 On BrevityScan On! |
 Background:
Several participants, while
scanning text, would read only the first sentence of the paragraph. This suggests that
topic sentences are important, as is the "one idea per paragraph" rule.
—Morkes & Nielsen (1997)
Lets users decide whether to read or skip.
—Frisse (1987)
Helps accurate comprehension.
—Kieras (1980)
A topic sentence states the controlling idea of a paragraph; the rest of the paragraph
supports and develops that statement with carefully related details.
The topic sentence is often the first sentence because it states the subject the
paragraph is to develop. The topic sentence is effective in this position because the
reader knows immediately what the paragraph is about.
—Brusaw et al. (1997)
Original Paragraph:
Sometimes we go through a lengthy period of
preparation, during which we gather information, think about the problem, and, perhaps,
try out some preliminary solutions. You have probably observed yourself doing this on
school projects. Much early work on the way we think was similarly based on
self-observation. In 1926, for example, Wallas published his classic The Art of Thought,
in which he summarized his reflections on the way he himself thought that he
thought—and backed up those introspective analyses with autobiographical narratives
by other people. He saw four major phases to thinking. You might be interested to know
that after the preparation phase came:
1) Incubation, during which you put aside the problem to work on other things, or sleep
2) Illumination, when the solution appears in a flash
3) Verification, during which you check the solution carefully to make sure it works.
145 words.
Revised Paragraph:
Much early work on the way we think was based on
self-observation. In 1926, for example, Wallas published his classic The Art of Thought,
in which he summarized his reflections on the way he himself thought that he
thought—and backed up those introspective analyses with autobiographical narratives
by other people. He saw four major phases to thinking:
1) Preparation, during which you gather information and make some preliminary attempts
to solve the problem
2) Incubation, during which you put aside the problem to work on other things, or sleep
3) Illumination, when the solution appears in a flash
4) Verification, during which you check the solution carefully to make sure it works.
113 words.
Challenge: Carve into paragraphs, each starting with
a topic sentence describing its main idea.
Polya stresses the importance of restating the goal
(working back from what you want to achieve to the materials given) and restating the
givens (working forward from what you are given to the goal). Of course, because these
ideas are too vague to test experimentally, we cannot call his work empirically based,
although it does, of course, derive from his many years teaching students to solve
geometric and mathematical problems. He sketches out four steps in How to Solve It
(1957):
1. Understanding the problem, during which you ask, "What do I have in terms of
data, or conditions?" and "What do I want, or what is still unknown?"
2. Devising a plan, during which, based on past experience, you come up with a plan by
asking, "Do I remember a problem like this? Can I restate the goal in some new way,
based on what I did before? Or can I restate the givens in some new way, working forward
from there to my goal?"
3. Carrying out the plan, during which you do each step of your plan.
4. Looking back, during which you check your results by using some other method, to see
if all the pieces fit together, and you ask yourself, "Can I use this method on some
other problem?"
You can see that Polya’s first step, in which you endeavor to understand the
problem, corresponds roughly to Wallas’ preparation. But part of devising the plan
corresponds to that phase, as well, but includes what Wallas calls incubation and
illumination, too. Looking back corresponds closely to Wallas’ verification. Without
careful experiments, we cannot say for sure that either description is accurate, because
both are subjective; our intuition agrees with both descriptions, but science expects more
of us than hunches. So Polya ends up being, simply, another example of the introspective
approach—suggestive, but not scientifically validated. Polya’s emphasis on
rearranging our view of the givens or goal, though, resembles Gestaltian restructuring.
See: Barstow & Jaynes
(1986), Brusaw et al (1997), Frisse (1987), Horton (1990), Kieras (1980), Mayer (1992),
Morkes & Nielsen (1997) |
