0.8 Manual for writing mentors  (Page 9/11)

Students sometimes try to avoid acting in their best interests by playing a game psychologist Eric Berne refers to as "Why don't you? Yes BUT..." They tell you their problem. They remain in charge of the game by saying "Yes, but…" whenever you make a suggestion. So long as they come up with reasons why your suggestion won't work, they remain in charge of the game. To end the game and shift your position, you reply to the student: "That's really bad. What do you plan to do about it?" This reply puts YOU in charge, and then you can evaluate how well the student's suggestion is going to work OR suggest that the student discuss his or her plan with a counselor at the Counseling Center. Here is the reference you need:

Rice counseling center office

303 A Lovett Hall

8:30 am - 12:00 pm and 1:00 pm - 5:00 pm

Monday through Friday

Phone (713) 348-4867 (24 hours)

Fax (713) 348-5953

(External Link)

Writing

In Introductory Biology at Rice University, students write short summaries/ critiques of published research articles. Below are some well-established techniques for writing this kind of assignment. Mentors may find this information useful in consulting as well as in their own academic life.

Summarizing a scientific article

Some writing texts advise you to include "the author's main points" in a summary. That may work well for other kinds of materials, but not so well for a scientific article. If you are writing a summary to show a professor that you read and understood a research article, you will need to answer the Twelve Essential Questions for Summarizing an Article.

Twelve Essential Questions for Summarizing an Article:

• What was the topic of the article?
• How was the problem/question/issue defined?
• What was the purpose of the research? What question, problem, or issue did the article address in relation to the topic?
• Were any assumptions unusual or questionable?
• Why is the question, problem, or issue important?
• What work has been done or what situation exists that motivated the research?
• What experimental design was used?
• What methods were used?
• What were the results?
• How were the results interpreted?
• What did the researcher conclude?
• Why were YOU reading this paper? Why is the article valuable or noteworthy?

In most cases, some of these questions will be much more important than others. Every published article contributes to the scientific field in some unique way, and in summarizing you want to make that aspect of the article especially obvious.

Some of the possible reasons that an article is special:

• Answers a previously unanswered question
• Introduces a new method or technique
• Contradicts an old set of conclusions
• Connects earlier research in a new way
• Tests a method or conclusion on a new type of data or specimen
• Tests an earlier conclusion by a new method or with a larger sample
• Proves an old assumption faulty.

Which of these possibilities (or others we left out) is the main reason the article you read is worthwhile? Your summary should make clear what aspect of a work makes it valuable. If the method, for example, is less complicated or more efficient than earlier methods, you should give enough detail about the method and its simplicity or efficiency to help the reader understand that aspect of the article. In that respect, the summary of a scientific article may not be a mere miniature of the larger article, but the answers to the principal questions above.