Reading: Information Extraction and Summarization LELI English Academic Writing Center

Preview  Text Selection  Relevance  Checklists  Reading Strategies  Skimming  Key-word Strategies  Vocabulary Strategies  Structure and Reading  Summarization  Comprehensiveness  Conciseness  Coherence  Independence  Using summarization in academic writing  Different types of summarizing  Application

Selecting Texts  Purpose of academic reading – Information exctraction  Know what type of information you want  Find appropriate texts  Discard irrelevant texts  Search for information specifically - Checklists

Exercise – Choosing Texts  Topic: Pre-Colombian Religions and Latin American Catholicism  “Syncretic religions: An overview”  “Saints and Gods: A comparison”  “The Colonial Catholic Church”  “Mesoamerican Ritual Sacrifice”  “Religious Rhetoric and Latin American Politics”  “Catholic Spain: A History”

Reading Strategies  Skimming  Read quickly  Don’t use dictionaries  Identify key words  Key-Word Strategy/Scanning  Find key words  Define key words  Connect key words  Vocabulary Strategy  Don’t immediately use a dictionary  Context clues  Mark unknown words  Structure Clues  Remember academic structure  Use topic and concluding sentences to identify main points

Importance of Reading Strategies  Time management – Skimming  Text selection – Key words  Vocabulary building  Understanding Structure

Exercise – Reading Strategies  Probably the most difficult problem for people living alone is dealing with feelings of loneliness. First, they have to understand the feeling. Some people confuse being alone with feeling lonely. They need to remember that unhappily married people can feel very lonely with spouses, and anyone can suffer from loneliness in a room crowded with friends. Second, people living alone have to fight any tencendies to get depressed. Depression can lead to much unhappiness, including conpulsive behavior like overeating or spending too much money. Depression can also drive people to fill the feeling of emptiness by getting into relationships or jobs that they do not truly want. Third, people living alone need to get involved in useful and pleasurable activities, such as volunteering their services to help others.

Summarizing  Characteristics of good summaries:  Comprehensive – All important information covered  Concise – Short, to the point, non-repetitive  Coherent – Not just a list of statements, but a connected sentence or paragraph  Independent – Not an attempt to preserve the author’s “voice,” but to restate the information in your own way

Summarizing  Types of summaries  Paragraph  Sentence  Long text  Paragraph  Section  Sentence  Paragraph  Phrase

Why is Summarizing Useful?  Paraphrasing  Literature reviews  Writing concisely

Exercise – Summarizing  Probably the most difficult problem for people living alone is dealing with feelings of loneliness. First, they have to understand the feeling. Some people confuse being alone with feeling lonely. They need to remember that unhappily married people can feel very lonely with spouses, and anyone can suffer from loneliness in a room crowded with friends. Second, people living alone have to fight any tencendies to get depressed. Depression can lead to much unhappiness, including conpulsive behavior like overeating or spending too much money. Depression can also drive people to fill the feeling of emptiness by getting into relationships or jobs that they do not truly want. Third, people living alone need to get involved in useful and pleasurable activities, such as volunteering their services to help others.