Summary Critique Writing Created by Betsy Divine ESL Service Courses, Fall 2012

Major ObjectiveThe summary-critique essay will give you practice in both summarize an external source as well as to critiquing the source’s validity, credibility, argumentation, and organization. The skills practice in this assignment are practical and applicable a wide variety of graduate-level writing tasks.

ResearchCriticCritic of Critic Your Critic of Loxton “Word Learning in a Domestic Dog: Evidence

for ‘Fast Mapping’” (Kaminski et al., 2004).

“Rico the Word Dog Prodigy More Human Than Canine Dog Gives New Meaning To Language”(Peterson, 2005).

“Pooches May be Smarter Than We Think” (Loxton, 2007).

“Your Exciting Title” (Divine, 2012).

Writing a Good Summary Critique Requires:

1. Understanding all the past and current research on the topic first.

2. Understanding the thesis and supporting points of the work you are critiquing.

3. Coming to your own conclusions about the published work and taking your stance in the form of a central transitional thesis.

4. Identifying the most important supporting evidence/elements of your thesis and expressing those points using clear P-I-E structures.

5. Being concise in our summary writing. Remember that the summary critique is only going to have 1-2 paragraphs of summary and the remainder will be your critique.

Beginning The Summary Part A summary should begin by mentioning the

original source. Here are some examples:

1) In her article entitled “The Joy of Summary Writing,” Divine (2012) +that

2)In “The Joy of Summary Writing,” Divine (2012)

Informs us

statesclaimsshows us

indicates

discussesexplores

analyzes

Beginning The Summary Part The article, “The Joy of Summary Writing” by Betsy

Divine

According to Divine’s 2012 article “The Joy of Summary Writing,” concision can be a difficult skill for students to master

Concision, according to Divine (2012) in her article “The Joy of Summary Writing,” can be a difficult skill for students to master.

examinesexploresshows usreveals

Sample Student Introduction In his article “Pooches May be Smarter Than We

Think”, Jason Loxton criticizes April Pederson’s article, “Paranormal Pooches”, which attacks the validity of Kaminski et al.’s research, “Word Learning in a Domestic Dog: Evidence for “Fast Mapping””. Loxton argues that + main idea

Critique the student text above. Do they follow the appropriate APA format? Is the wording comprehensible? Is the language neutral?

Sample Body of A Critique Some positive, but mostly negative

Positive (Weaker) opinion first = 1 paragraph Negative (Stronger) opinion second = 2 paragraphs

Some negative, but mostly positive Negative (Weaker) opinion first = 1 paragraph Positive (Stronger) opinion second = 2paragraphs

Remember that all your main points need to be related to your transitional thesis

Sample Phrases: Evaluative Language The author’s [positive characteristic] was

reflected in the author’s ability to… Although….., there existed a lack in

connection between X and Y…. Despite….,Divine fails to acknowledge X Given the author’s background in X, it

comes as no surprise… Divine’s coverage of X goes beyond…

Unreal Conditionals in Critiques Would/might have + PP verb+

Comparison + if + noun phrase + PP verb

This article would have been more persuasive if the author had related the findings to previous work on the topic.

It would have been better if the authors had given their main findings in the form of a table.

Subordination in Critiques Although the author suggests that journal articles

written in languages other than English may have limited impact, he fails to see the advantages of more publications being available in English.

Despite the many interesting citations in support of his view, the citations are dated and are not likely meaningful today.

The author recognizes that…..; however, she fails to see….

Double Adjectives in Critiques In this ambitious but flawed study, Jones

and Wang…

In this flawed by ambitious study, Jones and Wang…

Notice that just like subordination, the emphasis changes depending on the order.

Evaluative Language: Adjectives PositiveUsefulImportantInterestingDetailedInsightfulConsistentInformative

NegativeInconsistentDifficultRestrictedMisleadingDistracting

A Closer Look at Evaluative Language

Read the following student summary of Loxton.

Pay close attention to the evaluative language used.

Sample Summary In his article “Pooches May be Smarter Than We Think”, Jason Loxton

criticizes April Pederson’s article, “Paranormal Pooches”, which attacks the validity of Kaminski et al.’s research, “Word Learning in a Domestic Dog: Evidence for “Fast Mapping””. Loxton argues that Kaminski’s experiment deserves more consideration than a simple dismissal because it was carried out by a respected research institute, published in a reliable magazine, and has gone through peer-reviews. He contends that Pederson neglected and misunderstood several important details of the experiment, and did not provide any scientific evidence in supporting her argument. In particular, he criticizes her for accusing the experiment of involving a “Clever Hans” phenomenon, which shows that she neglected the fact that the experiment was carefully designed to avoid that phenomenon. Also, although he admits that Pederson rightly pointed out that Rico’s alleged ability to fast map could in fact be a simple repetition of “fetch-a-new-toy” routine, he believes that her denial of Rico’s recalling ability as a mere chance is unjustifiable because the 50 % success rate is a significant figure, considering that the random chance is 11 – 20%. Finally, he refuted her attack on Kaminski’s experiment method by mentioning that all 200 items were in fact included in the pool and that there is no possibility of manipulation in the design of the experiment.

