Summarizing

Summarizing

Aim

The aim of the Summarizing course is to teach students to makestudents make a paragraph-length summary of certain genres of text.

 

Learning outcomes

By the end of Summarizing a passing student will be able to:

1. Identify macro-organizational features of a text.
2. Identify elements of a report which is formally organized into the component sections of SPRE, in order to produce a single paragraph summary of it.
3. Identify elements of a news report whose structure contains informally organized components of SPRE, in order to produce a single paragraph summary of it.
4. Identify the elements of topic, purpose, methods, results, evaluation/recommendations in a popular report of academic research, in order to produce a single paragraph summary of it.
5. Identify the elements of topic, purpose, methods, results, evaluation/recommendations in an academic report of academic research, in order to produce a single paragraph summary of it.
6. Identify elements of a(n argumentative) text which expresses a strong opinion, in order to produce a single paragraph summary of it.
7. Identify elements of a comparative evaluation, in order to produce a single paragraph summary of it.

 

Assessments

Summarising is assessed by a single exam:

           

Final Exam                   100%  

 

Autonomous Study

Students are responsible for improving their summarizing skills by themselves; students will prepare for the examination independently, but help from detailed course materials that include explanatory texts and guiding videos.

Students should:

1. Review the course information

2. Look carefully at the Genre Focus and the Skills Focus lessons

3. Use the texts in the other folders to learn vocabulary

4. Write summaries of as many of the texts in the other folders as they can

5. Submit their summaries to the Discussion Forum in each text folder

6. Read and act on feedback on that summary

Corpus

Summarizing consists of some 150 texts, collected into a single Summarizing Corpus. Students are expected to complete all texts and tasks in their own time. This means that they are 100% responsible for their own learning. Students are strongly encouraged to read and attempt to summarise a good number of the available texts, submitting summaries as drafts for formative feedback.

 

 

Target Genres

All of the texts in the Summarizing Corpus will be analyzed in terms of one of 5 genres. These are:

 

1. SPRE – More or less academic report
2. Academic report of academic research
3. News report of academic research
4. Comparative evaluation
5. Opinion piece (Argumentative)
6. Report of a survey