SCHOLARY ARTICLE SUMMARY ASSIGNMENT
SCHOLARY ARTICLE SUMMARY ASSIGNMENT
PURPOSE OF ASSIGNMENT
This assignment is designed to give you practice reading and summarizing secondary source material. When academics and literary scholars conduct their research and write up their findings, they rely on their ability to read and understand what others have written about their topic, and to synthesize and condense the main points of those arguments into their own words. Writing a summary of a scholarly article about of the readings from our course will help you develop this vital skill, as well as hone the Content Knowledge associated with the Course Objectives.
SKILLS TO ACQUIRE
The Summary Writing Assignment will help you master several important skills necessary to performing writing tasks in college and engaging with ideas and values that are foundational to a well-rounded university education.
Identify and apply a variety of critical approaches to literature
Identify the important literary periods and themes of American Literature from the mid-nineteenth century to the present
Demonstrate knowledge of a diversity of American cultures through the study of literature
Apply various reading strategies to text in order to summarize, synthesize, analyze, interpret, and evaluate the literature
Using MLA style and a variety of sources, write a paper on American literature that shows original thought, research, and an ability to assimilate and synthesize the ideas of others
Enhance technological skills
TASKS TO COMPLETE
• Choose one article from any of the Engl 2132 Recommended Scholarly Articles.pdf from Units 2-5 (this document can be found under Writing Resources in Course Resources folder in the Table of Contents) and compose a 600-word summary. Those articles have already been retrieved for you from Galileo and can be downloaded in a pdf. version by going to the “Recommended Scholarly Article” folder at the end of the content section for each author in Units 2-5. Click on the “See Current Reading List” in the upper left-hand corner and you will see the articles for that writer. If you wish to retrieve a different scholarly article by yourself from Galileo, you can click here for directions.
• Create a correct bibliographical citation (MLA, 8th ed.) for your article and place it at the top of the opening page. The citations provided for you in the “Recommended Scholarly Articles” folder are already in correct MLA format.
• Begin with a statement (usually more than one sentence) explaining the author’s thesis in the article. Throughout your summary, refer frequently to the author of the article so that it is clear you are summarizing his or her ideas and not your own.
• Identify all the main points (and relevant sub-points) that support the author’s thesis; identify key ideas and terms from the article; include several short quotations from the article, with the actual page number in parentheses after the quotations; provide a sense of conclusion at the end.
• This assignment is worth 99 points and will count 10 % of your total grade for the course.
SUBMITTING YOUR SUMMARY
Open the Assignment folder for the Summary Writing Assignment and attach your final document by the assignment due date. Be sure to save the assignment in .doc, .docx, or RTF format. Your instructor must be able to open your submission in order for you to receive credit. Save your file with your last name, first initial and “Summary Writing Assignment” (i.e., JonesP-Summary Writing Assignment.doc)
