Distilling Down Reserach Accurately

Take one of your more recent course readings and decide if it was describing one of the following things or something else

• Defining and introducing a specific concept
• Explaining a process by which something occurs
• Showing the multiple sides of an issue

Pick which of these is the main purpose of the paper and start thinking about how to most succinctly convey this purpose

Distill it down to the bare points

What are the key terms that a person needs to know to understand the purpose?

If the paper describes a process, either a research method or a larger theoretical process, what are the steps described?

If the paper introduces multiple perspectives or means of explaining a phenomenon, how do the perspectives differ from each other? 

Now imagine how to explain those main points to a friend of yours not in this class

Write down a citation (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc)  for the reading you’re referring to, so that you or anyone else who comes across these notes can easily find that reading once again and refer back to it later. Then, rewrite the main points and purpose of the paper in language you would use to explain this information to a friend who is completely unfamiliar with the topic. You could think of this as an annotation you might write for a very casual annotated bibliography.

A Word of Caution: Context is key

It can be easy to cherry pick out facts from a paper in order to sensationalize the findings and misrepresent the paper. To avoid doing this, make sure to include the context of the findings so your audience has an accurate idea of the strengths and limitations of the research you are translating.