CHAPTER 46 WRITING ABOUT TEXTS

When writing about texts your summarizing the author's key points. This will show that you understood the author's main ideas. In order to produce a strong summary, you will need to actively read the text. When you actively read a text you are taking notes, writing down any comments, questions or thoughts you have. This is called annotating the text. You want to make sure that you become familiar with the author's writing and really understand it so that you can put it in your own words in your summary. To really comprehend the meaning of the author's text you will need to read  it a few times. When you reread, the key points will be fully embedded in your mind, rather than the once overview reading. You will catch certain points that you did not the first time around.

After reading the text you want to create an outline. When creating an outline your main focus is on the thesis of the text, the main idea. This is your opportunity to sum up all of the information that you took notes on to prepare for your summary. If there is a visual, you have to figure out the point of the image and what images they are using to support the key points.

The summary should start off with mentioning the title, the author's name, and main points in the first sentence. It should be condensed and concrete. Again, this is interpreted in your own words and that in itself will show that you did in fact understand what you read. 

In my own writing, I plan on writing an outline before I write all of my papers. When doing that with the above summary I felt that allowed my words to really flow effortlessly. I also plan on taking notes as I write so that I could make sure that I get the main points installed in my mind. I was surprised to read in this chapter the suggestion of rereading your text. I found myself doing that anyways because I needed to, however, to have this suggested to everyone was great. I'm not alone! In the future, I will definitely start taking a deeper look at the images. I never realized how important an image could be in regards to the text until after reading the Writing about texts. Now, I understand that the visual always has an underground message, I just need to look for it.