Directions: You have now performed a college-level English assignment. Please answer the following questions: Have you ever written a summary or a paraphrase before? How does this assignment compare? How do you think you will use these skills in your future papers (in this class and your future college classes)? Do you have any questions about summary and paraphrase before we move on? (On this last question, if I get a lot of the same answer, we will review in class, rather than me providing you with an individual answer.)
You can respond in paragraph or list form. 200 word maximum.
Due before 10pm on September 10th.
I have written a summary before this assignment in high school, I don't remember writing a paraphrase though. I can't compare this assignment to previous ones because It's been so long since I was in an english class. I can see myself using these skills in future classes. These skills will be helpful when I have similar assignments, I will already know what to do. I am confused why we need to paraphrase and summarize because they are so similar in my mind. Paraphrasing is like a shorter version of summary but you can't use any of the same words in the original quote etc. Is that right?
ReplyDeleteThis was the first assignment like this I have ever done. When I last had English classes, I did write essays, but the rules of writing didn’t seem quite as strict. I am very excited about learning these skills. My use of these learned skills will reflect in future papers. I do realize I have a lot of room for improvement, but I am very confident I will become more comfortable with each paper I complete. The structure of MLA format makes things much clearer for the reader. The strict rules in writing may seem a little confusing to me, but college is not supposed to easy. I am very confident that incorporating these new skills with my old school ones will help in my desired success. My question would have to be: Why and when did the rules get so strict? Specifically, not having the ability to express any opinion at all in a summary, or the inability to use a word an author used. But hey, I just found out there is only one space between a period and beginning of a sentence! When I was last in school, it was two! Who remembers this?
ReplyDeleteI have written many summaries throughout my life especially in middle school and high school, but never a paraphrase. This assignment does not compare to past writing assignments I have had before because most of my essays have long specific guidelines to follow. This assignment did have guidelines but I rather enjoyed them than despise them.The skills that I obtained from this will definitely help me in the future with college essays, and summaries in other classes. I really enjoyed learning about paraphrases, and glad that we covered a way to summarize a sentence in our own words without plagiarizing. My question would be paraphrasing and summarizing are so similar, so why do we need both of them? Which is it the correct one to use in a certain situation?
ReplyDeleteI have written a summary before, however have had very little experience with writing a paraphrase until this assignment. The summaries I had written in high school were only a little more basic than this version, but that may be because I took college level english classes for years. I do think that I have a better understanding and idea of what needs to be accomplished in a summary, as well as a paraphrase. It all seems more structured and easier to accomplish with the 3-read process. I will use these skills in the future by being able to clearly communicate someone else's ideas and tone in other papers. The only real problem I encountered for this assignment had to do with the MLA format of the works cited page. I was unsure how to exactly structure this and wasn't sure whether or not to use a website such as Noodle Tools like I did in high school. It would be very helpful for me personally if we could quickly go over how to write an MLA works cited and how to distinguish what form (newspaper, website, etc.) we need to use for a piece.
ReplyDeleteReflecting on unit one recaps most of my high school essays and poems. Summarizing and paraphrasing seems natural in writing and life itself. The summary and paraphrase assignment was actually rather similar to a lot of my writings in middle school and high school. I can also relate to the S.O.A.P.S method, which was the basic structuring of my writing. The only challenging part of unit one has been the MLA formatting, I was never taught this in high school. The Little Brown Handbook has been an enormous help, and reviewing it in class has answered a lot of my questions about the formatting. Although, I still have questions on quoting certain titles and quotes. I have checked the handbook and am still confused as to where the quotations are necessary. Besides quotation placement unit one has been fairly stress-free.
ReplyDeleteI have had more experience working with summary then I had even thought about in class. At 19 I join the Infantry and as it happens most mission get disseminated via oral summary to the the more senior officers who would then pass the mission specific information to the team. However I have been out of academic writing as something that I do since high school which left me a bit more worried then I needed to be. This assignment was a nice refresher to knock loss some academic cob web. I don't know how much more academic writing I will have to do with summary but from what I have seen on other Collages I bet it will be a lot . My biggest problem that I see in this assignment was in get the citation right but lucky for me and most likely unlucky for the writing center they will be helping me with most of my papers while I am in attendance. I feel like the material was toughly covered at reasonable pace for me. Although the information and material could be covered faster and I would be just fine I hope.
ReplyDeleteI feel like I have written a summary and paraphrase before but I can’t really remember either. I thought it was great to jump into the writing process through analyzing another’s writing in order to summarize their point. It helped break through the process and just start putting what I learned from the writing to paper. The skills I learned were mainly how to draw an author’s main point into the light and understand it which I feel, will be invaluable in college and life. As for paraphrasing I understand the point of conveying the authors stance on whatever they’re covering but is it totally necessary to change every word used by the original and if not is it plagiarism? If it is plagiarism or close to it would it be better to just summarize and use original quotes? If that last questions answer is yes then is paraphrasing something that is seen often or something that is obsolete to summarizing? Sorry lots of questions I really did enjoy unit one and look forward to learning more.
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