I believe the difference between summary and analysis is pretty black and white. Some people may not know the difference between the two simply because they do not understand what they mean. The summary of a story is taking a book or basically anything with a storyline and wrapping it all up. In a summary you usually only talk about the beginning, key points through the story and the end. We use summary in almost everything we talk about, some examples are movies, sports or telling someone how your day went. Now, analysis is completely different then summary, it is when you look at reasons why events happen and how they occurred also if you were to analyze something you would have to look at every little detail that happened because one detail can change everything. Take for example, your telling someone how your day went, if I was to use a summary I would say key points or interesting things that happened, but if I was to analyze my day and tell it to someone I would have to focus on every second of that day from when I woke up to when I went to sleep.
http://dept.lamar.edu/writingcenter/pdf/Summary%20vs%20Analysis.pdf
I really liked how you compared summary/analysis to black and white. You did a great job on describing, in detail, the difference of summary vs. analysis. Maybe you should give an example of what you would focus on for analyzing your day. Otherwise I enjoyed reading your post and if I didn't know anything about the difference between summary/analysis, this would immensely help.
ReplyDeleteI think you are right that the definitions and basic meaning behind summary and analysis is very clear. The problem in my mind is that when we begin to analyze pieces for our class it can be very easy to slip into summary when the object is to analyze. Trying to recognize that and not fall into it's trap is our mission, should we choose to accept it :-)
ReplyDeleteLaurie B