Article Summary Writing Exercise – Instructions and Article Link

Week 8

In-Class Writing Assignment

WHAT IS A SUMMARY?

A summary is a restatement of the main ideas of an article or passage of text. Summaries are composed in your own words and demonstrate your ability to understand what you have read, to locate the important ideas in the reading, and to communicate those ideas to someone else.

THE ASSIGNMENT

You need to carefully and critically read the article provided. You then need to compose a no more than 1 page summary that

· Clearly identifies the article you are summarizing by title and author

· Clearly states the overall main point of the article in one sentence in your own words

· Briefly provides the necessary supporting points of the article in your own words

· Correctly cites the source in APA format with in-text citations and a References section at the end of the paper

FORMAT

Your summary should be in essay format, using complete sentences and paragraphs. Any material taken word for word from the article must be in quotation marks and cited with a parenthetical citation that includes authors’ last names, publication date, and page number.

ARTICLE

Callahan, D. (2004) The cheating culture: Why more Americans are doing wrong to get ahead. Orlando: Harcourt.

http://trineonline.trine.edu/pluginfile.php/1257983/mod_page/content/5/Callahan.CheatinginaBottomLineEconomy.pdf

GRADING GUIDE – Please use these criteria to guide your work on this assignment.

Criterion

Description for Students

Maximum Points Possible

Main Idea: Accurately conveys the Main Idea of the Article

You have accurately explained the main idea of the article in your own words.

15

Support: Selects appropriate supporting ideas

You have chosen the correct supporting ideas from the article to show how the author has made his/her claims and stated them in your own words. You have provided clear statements of the author’s ideas without providing excessive information from examples or evidence used by the author.

15

Content: Provides sufficient and appropriate information for understanding

You have provided enough information from the article that a person who has not read it could understand the main point and the supporting points and evidence. No unnecessary information is provided and no necessary information is missing.

15

Clarity of Writing: Logical Order of Ideas

Your ideas follow a logical pattern throughout the paper. Information is provided where a reader would need it to understand the topic and information is not repeated unnecessarily. You have used transition words such as “further,” “however,” or “similarly” to show the relationship between ideas.

5

Clarity of Writing: Paragraph Structure

You have composed clear paragraphs with topic sentences that state the main idea of the paragraphs followed by sentences that relate only to the topic introduced in the topic sentences.

5

Clarity of Writing: Word Choice

You have chosen words that are appropriate and make sense for the topic you are writing about. Few or no words are misused or are too informal for the assignment.

5

Mechanics: Sentence Structure

You have used correct sentence structure throughout, with correct subject-verb placement, and minimal errors in use of modifiers and transition words.

5

Mechanics: Grammatical Errors

You have minimal errors in grammar, punctuation, and spelling.

5

Citations: Signal Phrase

You have included a correct APA signal phrase with the author’s last name and publication date.

10

Citations: In-text Citations

You have included a correct APA-style parenthetical citation at the end of the summary. You have included citations with author’s last name, date and page number for any quotations taken word for word from the article. All quotations are also correctly indicated with quotation marks.

10

Citations: References

You have included a correct APA-style References citation at the end of the paper. Correct citations include all required information and are formatted correctly with a hanging indent.

10