12. Transcript

S:  Okay so if you could just sign these papers right here

C:  Okay.

S:  This is basically just going over that you are my subject and that you’re agreeing to participate in this study and if you don’t agree with anything you can tell me to stop at any time.

C:  Okay.

S:   So do you know what a summary is?

C:  Yes.

S:  Could you define a summary?

C:  A summary is a snapshot of an entire plot where you don’t need to exactly read every word but the summary gives you the descriptive details that you do need, they basically give you the gist of the story, like the character, the plot, maybe the conflict where they may at least attempt to give you the conflict in some type of way but not unreal the whole entire thing for you but a summary is just usually maybe a couple of sentences just to maybe give you an idea of the topic, or a story, or a subject or anything like that.

S:  So clearly you understand what a summary is used for.

C:  Yes.

S:  How often would you say that you’ve used summaries in your major?

C:  For Comm, um, I think a lot, a lot of the times with your research projects and when I’m trying to gather sources for a paper I’ll ya know read the paper and try to give the summary of the source that I’m using so I won’t have to read the whole paper.  When I’m ready to use the source I can write down maybe a couple sentences about the summary that I read and it will help me narrow it down with the sources that I need to use

S:  Yeah… so do you understand what a professor is expecting from you when they ask you for a summary?

C:  Uh, yes, I mean I feel like we have learned that so young and it has been embedded in our minds since we were in preschool and just the basic so I feel like now in college it’s almost second nature to ya know to pick a summary, to outline a summary or to do a summary.

S:  Are you aware that there are different types of summaries?

C:  Um, no. I guess not?

S:  Well, you obviously know from explaining earlier what a summary is, you would say that’s a plot summary, right?

C:  Yeah.

S:  Well, there’s summaries where the professor, if a professor came to you and said “I want you to give me a summary”,  what would you assume that they would want you to do? 

C:  Um, kind of how I described before.

S:  So as a plot summary?

C:  It depends on what class I’m in.  So, if it’s a Comm or English class I’m assuming you mean a plot summary. 

S:  A lot of professors actually want you to give your interpretation of what,

C:  Of what you read in the summary?

S:  Yeah

C:  I could see that

S:  What you read in the work, they want your interpretation of it so if you were say describing… If you had to do a summary for Romeo and Juliet, how would you say?  How would you say a summary for that would be?

C:  I mean for that one, since um, it is Shakespearean, sometimes it is more difficult to understand or decode depending on how knowledgeable you are in Shakespearean literature.  I do feel that in that sense you would probably do more um of a type of summary you described, versus a plot summary I feel ike you would do more of an interpretation because I mean some of the characteristics will always be the same with each of the papers the professor reads from a student but I do feel like it would vary a little bit because the interpretation of what you read is more complex than a regular piece of literature.

S:  Can you name a specific example of where you have done an interpretation summary?

C:  Um… That’s a good question… Um… The class I took last semester, it was an English class. Um, I can’t remember the name of it off the top of my head but it was where we would read a lot of poems in that class and that was a good example of us giving our interpretation summary because basically we presented it, what we thought the poem was about, he was able to tell us off of our interpretation of what we wrote for the summary, were we close to what it was trying to say or were we not so, that’s a good example of one.

S:  Were your interpretations correct?

C:  Actually, yeah, they were pretty spot on, yeah!

S:  Do you think it’s more important to know an interpretation summary or a plot summary?

C:  Uh, probably interpretation.

S:  Why do you say that?

C:  Because I mean, anybody could write verbatim, ya know, of a summary like finding a new way to rewrite a story without writing it the same exact way but interpretative makes it so much more about you and how you look at it and how you angle it so it makes you think more and think about it on your own versus kind of rewording what they have already written as a basic summary format.

S:  Yeah, would you say it’s important to know and learn the basic concepts of a summary? 

C:  Um yeah I think it would help to have it not retaught to us but maybe mentioned to us again while we are in college because ya know some stuff you don’t always remember from college so to have a refresher I think that’s a good idea.