M6-b: Determining the meaning of the original source
Rather than trying to paraphrase word-for-word within each sentence, a better approach is to look at an entire passage and try to understand the meaning of the passage as well as how the information is organized before you try to present it in your own words. Try to understand the meaning of each phrase or clause rather than just the meaning of each word.
original source
People who spot and seize opportunity are different. They are more open to life’s forking paths, so they see possibilities others miss. And if things don’t work out the way they’d hoped, they brush off disappointment and launch themselves headlong toward the next fortunate circumstance. As a result, they’re happier and more likely to achieve their goals.
The topic sentence of a paragraph is important. The topic sentence here (the first sentence in the paragraph) tells you about a particular group of people; from the title of the article, you can tell that Webber is talking about people who create their own luck. Lucky people, according to the author, have different characteristics from people who are not lucky. The rest of the paragraph then describes how lucky people are different.
Here is the original passage as the student writer annotated it. She worked through the original passage, repeatedly asking herself, “What is the author’s point here?”
original source with student annotations
