Summary vs precis 1
- 1. Summary -vs- Rhetorical Précis
- 2. What is a Summary? A condensed version of the text’s main points.
- 3. Written in your own words.
- 4. Conveys the author’s main ideas.
- 6. When might a summary be used? When writing a research paper (to give an overview of another writer’s perspective or argument)
- 7. In academic assignments (to report your understanding of what a text says).
- 8. In a persuasive “take a stand” essay/paper (to support your view and present arguments that oppose your view).
- 9. How to Compose a Summary Read the text for its main points.
- 10. Write out the text’s thesis or main point.
- 11. Indentify the text’s major divisions or chunks .
- 12. Summarize each part in one or two sentences.
- 13. Combine your summaries of the parts into a coherent whole. *Be sure to use your own words !*
- 14. What is a Rhetorical Précis? French for “concise summary.”
- 15. It is part summary, part analysis.
- 16. Less neutral and more analytical than a summary.
- 17. Describes content of text.
- 18. Describes HOW the text makes its points.
- 19. Guidelines to Writing a RP Provide a condensed statement of the text’s main point.
- 20. Write brief statements about the text’s essential rhetorical parts: purpose, methods, and intended audience.
- 21. How to Structure a RP Sentence 1 : Name of author, genre, and title of work, date in parenthesis; a rhetorically accurate verb (such as “claims,” argues,” “asserts,” “suggests”); and a THAT clause containing the major assertion or thesis statement in the work.
- 22. Sentence 2: An explanation of HOW the author develops and supports the thesis, usually in chronological order.
- 23. Sentence 3 : A statement of the author’s apparent purpose , followed by an “in order to” phrase.
- 24. Sentence 4: A description of the intended audience and/or the relationship the author establishes with the audience.