Summaries

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"A descriptive paragraph is one in which the sentences work together to present a single, clear picture (descriptive) of a person, place, thing or idea." (Sebranek, 1992, p. 47)

Read and summarise this before class. Make your summary approximately 50 words in length.

A plant's leaves are the parts most exposed to the environment. Here they spread out and absorb sunlight and carbon dioxide for photosynthesis. And here they also catch the attention of hungry herbivores. It is not surprising, therefore, that many plants have evolved leaves with protective mechanisms.
The most obvious defence is having sharp prickles. Holly leaves have several sharp projections along the edges, and thistle leaves carry this motif over the whole leaf surface. In cacti, the entire leaf has become a sharp spine, with the stem taking over the role of photosynthesis completely. Some grasses grow their weapons in miniature, producing saws rather than swords.
Many leaves have more subtle defences, such as specialised epidermal hairs. The itchy juice secreted by the hairs of tomato plants, for instance, deters animals from brushing them, much less eating them. The hook-shaped hairs of beans tangle small insects, and the insect stops feeding on the plant while it struggles to free itself. The nettle leaf has hairs of both these types. Epidermal hairs of other kinds of plants release glue, which traps small insects and immobilises the feet and mouth-parts of larger ones.
Some leaves' defences are not external but internal. For example, leaf cells may contain sharp, needle-like crystals of calcium oxalate called raphides, which ensure that animals will not take a second mouthful of leaves from the plant. Other plants produce toxic chemicals. For example, milkweed leaves contain cardiac glycoside, chemicals that cause the heart to beat faster, sometimes leading to death of the animal. However, this defence is not absolute; the caterpillars of monarch butterflies have evolved the ability to eat milkweed leaves without ill effects. In fact, these caterpillars use the milkweed's cardiac glycosides for their own defence, and therefore are largely free from predation, both as caterpillars and as adult butterflies (Arms and Camp 1987,668). (This was a 1995 examination question)

Lecture:

I.      Features of Descriptive Writing - Focus, Order, Purpose

II.     Summaries
1. Points about a Summary
a. complete
b. concise
c. objective
      2.      Steps for Effective Summary Writing
•   read text carefully
•   find the main point
•   determine how the text is arranged
•   follow the structure of the original text
      3.      Pitfalls
•   quotes
•   adjectives and adverbs
•   illustrations

III     Structure of a Summary
•   source
•   overview of thesis
•   main points + key examples

IV     Literature Reviews

Example 1 - A Book Review

Extract a.
In his book, Chaos, James Gleick chronicles the events of the last twenty years which have shaped this new science, and the men responsible for these events. He begins with what is considered the starting point of the new science, Edward Lorenz's Butterfly Effect, and ends with a discussion of the newest discoveries and the future of chaos. But most importantly, he explains in depth the incredibly fascinating equations, theories and concepts which are the heart of chaos, and the brainwork behind them all. For example, Mitchell Feigenbaum's theory of universality. Using only a hand-held calculator, this incredibly gifted physicist proved that simple equations from a simple system can be applied to a totally unrelated system to produce a complicated solution. Though this theory was at first greeted with extreme scepticism, it soon became the basis for finding order in otherwise unrelated irregularities (Hartman, 145).

Extract b.
What was until now unexplainable chaos explains: the onset of turbulence, the prediction of weather, the formation of clouds, currents and snowflakes. (Hartman, 145).

Hartman, C. (1991) "Chaos".  In C. S. Clegg & W. W. Wheeler (Eds.) Students Writing Across the Disciplines. (pp.145-147). Fort Worth: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

Example 2 - A Literature Review

Although the pattern of language shift to English has been widely noted (e.g. Young 1973; Kroef 1977; Stoeffel 1982; Jakich 1987) detailed published studies of the process are lacking. Nor do we have a great deal of information about domains of use. Research in this area has often focused on the English language skills of young children (e.g., Cheung 1971; Clay 1971; Wee 1974; Natusch 1978; Moynihan 1980).  Jamieson (1976) undertook a comprehensive study of the language proficiency of all 102 five and seven- year-old Tokelau children in New Zealand. Their English language skills were less developed that those of Pakeha children at the same ages, but about 80 per cent also spoke Tokelauan at least 'moderately'. Watkins' (1976) study of children from the Samoan community in Auckland, New Zealand's largest city, observed that the desire for their children's advancement led some parents to speak English at home. Others spoke Samoan while their children responded in English, Watkins found her 20 young adolescent subjects could be divided into three groups - a few recent arrivals still learning English, two children monolingual in English, and the majority bilingual in varying degrees. In a multi-ethnic suburb of the capital city, Wellington, Jamieson (1980) found a wide variety of languages used alongside English. Groups varied in the degree of language maintenance. Greek families insisted on Greek in the home, whereas in Cook Island families mothers reported a decided shift to English. No group reported more than 50 per cent of its children maintaining the ethnic language in the face of English.

Other researchers report broadly similar findings, with the extent of non-English language maintenance influenced by community size, concentration and speech event. While 63 per cent of nine-year-olds in the vital Wellington Samoan community were described as fluent in Samoan (Fairbairn-Dunlop 1984), really fluent speakers of Cantonese were predominantly aged over fifty (Greif 1974). The few published studies conclude that while the first generation of immigrants usually maintain ethnic languages in the home and sometimes in community speech events, there is a substantial shift to English in other domains. Few children of migrants speak their parents' language even at home (Bell &Holmes,1991,p.l54).