Monday, April 20, 2009
Summary-Responses
GEW, I know you took Keesey's class when I did. Did you, SafiaK? Do you remember all those summary-responses we had to write? That exercise made me a much faster at reading and assessing articles. I'm guessing that it would do me well to re-develop that skill, so I'm starting to write Summary-Responses for the articles I'm reading in connection with my dissertation. Have you tried this? Do you think it will be ultimately helpful?
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Yes, I did those. I haven't been doing formal versions--too impatient. But after most articles that have much relevance, I do write a brief summary, and I write my thoughts. Sometimes the responses are fairly long if the article was very relevant or stirred a lot of thoughts. Other times, it's brief. And yes, it helped a lot. Much of my first 5,000 words included passages from those write ups. It really helps to have those kinds of notes, especially if you get a couple of months (years?) out from having read the article. I've had a much harder time figuring out how to manage notes about books.
And then I remembered that we called them "Summary-Critiques."
I haven't figure out the book thing either. I think I'm going to a summary-critique of the intro as a start. I've been doing the Torres book review--skim acknowledgements and table of contents, read intro, read/skim conclusion, skim index--to see if a book will be helpful. I do notes on the process so I'll remember--it's kind of like an expanded annotated bibliography with odd additions (such as, "has a separate index of Shakespeare plays" or "includes Butler in index"). I've only read one book recently and stalled out on taking specific notes on it. I think I'll have to work up a system for books I won't get to keep (I've been buying all the books I need so far). Let me know if you figure anything out!
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