Assignment: Read “Academic literacy and plagiarism...

Assignment: Read “Academic literacy and plagiarism: Conversations with international graduate students and disciplinary professors” by Ali R. Abasi and Barbara Graves, and write a summary of its thesis and main points. Your summary should be at least one paragraph long (8 -10 lines) and no more than one page. You CANNOT plagiarize from the abstract on the first page. Summary: a concise restatement of a reading’s main ideas. When composing a summary . . . Do . . . Don’t . . . Use your OWN words. It may be necessary at times to quote the author if you want to capture a particular phrase or tone from the original, but your summary should be mostly in your own words. Rely heavily on quotations. Borrow language directly from the text without enclosing it in quotation marks. At some point (usually either in the beginning or the end of your summary) offer a direct statement of the author’s thesis or main idea in your own words. Include a summary of the supporting ideas the author uses to support his or her main idea. Offer your opinions, analyses, or judgments of the author’s ideas or effectiveness. This can be tricky to avoid—even a statement like “Ulreich beautifully describes . . .” involves your opinion that his description is beautiful. Provide context for your summary by offering the full name of the author and the full title of the text in the first or second sentence. Then, refer to the author throughout the rest of the summary by his or her last name. Write as if your reader is already familiar with the text. Use effective verbs that characterize an author’s rhetorical moves: argues, claims, stresses, concedes, admits, examines, questions, analyzes, points out, reasons, compares, refutes, rejects, emphasizes, confirms. Offer some variation in your verbs. If the author is making lots of claims, don’t use the verb claim over and over. Offer some variation through synonyms: claims, posits, argues, asserts, believes, comments, contends, notes, thinks, notes, writes, suggests. Don’t use verbs that indicate a direct statement by the author unless followed by a direct statement. For example, don’t say that the author “states that . . .” when you are only inferring something from his or her remarks. Reserve verbs like states for direct quotes. Don’t use the verb quotes unless the author is quoting someone else. In other words, don’t say “Al Gore quotes that he could have won the nomination.” Reserve the verb quotes for when Al Gore is quoting someone else in the text: “Al Gore quotes Leo Tolstoy, saying that ‘All happy families are alike.’” Compose your summary in the present tense. Switch tenses or use the past tense unless the text itself refers to something that happened in the past. For example, “According to Stevenson, research done in the early 1970’s erred (past) because it ignored women. Because of this she argues (present) that it should be reassessed.” Grading: When grading your summaries, I will pay attention to the following: your ability to adhere to the conventions above; organization; your understanding of the article’s thesis and main ideas; grammar and spelling. Since this is a short assignment (less than one page), I will expect an “A” summary to be free of grammatical and spelling errors. After all, you will likely have less than ten sentences to edit.