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Aim: understand the characteristics of summaries
and develop strategies to write effective summaries.
A summary is a shortened version of a
spoken or written account of an event, text, section of text, or visual
in which the main idea is given. It can be used to incorporate
other writers' work into your own writing. A good
summary shows that you have understood the text.
Read the following original text and its summary:
Original text:
The family,
however, has to be a sacred unity believing in the permanence
of what it teaches, if its ritual and ceremony are to express
and transmit the wonder of the moral law, which it alone is
capable of transmitting. When that belief disappears, as it
has, the family has, at best, a transitory togetherness. People
sup together, play together, travel together, but they do not
think together. Hardly any homes have any intellectual life
whatsoever, let alone one that informs the vital interests of
life. Educational TV marks the high tide for family intellectual
life.
Source:
Bloom,
Allan. 1987.The Closing of the American Mind. New York: Simon
& Schuster: 57-58
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Acceptable summary:
In his discussion of what is amiss in intellectual life
in America, Allan Bloom points to the fact that families no
longer provide their children with a moral code. Because the
family no longer inspires a belief in wisdom, it limits the
potential for learning (Bloom, 1987:57-58).
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Now answer the following questions:
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