Posterous theme by Cory Watilo

Rhetorical Precis

For international students beginning their university career in the UK, the amount of reading they need to do can be overwhelming and, for many students, understanding and critically evaluating academic texts can be challenging.

One response is to encourage students to have students use a framework such as a rhetorical precis to summarise the texts that they read. A rhetorical precis, developed by Margaret Woodworth in 1988, is a four sentence, structured summary of a complete text, consisting of the following information:

  1. Name the author, genre and title and introduce the main idea using a reporting verb.
  2. State the main idea and provide supporting evidence from the text.
  3. State the author's purpose
  4. State the author's tone and the intended audience

An example rhetorical precis might look like this:

"Houghton, in his article (2004), looks at different approaches to learning at university in the UK. He supports his research by comparing two approaches to learning identified by Marton and Saljo (1976): a deep approach and a surface approach. The author’s purpose is to explain how different approaches affect student success at university and he recommends that students take a deep approach to learning. The author writes in a formal style for a student audience."

Although this may be difficult for students at first, it can help students get to the bottom of a text, and begin to think crticially about how the intended audience can affect the tone of the article. I've tried it, though I think my delivery of it could do with some refining, I can certainly see value in it for my students.