Week 8: Summarizing and Paraphrasing; Citations

Writing Instruction Week 8: Summarizing and paraphrasing; Citations

Weekly topic: Summarizing and paraphrasing Objectives Students will be able to: o Breakdown the 2nd paper prompt o Distinguish and appropriately choose between quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing evidence. Lesson Questions/Details/Descriptions Student Activity Actions Writing instruction: Breaking down the prompt: Analysis  Although ‘accountability’ is widely considered one of the most important (55 min) features of democracy, it is not clear that democratic governments are always equally responsive to all social groups, especially in the context of changing conditions. Please write an essay that answers the following question: How do changing social, economic and technological conditions affect the likelihood that democratic governments will be effectively accountable to the variety of individuals and groups to be found in them?  Do changing conditions contribute or detract from holding democratic government accountable?  Which conditions do you want to focus on? Which ones seem most important?  HOW do they affect them?  Which authors are you going to agree with? Which ones are you going to disagree with?  You can choose how to allocate your space and focus of your argument. To quote or to paraphrase:  Quote the source by using its exact language with quotation marks or in a block quotation.  Paraphrase the source by restating a short passage in your own words.  Summarize the source by restating its ideas in fewer words than the original. Which option you choose depends on how much of a source you are using, how you are using it, and what kind of paper you are writing, since different fields use sources in different ways. You have to decide each case individually, but here are some general guidelines:  If it’s long, summarize. If a passage is more than a paragraph or two, summarize it. Never quote or paraphrase long passages.  Don’t quote too much. If you use many passages from sources, do not quote them all. Too many quotations will make readers wonder whether you have contributed any of your own ideas.  In the sciences and experimental social sciences, paraphrase and summarize. In these fields, it’s usually the results that matter, not the words used to report them.  In the humanities and qualitative social sciences, quote only when the exact words matter. If a passage from a source is your primary evidence, quote it (or, if it is too long, quote parts of it). If you address the exact words of a secondary source, quote them.

1 Writing Instruction Week 8: Summarizing and paraphrasing; Citations Practice: Identify, analyze, and cite evidence to support one of the following two arguments. When identifying your evidence, remember to think carefully about whether to quote, summarize, or paraphrase.  How do changing technological conditions affect the likelihood that democratic governments will be effectively accountable to the variety of individuals and groups to be found in them? o Argument 1: The advent of big data collection and analytics has undermined democratic accountability through facilitating targeted advertising and political outreach to minority groups. This targeted outreach both further isolates minority groups and precludes the formation of new political ties between minority groups and political organizations. o Argument 2: Advances in communication technology, like blogs and social media, facilitate democratic accountability by providing near-universal access to share and view political grievances; officeholders, then, more likely fear reactions from citizens and citizens can more quickly mobilize to redress grievances with their officeholders.