Lesson 11 Prompt: Summarizing

The Lesson 11 Prompt is: write about your experience summarizing the reading. 

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I chose two articles to summarize for lesson 11, the first an article I found online through the Crimes of War Project, titled “Why the U.S. is so Opposed” by Paul Kahn. The second article was one printed in the March 7-13^th issue of The Economist, titled “Braced for the Aftershock”. Both articles were over three pages in length, using Microsoft Word traditional formatting as a scale.

I included Paul Kahn's article in my working bibliography for lesson 9, and chose to summarize it for lesson 11 because of the challenge it had presented back in lesson 9. “Why the U.S. is so Opposed” is an article written with thought, but very deep thought rooted in philosophy, theory of rule of law, and world values, including those of America. It is a very different article from most written about the ICC, challenging to read because of its subject matter, but also because of the advanced vocabulary and style Kahn writes with. Right off the bat summarizing is challenging for me. Yet Kahn's article was so complex that soon I discovered summarizing it meant I would have to state and explain Kahn's main points in a simpler, more straightforward language. This was the most challenging part of the summary, because Kahn's points were so complex that they truly needed all the lengthly explanations Kahn wrote into his article. Summarizing these explanations for an audience who had not read the original article was a daunting task for me. In the end, my summary is not as concise as I would like it to be, but due to the complexity of the article, I still feel there is little else I can do to further condense it.

The second article I chose for different reasons than the first. “Braced for the Aftershock” is not as long or complex as “Why the U.S. is so Opposed,” but while Kahn's article has a philosophical topic, my second article is writing about one specific event. This means that “Braced for the Aftershock” is much more detailed and precise then Kahn's article. I was interested in the contrast between the two articles I summarized, and indeed, the contrast became apparent. Even though the article from The Economist is shorter than Paul Kahn's article, I took twice as many notes, and ended with an annotation of the article that was slightly longer than that for Kahn's. The details embedded into “Braced for the Aftershock” were necessary to include in the summary, and my job was to find the essence of their meaning. This was challenging to do, simply because there were so many details to sort out. Like my first summary, I would liked to have written a more concise summary of “Braced for the Aftershock,” but short of leaving out important details and connections, there is little I can do.

For both articles I was challenged to write my own evaluation of the article into my summary. I felt that comments about the complexity, evidence used, and neutrality of the article broke up summary flow, and were unnecessary. 

All in all, summarizing both articles was a good exercise to go through, however challenging it was. Summarizing “Braced for the Aftershock” gave me a much clearer picture of what the article was trying to convey, and helped me commit some of the information to memory. However, it's hard to determine how helpful summarizing, outlining, writing down main points, and annotating “Why the U.S. is so Opposed” was. I have a clearly idea of the main point, but it is hard to remember all the complexities of the topic. If I am to include Kahn's article as a reference, I will need to read it several more times to further understand the argument being made. 

-Ace