Summarising and Paraphrasing

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Week 3: Summarising and Paraphrasing
Complete each of the tasks. You may use a dictionary
1 Paraphrasing Task
Read the following definition of multiculturalism from the Collins Cobuild English Dictionary for Advanced Learners, 2001
Multiculturalism is a situation in which all the different cultural or racial groups in a society have equal rights and opportunities, and none is ignored and regarded as unimportant.
Make notes to prepare to paraphrase this definition.
Notes
* Multiculturalism refers to a situation,
* It happens in societies with people of different groups
* The people must be given equal rights and privileges or opportunity
* The people are to be regarded as important
Paraphrase
Multiculturalism refers to a case in a society, where all the members of the society belonging to different racial groups and cultures, are accorded with equal rights, are all valued, and appreciated (Malik, 2010).
2 Summarising task
Read the extract, which is taken from the online article:
Malik, K. (2010). ‘Against multiculturalism.`New Humanist [online] Available at: /commentisfree/2010/mar/17/multiculturalism (accessed 31 July 2012).
Multiculturalism undermines diversity
As a political policy, multiculturalism`s desire to put people in boxes has left many minorities feeling misrepresented. Has multiculturalism been good or bad for Britain ? It`s a question to which the answers have become increasingly polarised in recent years. For some, multiculturalism expresses the essence of a modern, liberal society. For others, it has helped to create an anxious fragmented nation.[Expressing opposite opinions] [divided]
Part of the difficulty with this debate is that both sides confuse the lived experience of diversity, on the one hand, with multiculturalism as a political process, on the other. The experience of living in a society transformed by mass immigration, a society that is less insular, more vibrant and cosmopolitan, is positive.
As a political process, however, multiculturalism means something very different. It describes a set of policies, the aim of which is to manage diversity by putting people into ethnic boxes, defining individual needs and rights by virtue of the boxes into which people are put, and using those boxes to shape public policy. It is a case, not for open borders and minds, but for the policing of borders, whether physical, cultural or imaginative.
The conflation of lived experience and political policy has proved highly invidious. On the one hand, it has allowed many on the right - and not just on the right -to blame mass immigration for the failures of social policy and to turn minorities into the problem. On the other hand, it has forced many traditional liberals and radicals to abandon classical notions of liberty, such as an attachment to free speech, in the name of defending diversity.[Combining of two ideas to make them into one] [Unacceptab...