In his article “Pooches May be Smarter Than We Think”, Jason Loxton criticizes April Pederson’s article, “Paranormal Pooches”, which attacks the validity of Kaminski et al.’s research, “Word Learning in a Domestic Dog: Evidence for “Fast Mapping””. Loxton argues that Kaminski’s experiment deserves more consideration than a simple dismissal because it was carried out by a respected research institute, published in a reliable magazine, and has gone through peer-reviews. He contends that Pederson neglected and misunderstood several important details of the experiment, and did not provide any scientific evidence in supporting her argument. In particular, he criticizes her for accusing the experiment of involving a “Clever Hans” phenomenon, which shows that she neglected the fact that the experiment was carefully designed to avoid that phenomenon. Also, although he admits that Pederson rightly pointed out that Rico’s alleged ability to fast map could in fact be a simple repetition of “fetch-a-new-toy” routine, he believes that her denial of Rico’s recalling ability as a mere chance is unjustifiable because the 50 % success rate is a significant figure, considering that the random chance is 11 – 20%. Finally, he refuted her attack on Kaminski’s experiment method by mentioning that all 200 items were in fact included in the pool and that there is no possibility of manipulation in the design of the experiment.

Making Neutral Reference Not every part of a critique should be

evaluative. You need to remember to remind the readers of who/what you are criticizing by using neutral summary phrases between the critiques such as:

The author goes on to say… Divine (2012) also reports that… The article further states that…

Concluding The Critique A concluding paragraph restates the

conclusions that you have drawn about the work. For example, if you've analyzed how the role of women are presented in a work of literature, the conclusion is the place for you to say what impact that roles has had on that book and perhaps literature as a whole. Thus, we can think of the conclusion as a restatement of the thesis as well as a deeper or broader analysis of the issue and associated research.

Sample Conclusion In summary, it has to be admitted that the

current study is still far from being conclusive. Further studies must be undertaken, better measures must be developed, and larger samples must be used to improve our understanding concerning the exact relationship between culture and decision making. Despite some deficiencies in methodology, to the extent that this research is exploratory i.e. trying to investigate an emerging issue, the study has provided some insights to account for culture in developing ethical standards across national borders.

Sample Conclusion In summary, it has to be admitted that the

current study is still far from being conclusive. Further studies must be undertaken, better measures must be developed, and larger samples must be used to improve our understanding concerning the exact relationship between culture and decision making. Despite some deficiencies in methodology, to the extent that this research is exploratory i.e. trying to investigate an emerging issue, the study has provided some insights to account for culture in developing ethical standards across national borders

Summary Self ReflectionPlease look to your paragraph and consider the following:

1) Is the source given correctly at the beginning?2) Do you capture the main idea?3) How did you express the main idea in your paragraph?4) Did you discuss the main supporting subtopics?5) What are they?6) Are there any unnecessary details? If so, remove them.7) Does your summary give the impression that you

clearly understood the reading? If not, mark any places of misinterpretation.

ReferencesMcWhorter, K.T. (2006). Successful College Writing

(3rd Ed.). Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s.Plotnick, J. (n.d.). “Paraphrase and Summary.”

University College Writing Centre. Retrieved fromhttp://www.utoronto.ca/ucwriting/paraphra se.html

Swales, J.M., Feach, C.B. (2005) Academic Writing for

Graduate Students: Essential Tasks and Skills (2nd Ed.)University of Michigan Press: Ann Harbor

Discussion on 3rd ArticleLoxton's main ideas: Pedersen’s article in Skeptic Vol 12 (3), Paranormal Pooches, criticizes

Kaminski’s article Can a dog learn a word? which appears in the journal Science.

Loxton in Skeptic Vol 13 (2) argues that an article in a respectable peer-reviewed Journal cannot be dismissed as Pedersen does since sheadduces no supporting scientific evidence but relies on popular newspaper and magazine sources.

Pedersen’s invoking of the "clever Hans" fallacy fails to note Kaminski’smethodological safeguard against it.

Loxton argues that Pedersen’s interpretation of the evidence against ‘fast mapping’ by the border collie Rico, is unsound – specifically she misunderstands valid statistical inferences and fails to mention the realproblem of small sample sizes.

Also, Pedersen’s crudely attacks the researchers, and also misinterprets and makes errors in criticizing a well designed experimental testing of the dog’s vocabulary knowledge.

The remainder of the Pedersen article is dismissed as irrelevant and dubious by Loxton