July 13 2009

Writing effective summaries

1.    Make it point toward your main idea

2.    Make it a generalization; leave juicy details for later paragraphs

3.    Make it synthetic, a pulling together of key ideas.

4.    Make it original; avoid plagiarism by not using any words, phrases, or sentences from the original publication.

5.    Cite any specific references parenthetically (author’s last name page number)

Class Activity

With a classmate, write a summary of the article online, “1952 Outbreak Has Echoes for 2009” (Lerner).  

By BARRON H. LERNER,

 The New York Times. June 16, 2009.

Who, what, when, where, how, why: the journalistic heuristic

Echoes from 1952: how an illness started

How an illness spread

Illnesses happen at summer camps

The illness infected a large amount of people and caused closings

The outbreak was Linked to one person: a cook

The illnesses affected the same age range

Symptoms are same: high fever and lethargy

The outbreaks made/have made people take more cautions, in particular, washing hands.

The illness in 1952 started from food, and the swine flu ??

The illnesses show benefits from prompt and aggressive treatment

These illnesses are not spread casually

Class activity: find a news article or something from an IUP database. Read it, reread it, looking intentionally for ideas that you can pull together to generalize about the overall main idea of the article. Write a summary of the article. Write a generalizing statement, then move into more specific material that helps support your summary.