Open Access Library Journal 2018, Volume 5, e4648 ISSN Online: 2333-9721 ISSN Print: 2333-9705 DOI: 10.4236/oalib.1104648 Nov. 26, 2018 1 Open Access Library Journal Students’ Use of Summary in a Writing about Writing Class Thomas Girshin Ithaca College, Ithaca, USA Abstract This study explores whether or not a Writing about Writing (WAW) course design has a positive bearing on students’ use of summary in their researched arguments. It hypothesizes that students will draw more on summary in their researched arguments, since students in WAW actively interpret a shared group of texts through the lens of the discourse community and thus have a higher level of comprehension of the source materials than if they sought out the source materials on their own. Borrowing the source-coding methods of the Citation Project (CP), the study provides data in response to the following questions: How do students use sources when asked to compose a written formal research project in the context of a course in which the sources they draw on are assigned as part of the course material? How does student source use, particularly with respect to summary writing, compare with available CP data in which students may or may not have drawn on assigned texts? Ulti- mately, it finds that students in the WAW course draw on summary at a sig- nificantly higher rate than in the CP. Subject Areas Education, Linguistics Keywords College Composition, Writing Pedagogy, Summary-Writing, Assessment 1. Introduction Summary is an important part of academic discourse [1] and yet underused by first-year writers [2] [3]. The underuse of summary may be related to its diffi- culty, as it requires writers to form an understanding of the source text far greater than other forms of borrowing [4]. Whereas even direct quotation with How to cite this paper: Girshin, T. (2018) Students’ Use of Summary in a Writing about Writing Class. Open Access Library Journal, 5: e4648. https://doi.org/10.4236/oalib.1104648 Received: May 7, 2018 Accepted: November 23, 2018 Published: November 26, 2018 Copyright © 2018 by author and Open Access Library Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Open Access