Smart Thinking: Skills for Critical Understanding and Writing, 2nd Ed

146 SMART THINKING: SKILLS FOR CRITICAL UNDERSTANDING & WRITING

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The last paragraph is a summary of what comes before and I have not cast
it.

Capturing the essence of the text

Looking back over the last three paragraphs, I have tried to produce something of
the key argument they contain as a list of claims and diagram. In doing so, I hope
not only to assist you in understanding the text as a whole but also to show how
casting is not 'the only way of doing things'. Sometimes we can try to understand
things by reconstructing the underlying argument structure, rather than directly
recovering it from the narrative flow. I have changed the words, and stripped the
argument down to its essentials so as to make clear what the logic is. This is not
casting. I am doing it here simply to show you another use for the methods of
thinking about logic I have discussed in this book.

1. We need to make students think of themselves as writers and not as
   students.


2. Students write for an assessor.


3. Students have comradeship with other students.


4. Students write with the goal of getting a good mark.


5. Students write as a result of being told to write.


6. Being a writer means believing that the goal of writing is contributing
   to knowledge.


7. Being a writer means thinking of one's audience as those people with
   something to learn from the writer.


8. Being a writer means having a sense of comradeship with other
   authors.


9. Being a writer means writing with self-motivation to write.
   10. Students do not write as if they are writers, but write as students.
   11. Referencing only seems relevant if one is a writer.
   12. Students know technically how to reference.