Unit 4: Transitions and Summarization
Whether your goal in a particular piece of writing is to persuade, inform, or entertain your readers, you need to help readers understand how your arguments, evidence, and conclusions fit together. This unit will teach you about transitions. Transitions are words and expressions that signal logical relationships between ideas in a text. When a writer uses transitions effectively, they guide the reader through the text and the reader understands how each piece of information relates to other information they've read. This unit will focus on transitions and summarization to organize your writing and orient your readers. You will also learn about plagiarism and how to avoid plagiarism in your writing. Grammar practice in this unit will focus on the use of quotation marks and apostrophes.
Completing this unit should take you approximately 13 hours.
Upon successful completion of this unit, you will be able to:
- outline relationships between main ideas and subordinate ideas within the writing of others;
- use transitional words and expressions to signal relationships between ideas;
- write well-organized analytical paragraphs in response to writing prompts;
- effectively quote, paraphrase and summarize ideas;
- use quotation marks and apostrophes appropriately in writing;
- define plagiarism and implement strategies for avoiding plagiarism;
- craft short essays employing a variety of organizational patterns; and
- demonstrate principles of active reading.
4.1: Transitions
4.1.1: Writing Transitions
Throughout this course, you learned techniques for writing effective sentences and combining ideas into well-organized paragraphs. First, you mastered the basic elements of complete sentences in unit 1. Next, you practiced combining ideas in unit 2. After that, you learned to connect ideas through the effective use of punctuation in unit 3. Now that you've mastered these techniques, you will learn how to use transitional words and phrases to signal relationships between ideas to your readers. Then you will practice the art of summary, which is also part of creating effective transitions in your writing.
The previous paragraph used transitional words and a summary to introduce the material covered in this unit. Read this article about organizing your writing with transitions, then complete the practice activities at the bottom of the page. You will use transitional phrases, which you can find answers to on the answer key. When you finish, test yourself by re-reading the paragraph above and identifying the transitional words.
4.1.2: Transitional Devices
Refer to this chart for more transitional words and expressions. Practice by writing a paragraph that explains why transitions are important for communicating effectively in writing. Try to use transitions from at least three of the categories listed on the chart when writing your paragraph.
You've seen many examples of transitions that signal different types of relationships between ideas. This page lists transitional words and expressions that signal types of logical relationships such as addition, cause and effect, comparison, concession, contrast, special features or examples, summaries, or time relationships.
Before you read, test your knowledge of transitions by writing down as many transitional words and phrases as you can think of for each of the logical relationships listed above. Then, read this page see some examples. Note any transitional words or phrases that are new to you.
4.2: Summarization
4.2.1: Summarization Basics
One of the most important skills for any writer (and any active reader!) is summary. You may be familiar with the concept of summary already; writing effective thesis statements and crafting logical transitions require writers to summarize their ideas. Read this article to learn more about the art of summary. At the end of the article, complete the practice activity to summarize Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's story "The Five Orange Pips", which you read at the end of unit 3.
4.2.2: Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing
Now that you understand how summary works, you will learn about two related strategies: quoting and paraphrasing. Read this tutorial, which explains the difference between quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing. Later, you will learn how quoting, paraphrasing, and summarizing can help you avoid plagiarism.
Part of becoming a confident and effective writer is knowing how to tailor your writing for different contexts. Follow up on what you learned in the previous tutorial by reading this short article that explains when to quote, when to paraphrase, and when to summarize.
4.3: Avoiding Plagiarism
4.3.1: Understanding Plagiarism
You've used quotation, paraphrasing, and summarizing to incorporate others' ideas into your own writing. In many types of academic writing, it is important to use facts and ideas from outside sources to support your own analysis and conclusions. Whenever you introduce an idea from an outside source, it is important to attribute that idea to that source. Otherwise, you are taking credit for someone else's work. This is called plagiarism.
Different writing communities may have somewhat different norms when it comes to avoiding plagiarism. Watch this short introduction to how colleges and universities in the United States define plagiarism and how students can avoid plagiarizing.
Take a moment to reflect and check your understanding. Write a short paragraph that defines plagiarism, explains why plagiarism is unacceptable, explains how to avoid plagiarism in your writing, and identifies at least one question you still have about plagiarism. Then, read this article to check your understanding and learn more about implementing strategies for avoiding plagiarism.
4.3.2: Citation Styles
Citation is the most important strategy for avoiding plagiarism. Read this overview of how to cite sources in three of the main citation styles (APA, MLA, and CMS) and see examples of ways to format citations in an essay. Don't worry too much about the specifics of each style right now. In most cases, your professor will tell you which styles they want you to use for a particular course or assignment.
4.4: Grammar Practice
So far, we've focused on using quotation marks to signal when you are quoting directly from another text, such as a scholarly article, a short story, or a film. This is not the only scenario where you should use quotation marks. Read this article, which explains how to use quotation marks. Then, complete the practice activity to add quotation marks to make sentences grammatically correct. When you finish, check your answers against the answer key.
The final type of punctuation you will study in this course is the apostrophe. Read this article about the apostrophe and then complete the practice activity. When you finish, check your answers against the answer key. After you check your work, review commas, colons, semicolons, dashes, and quotation marks.
- Which type of punctuation are you most confident using in your writing? Why?
- Which type of punctuation are you least confident using? Why?
- Write down two specific questions you have about using punctuation effectively.
- Review your notes about all of the punctuation marks you studied in this course. Can you answer your two questions?
4.5: Active Reading Practice
Without looking at your notes, try to write a 2–3 sentence definition of the term "active reading". Check your work by reviewing your notes from unit 1 or re-reading the first article in this course.
Now, read this story using active reading strategies. When you're done, take the quiz.
- Take this ungraded quiz to check your understanding of the materials presented in this unit.
Earlier, you practiced writing short responses to the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle stories you read. Now it is time to write your first essay. For this assignment, you will need to put into practice the skills you developed throughout the course, paying special attention to the summarization, paraphrasing, and quoting techniques you learned in this unit.
When you finish, check your work against the guide to responding.
Unit 4 Assessment
- Receive a grade
Take this assessment to check your understanding of the materials presented in this unit.
- This assessment does not count towards your grade. It is just for practice!
- You will see the correct answers when you submit your answers. Use this to help you study for the final exam!
- You can take this assessment as many times as you want, whenever you want.