Mastering English. Часть 2. Учебное пособие

−Let’s move on now and look at the figures for

…

−Let’s move on to the statistics.

−I’d like to point out that …

−What is interesting/ important/ warring/ surprising/ of concern here is …

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WORKING WITH SECONDARY

SOURCES OF INFORMATION

WRITING SUMMARIES AND ABSTRACTS

While working with technical literature Bachelors, Masters and postgraduate students have to work with different sources of information. They usually read original literature such as books, journals, articles, monographies. One of their tasks is not only to read these numerous sources of information but to rework the original, compress it and find the main ideas. When we speak about reworking the original technical information we mean secondary sources of information. They include: summaries, abstracts, reports, bibliographical descriptions.

Bibliographical descriptions are the shortest among the secondary sources of information. They are useful and applicable for descriptions of bibliographic resources in any type of catalogue. Bibliographical descriptions analyze and structure details about the formal elements of the materials, such as creator, title, dates, extent and contents, they also facilitate the identification, management, and understanding of the work. Here we will mainly focus on writing summaries and abstracts.

A summary is brief information of the original. Summaries are quite short. They usually contain about 1/8 of the original information. Summaries highlight the major points of the original sources. Be concise, using coordination and subordination to compress ideas. The purpose is to help readers to get the gist in a short period of time.

Writing an effective summary requires that a reader

−reads with the writer’s purpose in mind,

−underlines with summarizing in mind,

−writes, revises, and edits to ensure the accuracy and correctness of the summary.

While writing a summary keep the following steps:

1.Read the article carefully, making no notes or marks and looking only for what the writer is saying.

2.After you’re finished reading, write down in one sentence the point that is made about the subject. Then look for the writer’s thesis and underline it. Check if this thesis corresponds with the sentence you wrote down? If not, adjust your sentence or reconsider the thesis you selected.

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3.Look at the article again and ask yourself if your view is slanted toward one of the essay’s minor points. If it is, adjust your sentence so that it is slanted toward the writer’s major point.

4.Once you clearly understand the writer’s major point (or purpose) for writing, read the article again. This time underline the major points supporting the thesis; these should be words or phrases here and there rather than complete sentences.

5.In addition, underline key transitional elements which show how parts are connected. Omit specific details, examples, description, and unnecessary explanations. Note: you may need to go through the article twice in order to pick up everything you need.

6.Write, revise, and edit your summary finally.

7.There are different kinds of summaries such as:

−Summary in nonfiction (Ознакомительная аннотация)

−Executive summary (Краткий обзор, резюме)

−Abstract (Aннотация, краткое изложение содержания)

Nonfiction summaries serve to familiarize the reader with the subject matter of an entire work in a short space of time. They are written in a balanced and objective way, mirroring the genre’s aim to show actual events from the author’s point of view. Generally, nonfiction summaries do not offer analysis or assessment. Summarizers use their own words to write the shortened versions and draw on the original make-up of the pieces to structure the distillations. They exclude superfluous examples, descriptions and digressions. The opening sentence should introduce the topic, and the final sentence should sum up the theme, taking into account the knowledge gained from the body of the text. In recent years, a summarizing industry has sprung up. Leading firms focus mainly on business literature. They adhere to the nonfiction guidelines mentioned above, but also provide numerical ratings and evaluations of the titles covered. Shorter, more concise nonfiction summaries are called abstracts. They are approximately five pages, thus longer than scientific abstracts.

Executive summaries are used in business for a short document that summarizes a longer report, proposal or group of related reports in such a way that readers can rapidly become acquainted with a large body of material without having to read it all. It will usually contain a brief statement of the problem or proposal covered in the major document(s),

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background information, concise analysis and main conclusions. It is intended as an aid to decision making by business managers.

An executive summary will usually

−be written in non-technical language,

−have a conclusion,

−make a recommendation,

−summarize more than one document.

Summaries give a list of the main features of a given topic, often used as a rough draft or summary of the content of the original. A hierarchical outline is a list arranged to show hierarchical relationships, and is a type of tree structure. A lot of passive constructions are used in summaries. They do not express your own opinion of the original but only highlight the author’s opinion. Summaries usually give a recommendation for a certain group of readers.

Key-expressions are usually used for writing summaries:

−The article deals with …

−As the title implies … the article describes ...

−The paper is concerned with…

−It is known that…

−It should be noted about…

−The fact that… is stressed in the text.

