LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 12 : 5 May 2012
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

HOME PAGE

Click Here for Back Issues of Language in India - From 2001

BOOKS FOR YOU TO READ AND DOWNLOAD FREE!

REFERENCE MATERIAL

BACK ISSUES

  • E-mail your articles and book-length reports in Microsoft Word to languageinindiaUSA@gmail.com.

  • PLEASE READ THE GUIDELINES GIVEN IN HOME PAGE IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE LIST OF CONTENTS.

  • Your articles and book-length reports should be written following the APA, MLA, LSA, or IJDL Stylesheet.

  • The Editorial Board has the right to accept, reject, or suggest modifications to the articles submitted for publication, and to make suitable stylistic adjustments. High quality, academic integrity, ethics and morals are expected from the authors and discussants.

Copyright © 2012
M. S. Thirumalai
Custom Search

Creating Summaries with an Automated Tool

Renu Gupta, Ph.D.

Abstract

Students and researchers are frequently required to write summaries, either during examinations or as part of their ongoing work. This paper describes some features of a summary, derived from work in Natural Language Processing, briefly examines the AutoSummarize tool in Microsoft Word, and then proposes that such tools can be used in teaching.

1. Introduction

I’ve always been puzzled by the activity called summary writing. In school, I wrote summaries for tests and examinations without knowing why or how to write one. As a teacher, I once inflicted summary writing on my students in a writing class merely because other teachers were doing so. And as an examiner, I found that evaluators could never agree on what we were looking for on the summary/précis item.

This lack of clarity is curious because summaries are used extensively in everyday life as well as in professional work and at the university. In everyday conversations, we relate the plot of a movie or the gist of a conversation without describing every digression, ‘umm’ and ‘er’. Students know this intuitively; when writing a laboratory report, no student would launch into a description of the laboratory or the acid that fell on their clothes, because they know that this information is irrelevant in a report. Yet, in language classes, students are taught to write summaries without reference to the purpose; instead, summary writing is taught as an idealized or abstract skill.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Renu Gupta, Ph.D.
renu@stanfordalumni.org
Custom Search
  • Click Here to Go to Creative Writing Section

  • Send your articles
    as an attachment
    to your e-mail to
    languageinindiaUSA@gmail.com.
  • Please ensure that your name, academic degrees, institutional affiliation and institutional address, and your e-mail address are all given in the first page of your article. Also include a declaration that your article or work submitted for publication in LANGUAGE IN INDIA is an original work by you and that you have duly acknowledged the work or works of others you used in writing your articles, etc. Remember that by maintaining academic integrity we not only do the right thing but also help the growth, development and recognition of Indian/South Asian scholarship.