The Elements of Writing Proficiency
Identify, Summarize, and Define the key terms or categories of classification that have been developed in the reading set.
Summary: Summary condenses complex ideas in order to make them more manageable both for you and your audience. The reading sets often present a variety of ideas about a complex topic; this means that you must actively select a narrow focus for your analysis. What you make of the issues that you summarize demonstrates your ability to evaluate key ideas; and, it is a first step in collecting evidence to support your thesis, hypothesis or central idea. Only summarize the ideas and information that are most relevant to your thesis. As you work through the reading set, you should note when and why an author is summarizing; does one author's summary of the issue under consideration agree with another author's summary? Summary is not a passive reporting of facts; rather, it is frequently used in academic writing because it is the active selection of the most important aspects of the issue under consideration.
Note: There is a danger in using unanalyzed summaries. Often writers are asked to imagine a situation in which the audience has no knowledge; however, this is not often the case in academic writing. Generally, the purpose of critical academic writing is to persuade an audience of the reasonableness of your position rather than to give information to an audience. Do not assume that your audience knows nothing about the topic of the reading set. The faculty readers have read the material; although they may not be "experts" on the topic, they are knowledgeable readers who are reading your essay with a purpose: to evaluate whether or not you are reading, writing, and thinking critically at an intermediate level. It is best to avoid long and unanalyzed summaries of the readings ("book reports"). Do not simply summarize the contents of each reading in the set and think that you have analyzed the issues or developed a critical position.
Definition: Another commonly used skill in academic writing is the definition of concepts, which often become the key terms of an argument. For example, if you are asked to discuss the "practical" solutions to a particular problem that is analyzed in a set of readings, you should analyze how "practical" is used by each author to determine and identify their different interpretations of the concept. Your position on the debate will vary depending on how you interpret the phrase. If a term in the question is ambiguous, or if you want to refine the definition in ways that are different from the authors, you must establish a clear definition of the term as you mean it in your argument. Similarly, if the authors in group of articles all use the same terminology but they use the terms in somewhat different ways, you will need to make some distinctions.
Note: Inserting a dictionary definition will probably not help because it will not necessarily explain the concept as you are using it or as the authors are using it in the readings. If necessary, consult the dictionary and then form a definition that is specific to the context of the readings.