English 102—Writing Assignment #1, Summary of Elif Shafak’s “The Politics of Fiction” TED Talk.

Due for peer review6/26; final draft due 7/1.

the task: write a 1-1 ½ page summary ofthis text. Basically, your job is to “shrink it down”into its essence for your readers. Summarizing for our academic purposes means discovering and conveying the thesis and the main claims or points of the text that support the thesis. It can also mean including some of the supporting evidence or the illustrations and examples that clarify and sell the writer’s ideas. You also need to identify and briefly explain the kind of text you’re summarizing

Be sure that, in your summary, you tell your readers what the author actually says and not just what the author talks about.

Summarizing means balancing brevity with coverage—your job is to condense the talk to its most important points AND to be sure you include all that matters most to the argument. The page limit assigned helps you decide just how much you need to leave out.

The “hiddenacademic agenda”—when you summarize, you’re demonstrating how closely you attend to and how well you master the writer’s ideas and argument. Accuracy and precision matter hugely. You are taking on the responsibility of representing the writer and of sharing his or her ideas.

Your readers—write to academic readers who have not seen or read the text.What must you include or make clear to readers who haven’t read the text you are summarizing? Any particulars we need to consider about the form/context of this particular text?

What all distinguishes academic readers from other readers?

What a summary is and isn’t—your summary is your best effort to distill out the writer’s central argument for your readers. Your own opinions about the writer’s topics and claims have no place in pure summary. Of course they matter, they just don’t belong in pure summary. Your readers trust you to keep your own ideas and opinions out of it as you distill and share the writer’s argument. This is true even in your first and last paragraphs of pure summary—don’t give the summarized text any personal or distinctive context. This means that you don’t comment on the writer’s ideas in word or in tone, you don’t say why they matter, how they align with your own thinking or experiences...etc.

Structuring and paragraphing—Breaking your summary into paragraphs will help your readers take in and digest the writer’s argument that you’re conveying. You’re already noting the main ideas as you read/listen; as you write the summary, then, decide how to package them in paragraphs to help your readers follow easily. Usually a paragraph in our own arguments and essays shares one main idea. In a summary of another writer’s text, though, a paragraph might cover several of the writer’s main ideas.

Transitions and attribution phrases (ownership reminders)—As with most writing, you need to help your readers follow easily as you share major claims, as you shift to new topics, as you move into an example, and in other ways. Use tight, straightforward, transition phrases to do this signaling work. Also, keep reminding your readers that you are sharing someone else’s ideas. Every two or three sentences, then, work in an attribution phrase: “Shafak’s next point...” or “the author then suggests...”

Quoting, paraphrasing and citing—First of all, why quote in a summary? And how much quoting is enough and how much is too much?

Quoting a whole clause with attribution phrase:
Mccloud says, “art, as I see it, is any human activity which doesn’t grow out of either of our species’ two basic instincts: survival and reproduction”(164).

Blending a quote into my own clause:

Mcloud defines art as “any activity which doesn’t grow out either of our species’ two basic instincts: survival and reproduction”(164).

Acceptable paraphrase:

Mccloud claims art encompasses any human endeavors not driven by our needs to survive or procreate (164).

Further blending and quoting a quote using ‘ ’ inside “ ”:

Mccloud argues that artists who focus on developing their own idiom “invent new ways of ‘showing the same old thing’ ” (176). Artists who choose to focus on form, however, become “explorers” or even “pioneers and revolutionaries” who “question the fundamental laws that govern their chosen art”(179).

(quoted from Scott Mccloud’s Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art)

Grading criteria

  • Demonstrated grasp of the writer’s ideas and argument; accuracy of the summary
  • Grasp of and focus on the task of summary
  • Balance between the condensing and the coverage of the writer’s argument
  • Structure and paragraphing that effectively shape the information for readers
  • Grammatical and judicious integration of quotations using both whole clauses and blended phrases
  • Effective use of transition and signal phrases
  • Clarity and precision at the sentence level
  • Mechanics of grammar, punctuation, and spelling