WRiTing A SummARy 159samples — everything from in-class assignments, formal essays, and journal
entries to e-mails, blog posts, and chat sessions. Her conclusions are stirring.
right away you can see that Thompson has introduced a topic in each
paragraph — pundits’ criticism of students’ use of electronic media in the
first, and a national study designed to examine students’ literacy in the sec-
ond — and has indicated a connection between them. In fact, Thompson is
explicit in doing so. He asks a question at the end of the first paragraph and
then raises doubts as to the legitimacy of critics’ denunciation of young
people’s reliance on blogs and posts to communicate. How will Thompson
elaborate on this connection? What major points does he develop?Notice the author’s point of view and use of transitions. Another strategy
for identifying major points is to pay attention to descriptive words and
transitions. For example, Thompson uses a rhetorical question (“An age
of illiteracy is at hand, right?”) and then offers a tentative answer (“Andrea
Lunsford isn’t so sure”) that places some doubt in readers’ minds.
Notice, too, the words that Thompson uses to characterize the argu-
ment in the first paragraph, which he appears to challenge in the second
paragraph. Specifically, he describes these critics as “pundits,” a word that
traditionally refers to an expert or knowledgeable individual. However, the
notion of a pundit, someone who often appears on popular talk shows, has
also been used negatively. Thompson’s description of pundits “fretting,”
wringing their hands in worry that literacy levels are declining, under-
scores this negative association of what it means to be a pundit. Finally,
Thompson indicates that he does not identify with those who describe stu-
dents as engaging in “narcissistic blabbering.” This is clear when he char-
acterizes the professor as having “moaned.”
Once you identify an author’s point of view, you will start noticing con-
trasts and oppositions in the argument — instances where the words are
less positive, or neutral, or even negative — which are often signaled by
how the writer uses transitions.
For example, Thompson begins with his own concession to critics’
arguments when he acknowledges in paragraph 8 that educators should
expect students to “[master] formal academic prose.” However, he follows
this concession with the transition word “but” to signal his own stance in
the debate he frames in the first two paragraphs: “online media are push-
ing literacy into cool directions.” Thompson also recognizes that students
who write on blogs tend to write short, abbreviated texts. Still, he qualifies
his concern with another transition, “at the same time.” This transition
serves to introduce Thompson’s strongest claim: New media have given
students “a chance to write enormously long and complex pieces of prose,
often while working collaboratively with others.”
These strategies can help you recognize the main points of an essay
and explain them in a few sentences. For example, you could describe
Thompson’s key claims in this way:- electronic media give students opportunities to write more than in
previous generations, and students have learned to adapt what they
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