Academic writing plays a prominent role in the discourse community of professional teachers and researchers. Any good piece of academic writing should evidence three distinct parts that provide the framework to the composition : an introduction, a body and a conclusion. In this paper, two aspects regarding summary writing will be analyzed. In the first place, a summary written by a student will be considered. In the second place, a single sentence summary for three paragraphs in Unit 3 (Pintos, 2008) will be provided.
The summary written by the student reads as follows:
“ In her book The Process of Paragraph Writing, Reid (1994, as cited in Pintos, 2008)describes the main characteristics of a summary. The author claims that the general purpose of a summary is to give a limited amount of information to a specific audience. However, summary writing is not an easy task. In order to write an accurate summary, you not only have to extract the main ideas but you also have to be capable of expressing these main ideas, trying to avoid repeating the exact phrases of the original material. Moreover, good summaries are clear and balanced. That is to say, the reader should not find difficulties in understanding the main ideas of the material” (p.20).
The introductory phrase “In her book The Process of Paragraph Writing” provides the reference to Reid´s (1994) description. The body can be well identified, starting with the connector “however” introducing an argument against the last sentence in the introduction. The second sentence in the introduction starts with “The author”. This reference may help the reader understand that the topic of the sentence will be an enlargement on the previous statement. The connectors used in the body, “However” and “ Moreover”, appear at the beginning of the first and second sentences. The third connector “That is to say” is included as a reformulation of the previous sentence . These connectors foster smooth reading of the text, avoiding fragmentation of ideas.
The conclusion, where there should have been a restatement of the introduction, is missing. In order to complete the information in the summary, the student should have included the main characteristics of a summary. This point seems to be incomplete in the student´s assignment.
Regarding the second activity referred to earlier in this paper, it can be stated that the summary lines for each paragraph chosen from Unit 3 (Pintos , 2008) reflect the fact that academic writing is an activity leading to the construction of knowledge and thought ( para. 1, p.7). The activity can be characterized by certain distinctive features such as: academic register, a formal style, proficient language use, integration of information from other sources and types of academic genre (para.2, p.7). Therefore, if students want to become academic writers, they must learn the technical and academic uses of the target language. (para. 3, pp.7-8). It is fundamental that academic writers go through the selected paragraphs in order to ensure that their writing will fulfill academic standards.
All things considered, effective practice of the summary skills needed to meet the requirements of the EAP (English for Academic Purposes) class has been presented and discussed in this assignment.
References
Pintos, V. (2008). Academic Writing. Unit 3. Lengua Especializada I .UNIVERSIDAD CAECE. Retrieved August 29, 2009, from http://caece.campusuniversidad.com.ar/ mod/resource/view.php?id=2725
No comments:
Post a Comment