Coming to Terms

As I read through this chapter, I noticed how brilliant some of the key concepts were. For example, I learned that no summary is perfect, but a really good way to have a great summary is to take the text or passage, and rephrase some of the key ideas and quotes in your own words. By doing this it presents you with a new meaning that is key to the summary. Also I learned that in order to be successful when doing this type of summarizing, you need to be able to make sense of the text. Also as Menard said, experience is critical to being successful at this too. The more times one takes a passage and summarizes it in his or her own, personal terms, he or she will be more successful at understanding the text.

Then as I continued reading, I learned that I needed to slow down in reading the text and to think through the phrases. Reading is more than just reading a ton of lines and then stopping. After important lines I (the reader) need to take a moment and stop and think about the line: the context and meaning to the rest of the text, or maybe how it will have a role later in the text. Usually the advice readers get when summarizing is to restate the authors main point or thesis. But instead the reader should focus on specific claims. In addition, the reader must understand that a project (the text) is far more complicated then a main idea. For example, if I were to write a paper about the #BlackLivesMatter movement, my paper is not only about how it is wrong that Black people are being killed, my paper would also highlight the racial injustice that is within the system. The paper would also argue that our police system is broken and needs to be fixed. As I said, a project (a text or paper) is far more complicated then the main point or thesis.