>
> I agree and because of that realization, I sometimes wonder
> whether it is always wise to apply very stringent standards of
> paraphrasing/plagiarism with beginning students.
I believe that we need to assume that _many_ of our students come to us
with no idea whatsoever how to do this stuff correctly. And we can't assume
that someone else is teaching them the right way. That's why I take the time
to explicitly teach it, and assess for their understanding of it.
> Oh well, that's enough of a rant for now. Can you tell from
> this post that I also have a big pile of papers to read? =)
Nothing like TIPS to help one avoid doing one's work, eh? :)
Paul Smith
Alverno College
Milwaukee