−A mention should be made about …

−It is spoken in detail about…

−It is reported that …

−The text gives valuable information on…

−Much attention is given to…

−It is shown that…

−The following conclusions are drawn…

−The paper looks at recent research dealing with…

−The main idea of the article is…

−It gives a detailed analysis of…

−It draws our attention to…

−It is stressed that…

−The article is of great help to …

−The article is of interest to …

−… is/are noted, examined, discussed in detail, stressed, reported, considered.

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Summary to the text “Modern building materials”.

1.The text deals with different types of modern building materials.

2.As the title implies “Modern building materials” the article describes some innovations in the field of building materials.

3.A mention should be made about modern cement composites.

4.Much attention is given to fiber-reinforced composites.

5.It should be noted that a lot of builders are interested in modern building materials.

6.The text gives valuable information on/about different kinds of laminate.

7.The fact that the foamed glass is very popular nowadays is stressed in the text.

8.A lot of recent data are given in the article.

9.Modern equipment is mentioned in the article.

10.The text is of interest to the wide circle of readers/to Masters.

11.The text is of great help to civil engineers.

An abstract is a brief summary of a research article, thesis, review, conference proceeding or any in-depth analysis of a particular subject or discipline, and is often used to help the reader quickly ascertain the paper's purpose. When used, an abstract always appears at the beginning of a manuscript, acting as the point-of-entry for any given scientific paper or patent application. Abstracting and indexing services for various academic disciplines are aimed at compiling a body of literature for that particular subject. The terms précis or synopsis are used in some publications to refer to the same thing that other publications might call an “abstract”. In management reports, an executive summary usually contains more information (and often more sensitive information) than the abstract does.

Purpose and limitations

Academic literature uses the abstract to analyze complex research. An abstract may act as a stand-alone source instead of a full paper. As such, an abstract is used by many organizations as the basis for selecting research that is proposed for presentation in the form of a poster, platform/oral presentation or workshop presentation at an academic conference. Most literature database search engines index only abstracts rather than providing the entire text of the paper. Full texts of scientific papers must often be purchased because of copyright and/or publisher fees and

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therefore the abstract is a significant selling point for the reprint or electronic form of the full text.

Abstracts are protected under copyright law just as any other form of written speech is protected. However, publishers of scientific articles invariably make abstracts publicly available, even when the article itself is protected by a toll barrier. The abstract can convey the main results and conclusions of a scientific article but the full text article must be consulted for details of the methodology, the full experimental results, and a critical discussion of the interpretations and conclusions. An abstract allows one to sift through copious amounts of papers for ones in which the researcher can have more confidence that they will be relevant to his research. Once papers are chosen based on the abstract, they must be read carefully to be evaluated for relevance. It is commonly surmised that one must not base reference citations on the abstract alone, but the entire merits of a paper.

Usually abstracts have the following structure:

1)The background. It shows the content of the work. It has key words set aside from your paper as the basis. 1-3 introduction sentences and research questions are usually used here. We can use the following expressions:

−This article is motivated by …

−… is a fundamental question

−Previous research indicates …

−Previous research has shown …

−Previous research has focused on …

−The research focus (i.e. statement of the problem(s)/ research issue(s) addressed)

2)The aims. The purpose of research is usually given here.

−This article has the following goals …

−The article has the following goals …

−The article examines studies …

−The main purpose of the article is to …

3)The approach. This part shows the methods used in the research.

−We conducted the studies/ experiments on …

−We employed the following methods …

−The research explored …

−We tasted this hypothesis using …

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4)The results. It shows the main findings.

−The findings support the prediction …

−The findings support the model …

−Theoretical contributions and practical implications are discussed/ presented … in detail.

5)The conclusion. It shows what research lead to.

−The findings of the research illustrate how …

Abstract length varies by discipline and publisher requirements. Typical length ranges from 100 to 500 words, but very rarely more than a page. An abstract may or may not have the section title of “abstract” explicitly listed as an antecedent to content.

Abstracts may also contain brief references although some publications’ standard style omits references from the abstract, reserving them for the article body (which, by definition, treats the same topics but in more depth).

