ASSIGNMENT #1: DIAGNOSTIC SUMMARY 1 (5 Points)

ENGLISH 3050

ASSIGNMENT #1: DIAGNOSTIC SUMMARY[1] (5 points)

Rationale. In your career, you will often be called upon to summarize information for various audiences and purposes. Sometimes you will be summarizing information for a professional audience, but you will often be required to summarize information for a general, non-technical (lay) audience. The presentation of summarized information is often of primary importance in workplace communication, especially at the beginning of technical documents.

In addition to being the first graded paper in this course, this project will also serve as a diagnostic exercise to identify any difficulties you might be having in writing clear and correct language. Students with difficulties in grammar and stylemay be advised or required to attend the WSU Writing Center, or referred to the English Language Institute.

Assignment. For this assignment you will be writing for a general audience: assume your reader is well-educated and interested in the topic of the article. Write an informative summary of 1-2 single-spaced pages based on the article provided by the instructor. An informative summary includes the purpose (or thesis) of the article as well as its main points (Anderson, 2011, pp.319-321). Your readers should have a good sense of the article’s purpose and content after reading your summary.

A summary must be written in your own words. Copying words or sentences from the original article is plagiarism. See the Plagiarism section on the syllabus.

A summary must cite the author of the article properly. In the first line of your summary, cite the author of the original article using APA style, as in this example:

Hobson (2009) . . .

After the first line, do not cite the author again in your summary.

In the body of the summary, do not quote from the original article. Use your own words to summarize the main points of the article.

A summary must document the article properly. At the end of your summary, document the original article as your source in a section entitled References. In ENG 3050 we use APA style for citations and references (Anderson, 2011, Appendix A). Here are some examples of APA format for an article from a popular magazine, an article from an online newspaper, or an article from a website:

References

Hobson, K. (2009, August). The era of personalized medicine. U.S. News and World Report, 35.

Keith, D. (2007, October). Test your leadership skills: Do you have what it takes? Team Strategies for Business Leaders. Retrieved from

de Vries, S. (2007, November 18). Close encounters with Alfred Adler. Retrieved from Classical Adlerian Psychology website:

You will have to decide the best way to reference the article in APA style at the end of your summary.

Rubric. Assignment #1 will be wortha maximum of 5 points toward your final grade in English 3050. The following rubric will be used to evaluate your summary:

______Audience and Purpose -- 1 point

The summary provides enough information for a lay reader to understand the purpose and content of the original article.

______Content andOrganization -- 2 points

A statement of the purpose of the original article is evident early in the summary.
The summaryincludes the main points fromcontent of the original article.
The main points in the summary follow the organization of the original article.

______Citation and Documentation -- 1 point

The summary is written in your own words, not plagiarized.
The original article is correctly cited in the summary and documented in the References section using APA style.

______Grammar and Style -- 1 point

Sentences are grammatically correct, and style is appropriate for a general audience.

[1] This assignment is based on the informative summary described in Anderson (2011, pp. 319-321).