Summary+Notes

=**Writing Summaries** =

Here are some notes that will help you structure your summary. These notes contain especially useful information on the introduction to your summary.

More notes as a result of my feedback on some of your papers: **__Structuring a summary to avoid plagiarism__** One way to approach a summary is to understand the author’s strategy in the way he is arguing something. As we discussed this morning, Legrain has 3 main presentations: You can therefore organize your summary using these areas of presentation.  Select a key idea Legrain is presenting: **Legrain shows that cultures are more robust than we think.** How does he support this idea? Notice that what you are doing is tracing his process of reasoning, following his logic. In effect what you are summarizing is the author’s argument.  **__Present Tense or Past Tense?__** When summarizing an article that is still valid today, use the present tense – Legrain argues, he points out, he defends etc. The article and the arguments are still valid. In other kinds of articles – for example a paper that reports the results of a study, you would use the past tense because you are summarizing specific actions that took place in the past and are no longer happening. For example, ‘the authors surveyed 250 students;, the authors found that there were no correlations between X and Y’ etc. 
 * He presents the direct benefits of globalization.
 * He shows that we have exaggerated the idea that globalization leads to the whole world being dominated by American culture.
 * <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">He explores the notion that globalization does present possibilities of things becoming homogenous but that in the end identity is a matter of individual choice.
 * <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">An example of how an idea can be traced and expressed **
 * 1) <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">He presents the fear that American consumers goods are spreading everywhere and taking over other cultures.
 * 2) <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">BUT he argues that **products cannot replace values and culture** – we can use American products without losing our cultures
 * 3) <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">He also states that **even if there is change happening to cultures, we cannot just blame American product** s. WHY è The **changes come from other source** s – from ideas about science and politics, from the immigration of people all over the world, and from the spread of technology. These are really the forces that lead to new combinations of cultures.