Abstract:

This article is motivated by a series of experiments on the problems between members in the educational group. The main purpose of the article is to describe the reasons for conflicts between its members. The article aims to show some aspects of the problem described. We conducted the studies on type of conflicts arising in the group. The research explored how often the members had conflicts and the ways to avoid them. Theoretical contributions and practical implications are discussed in detail. The findings of the research illustrate how to organize work in this group and to make its members cooperate in a good way.

Graphical abstracts

During the late 2000s, due to the influence of computer storage and retrieval systems such as the Internet, many scientific publications started including graphical abstracts alongside the text abstracts. The graphic is intended to summarize or be an exemplar for the main thrust of the article. It is not intended to be as exhaustive a summary as the text abstract, rather it is supposed to indicate the type, scope, and technical coverage of the article at a glance.

Abridgement

Abridgement or abridgment is a term defined as “shortening” or “condensing” and is most commonly used in reference to the act of reducing a written work, typically a book, into a shorter form. The

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abridgement can be true to the original work in terms of mood and tone, capturing the parts the abridging author perceives to be most important, or it could be a complete parody of the original. A written work may be abridged to make it more accessible to a wider audience; for example, to make an adaptation of it as an audio book or a television show, to make a more convenient companion to an already established work, or to create a shorter reference version.

Model Summary

An example of a summary is provided on the following pages. The example uses an article by David Suzuki to show you how a reading can be marked up, outlined, and summarized. Ask yourself the following questions to help you notice how this example follows the suggestions made in this handout:

1.What different kinds of notations does the student use to mark up the reading? How do the notations help uncover the meaning and main points of the reading?

2.How closely does the outline follow the notations made on the reading?

3.What does the student who created this outline/summary do to show exact wording that she/he copied?

4.In the summary, what method is used to make reference to the author (Suzuki)?

5.What are some of the differences between the outline and the summary? Why is the summary more useful than the outline to show the main ideas in the Suzuki article?

6.Find some examples of how the student uses her/his own wording to paraphrase Suzuki’s ideas. Do you think the student plagiarizes anywhere in her summary?

7.Do you think the summary matches each of the summary criteria listed on the first page of this handout?

Transporting food can cost the earth

By David Suzuki

When it comes to food, buying local has been the mantra of environmental groups for years. After all, it’s pretty easy to conclude that transporting fruits and vegetables from one side of the globe to the other isn’t very good for the planet. Now, a comprehensive new analysis of the true costs of the way we produce, purchase and consume food has found

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that while international transport of food does have an impact, when it comes to environmental damage, the big culprit is domestic transportation.

Researchers in the United Kingdom used data from previous studies to estimate the hidden costs of conventional agriculture in that country. These costs include things like government subsidies; exhaust pollution from transport trucks, railroads and car travel; heat-trapping emissions that cause global warming; and infrastructure, such as roads. Their results, published in the journal Food Policy, show that international ship and air travel currently contribute a relatively miniscule amount to the overall hidden costs of our food. By far, domestic transportation from the farm to the retailer and then from the shop to the consumer’s home has the greatest impact – accounting for nearly half of the hidden costs. Raw distance, it turns out, is not always the deciding factor in determining the adverse effects of transportation. Shipping by water, researchers note, has lower impact than shipping by road. Transport by air, on the other hand, has the greatest impact of all. Right now, hidden costs for the international transport of food are relatively low because much of this food is shipped by boat, or in the cargo holds of passenger planes. If we start to ship food by air more often, these costs could increase dramatically.

But if domestic transportation costs in a country as small as the U.K. are high, then the hidden costs of food transportation in Canada may be much higher. Consider a box of cereal, for example, which may start with wheat from the Prairies, transported to Ontario for processing with other ingredients from all over the country, put into a box made in Quebec and then transported to British Columbia for retail sales, where it will be picked up by a consumer driving an SUV. Because of our reliance on fossil fuels for transportation needs, each of these stages has hidden costs. In fact, even if we buy local food, but all of us drive to the store to pick it up, there are increased hidden costs. So, does this mean big-box chains that sell in huge quantities may unintentionally help the environment by reducing the number of trips taken to purchase groceries? According to the research, that doesn’t appear to be the case. Consumers in the U.K. are actually making more grocery shopping trips and driving greater distances to make them than they were 20 years ago – before the rise of the megamart. Another hidden cost of our food is taxpay- er-funded government subsidies that prop up unsustainable agricultural practices. Switching to organic agriculture, the researchers conclude, would lead to big benefits in terms of overall costs to society. Of course,

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