At 07:20 AM 2/1/99 -0600, Paul C. Smith wrote:
>Sue Frantz wrote:
>> After a bit more probing, I discovered they both
>> had been taught (by separate teachers in separate school districts in
>> separate decades) that to summarize something, you take each sentence
>> and reword it. No wonder they looked alike!
>>
>> I explained that's not the best technique for summarizing. :-)
>
That is the reason why I put in my syllabus a sentence in bold capital
letters stating that summarizing is not taking random sentences out of the
article or just switching a word or two in the sentence. Before I began
doing this, I would get article summary papers like that all of the time.
Students are required to turn in the entire article they are summarizing
and I have had a few students kind enough to highlight the sentence they
copied from.
When my intro to psych students do this, I give them a chance to rewrite
the paper without copying it the first time I catch them (of course, they
may not and get an F).
Deb
Deborah S. Briihl, Ph.D.
Dept. of Psychology and Counseling
Valdosta State University
Valdosta, GA 31698
(912) 333-5994
