Summaries

Everyone,

We need to work on summary. This is an important concept to master since we often have to quickly explain the gist of sources in writing. The gist, however, needs to get at the heart of what an author is trying to accomplish by writing what they write rather than just a least of what they talk about. In other words, we need to explain why the writer says what she/he does not just what she/he says. For example:

In his article "From Pencils to Pixels: The Stages of Literacy Technologies," Dennis Baron argues that writing should be understood as a technology because failure to do so leads to a situation in which established sophisticated technologies become invisible and natural and new technologies are met with either scorn or hyperbolic enthusiasm. Both of these situations inhibit our ability to understand how writing as a technology both changes and resists change, and how access to technologies, both old and new, work to maintain sociocultural inequalities. Baron argues that by understanding writing as technology and the stages of technological change, literacy scholars can better understand and promote literacy.