Precis

PRECIS

FEATURES Reduce in length  Retain meaning  Mainly used for summarising others’ arguments 

EXAMPLE 

Teachers and librarians need to be aware of the emotional, intellectual, and physical changes that young adults experience. Teachers and librarians also need to give serious thoughts to how they can best accommodate such changes. Growing bodies need movement and exercise, but not just in ways that emphasize competition. Teenagers are adjusting to their new bodies and whole host of new intellectual and emotional challenges. Teenagers are especially self-conscious and need the reassurance that comes from achieving success and knowing that their

CONTD… 

However, the typical teenager lifestyle is already filled with so much competition that it would be wise to plan activities in which there are more winners than losers; for example, publishing newsletters with many studentwritten book reviews, displaying student artwork, and sponsoring science fiction, fantasy or other special-interest book discussion clubs. Moreover, a variety of small clubs can provoke multiple opportunities for leadership, as well as for practice in successful group dynamics. Further, making friends is extremely important to teenagers, and many shy students need the security of some kind of organization with a supportive adult barley visible in the background.

CITATION Dictionaries define citation as follows:  "the act of citing or quoting a reference to an authority or a precedent." - Dictionary.com  "an act of quoting; especially : the citing of a previously settled case at law" - MerriamWebster Online Dictionary. 

THE METHOD  Note

when you read an academic book chapter or an academic journal article that most paragraphs contain a citation, in fact usually contain many citations, with the author details in brackets (APA or Harvard system for example).  Whenever you refer to material you have read published sources (of all kinds including viewing films, TV and DVD) you need to cite that authority. See the explanations of citations from two universities as detailed below.

EXAMPLE  "When

you have included information from published sources in your work, you must acknowledge this information fully and accurately.  The inclusion of such information is called citation, and the details about the information are known as a reference, since you are referring to the book, journal article, website or other source." (University of Huddersfield 2007)

REFERENCES

Anglia Ruskin University, (2007). Harvard System of Referencing Guide. [Internet] Available at: http://libweb.anglia.ac.uk/referencing/harvard.h [accessed September 21st 2007]  University of Huddersfield, (2007). Referencing your work using the Harvard referencing system. [internet] Available at:  http://www.hud.ac.uk/cls/docs/helpshe ets/Referencing.pdf [Accessed September 21st 2007]

PRÉCIS:1 

1. "Social cognitive theory acknowledges the influential role of evolutionary factors in human adaptation and change, but rejects one-sided evolutionism in which social behaviour is the product of evolved biology but social and technological innovations that create new environmental selection pressures for adaptiveness have no effect on biological evolution. In the bidirectional view of evolutionary processes, evolutionary pressures fostered changes in biological structures and upright posture conducive to the development and use of tools, which enabled an organism to manipulate, alter, and construct new environmental conditions. Environmental innovations of increasing complexity, in turn, created new selection pressures for the evolution of specialized biological systems for functioning consciousness, thought, language, and symbolic communication." Bandura (1999) p.188

1A 

1. "Bandura (1999) outlines social cognitive theory and contrasts this with a variety of theoretical positions in personality theory, locating the theory related to a number of perspectives. He presents evolutionary theory which he sees as representing a unidirectional process, where biological aspects act on social situations and environment. In contrast Bandura (1999) sees social cognitive theory as reflecting both the action of evolving biology on social and environmental factors but also the effects of the more complex environment acting on biological systems such as the development of speech and mental functions. "

PASSAGE:2 

"That psychoanalysts seriously shot themselves in the foot by never evolving from case study methods as their primary mode of knowledge generation and hypothesis testing is beyond doubt. Throughout the 20th century, for example, psychoanalysts have offered a plethora of competing developmental theories, few of which have been subjected to empirical scrutiny, and some of which are empirically unfalsifiable (or already falsified, such of most of Melanie Klein's speculation about infancy, which fly in the face of research on infant cognition). On the other hand, no other method allows the depth of observation of a single personality offered by the psychoanalytic method of intensive interviewing, observation, and interaction with a person aimed at coming to understand the individual's associative networks, meaning structures, affective proclivities, ways of regulating affect, and so forth. Clinical observation casts a broad net for observing psychologically meaningful phenomena, particularly in the "context of discovery", where theories and

2A 

."Westen and Gabbard (1999) review the history of the development of psychoanalytic theory and provide an interesting analysis of psychoanalytic case study methods. They suggest that although case study methods cannot be tested in the laboratory , these methods of inquiry provide unique methods of examining single personalities in a deeper manner which includes, for example personal meanings, mood dispositions and ways of regulating emotion. They quote the example of the large number of developmental theories produced by psychoanalytical theorists often in a manner which cannot be tested or which is contrary, in their opinion, to other research evidence."

PASSAGE:3 

Page 372.."Behind the theoretical leap was methodological progress. Most behaviourists had not really believed that people had no thoughts or feelings. They simply had thought that studying them was necessarily unscientific because such inner states could not be measured. The great methodological creativity of social cognition research (borrowing, to be sure, from methodological advances in cognitive psychology) enabled people to begin rigorous scientific study of these inner states. Once the methods were in place, the taboo on theorizing about them was unnecessary and obsolete. Rigorous methods permitted rigorous theorizing, and even the most sceptical observers gradually had to concede that social cognition research offered substantial advances in the understanding of social psychology. Thus, one set of intellectual barriers was suddenly demolished".

CONTD… 

"The dilemma, then, was whether to relax methodological standards and study relationships, or to hold to experimental rigor but end up failing to understand the field's ostensible subject matter. Gradually, more and more social psychologists realized that it was better to have some data on relationships, even if these studies did not match the rigor of work on other topics. Survey methods, longitudinal studies, and other methods came into popularity as social psychologists accepted the challenge of understanding long-term relationships. The work turned out to be surprisingly good in many instances, and valuable findings and ideas emerged." Baumeister (1999) p 372, 373

3A 

."Baumeister (1999) provides an argument related to the development of social psychology which may be seen as subtly critical of behaviourism. He argues that social psychologists were able to borrow from the research methods of social cognitive research in a manner which produced advances not only in methodology but also in theory development, and thus barriers to theory development were removed. He further argues that valuable results emerged from using survey and other methods to understand long-term relationship in a manner which would not have occurred if researchers had continued to be constrained by accepted norms related to research methods in psychology at the time."