Text in Own Words
Many writers, young and old, often struggle when it comes to understanding text. Joseph Harris gives exceptional tips and advice in his book “Rewriting: How to Do Things with Texts”. On page twenty-five of the book, Harris gives help on how to translate “text into your own terms”. The author conveys that you must first restate a writer’s work into your own words. This idea helps you to form a summary of a paragraph or two from memory to comprehend the authors purpose. Next Harris tells the readers to create a list of keywords featured in the text. Finally, readers are told to combine the summary and keywords to “write an account of text” (Harris 25). These steps are sure to help me and many others better understand a piece of text.
I think the ideas Harris gives to his readers are very helpful. The steps cause you to approach reading in a different way than many normally do. Typically, people just read the text and are done. At most, some will write a summary, reciting every miniscule detail. Harris explains that to understand what the author is trying to do you have to write summarize in your own words from your own memories. Often, we doubt ourselves thinking we do not understand the writing but this can result from over thinking. Restating the work can help to jump start the thinking process towards coming to terms with the text.
The creation of a list of keywords and phrases used by the author is also another great idea from Harris. This step supplies readers with a readily available list of meaningful words and phrases. The idea can apply to not only the account of text but also for a response piece. As a writer, I often find myself trying to find random quotes for essays just to meet requirements. The list is an easy way to have quotes that are applicable to my response. Coming to terms with text is more easily done by building a list of keywords.
Harris’ last step for his project is to write an account, combining the summary and the keywords by paraphrasing and use of direct quotation. The incorporation of the first two steps allows your account to be completely one of your own understanding. It will be original thoughts pulled from the text. The paraphrasing you will do can be made stronger as will the direct quotations. The account will be a satisfactory way to grasp the ideas of the writing. Random ideas will not have been thrown into your account but ones with purpose. The keywords will show that you have been able to recognize major points of the text. Creating an account with your summary and keywords will better your understanding of the text.
Harris’ project gives three useful steps to comprehend an author’s work. While I believe that this project can be very helpful in many cases, I do not think it can be used at all times to understand text. If you truly do not know the authors purpose the entire account can be off. Regardless, I think Harris has a great way to help readers.
