Summary writng as a de-center exercise

In general, we all know summary writing is a good exercise for thinking skills because we have to think about both the original article and the new summary. However, after reading this article, “Summary Writing, Rogerian Listening, and Dialectic Thinking.” written by John C. Bean. Seattle University, I get a very interesting point about the wonderful function of summary writing. That is the summary writing can be considered to be a de-center exercise for students. In the article, “In summarizing another person’s ideas, the student must abandon his or her own perspective to assume what is often an unfamiliar point of view.” So, students must learn to be objective to express other person’s thoughts, and are careful to avoid adding their own concepts. In fact, this is a difficult task for students because the author mentions “egocentrism”.

According to Piaget who does a deep research in cognitive psychology, “an egocentric thinker sees the world from a single point of view…but without knowledge of the existence of other viewpoints of perspectives and without awareness that he is the prisoner of his own.” Although almost of us are not a serious and obvious egocentric thinker, it is not denied that sometimes we still will not be absolutely objective because we are lively human beings. Therefore, I think it is a good concept to regard summary writing as “a particularly effective tool for helping students overcome egocentrism” You should tell yourself “It’s just saying other people’s thoughts”, “It doesn’t allow any creativity”, “and I can put myself into it.” Those remindings seem clear and easy, but actually it is not easy to achieve them.
Besides, the author also mentions about “Rogerian Listening” as a related skill to summary writing. The concept of Rogerian argument as set forth in Young, Becker, and Pike’s Rhetoric: Discovery and change. The authors argue that before composing a persuasive essay the writer should “listen” to others position and understand others feelings and thoughts very empathically, so “such listening, Roger believes that, takes courage because the act of listening to the external world challenges the security of the writer’s initial ideas.” Therefore, in some degree, summary writing can be seen as a communication between the original author and rewriter. Because the rewriter should take the perspective of the author seriously and listen to it in detail, the rewriter doesn’t have the wrong comprehension. Maybe we can say reading is a silent listening in mind. So, listening to other person’s thoughts is an important thing for learners because the world of knowledge is so great that we just touch a smallest part.