Summarizing and Reflecting on a Text
Once you have finished reading and annotating the text—and responding to it either in your annotations or in a separate writing—it’s a good idea to put that text into the context of the course and your learning. Doing work like this helps cement the ideas in our memory.
Summarize
When you take the time to summarize, you are gathering up what you know about the author’s main point and putting it into words. Elsewhere in this textbook, I have more guidance for writing summaries, but even if you aren’t being asked to write a formal summary, taking the time to answer key questions about the text will help you use the text more effectively later.
Read back through your annotations and notes, and jot down answers to questions like the following:
- What is the author’s main point?
- What are the supporting points that lead to that main point?
- What evidence does the author provide to support those points?
- What examples does the author use, and how well do those examples explain and clarify the point?
View the example.
I’m not going to write a full-blown summary here so that you have the opportunity to write your own if your instructor has decided to assign this. However, here are my answers to the questions:
- Main point: Mitchell argues that we need to choose between “segregated coexistence,” where people of different races and ethnicities live in enclaves but mostly stay separated from one another, and “living in community,” which he calls integration. He favors the latter.
- Supporting points: Mitchell explains that we have been living in segregated coexistence for a long time and argues that this status feeds inequity and racism in our society. He claims that living in community is difficult to achieve and that we can only do this if we decide that we don’t want to live in conflict any more.
- Two examples of evidence:
- He uses statistical demographic data from the Othering and Belonging Institute to support his claim that we currently live in enclaves.
- He uses Eric Yamamoto’s description of the process of interracial justice that leans to racial reconciliation. Eric Yamamoto is a professor of law and social justice at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. He’s internationally known as an expert on racial justice.
- Two examples of examples:
- He gives Detroit and Baton Rouge as examples of cities that appear to be demographically diverse but that are really made up of enclaves.
- He gives the example of “equitable funding for schools” as something that the government must do if we are going to be able to live in community.
Again, using an article you are working on or the article you have chosen from the sample assignment, answer the questions that are listed earlier to help you summarize the main point and understand how the supporting points, evidence, and examples work in that article.
Reflect on Your Purpose
In your notes from when you were focusing your reading, you should have information about why you