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Summary paper assignment:

You will be asked to summarize information from texts, lectures, and/or discussions. What information you include in your summary and how you organize your remarks depends on the rhetorical situation. What is your purpose for summarizing? What is your goal? Who is your audience? How much background information does your audience need to make sense of what you are saying? You should begin by reading the texts by Crowther and Goldoni carefully. I recommend using Santelman’s information questions as a guide. They will help you to identify the key points. Then, imagine the following rhetorical situations:

1.You are writing a paper on the concept of “investment” in second language development. You want to include a brief summary of work in this area. Your paper begins with the following sentences:

Since the mid-1990s, the concept of investment (Norton, 1995) has figured prominently in research on second language development. For example, Crowther (2020)... Goldoni (2017)...

Write 1-3 sentences (<50 words) in which you explain how Crowther used the concept of the investment and what he found. Then, do the same for Goldoni’s article (<50 word summary). Your summaries should be brief, informative, and original (do not copy language from the source texts). Together, the two summaries you write should complete the sample paragraph. You should assume that your audience has read Norton’s paper on investment and is familiar with the concept. Your audience has NOT read Goldoni or Crowther’s papers. It is your job to summarize these papers in light of this rhetorical context.