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English Composition · Chapter 9

The Move Chooser

Summary, paraphrase, and quotation are not levels of effort or degrees of safety — they are three tools, and the purpose of the moment tells you which to pick up. Below are eight real writing situations built on one source. For each, choose a move, then read the sentence all three moves would actually have produced and see what each one costs.
The one source we use all chapter
Okonkwo 2023, page 214 — invented for practice
In our 12-month observational study of three medical–surgical units, nurses responded to a median of 187 device alarms per shift, of which fewer than 12 percent required any clinical action. Response latency lengthened significantly over the course of a shift, particularly after the seventh hour. We do not claim that alarm volume causes patient harm; our design cannot establish that. What our data do suggest is that current default alarm thresholds impose a substantial and largely uncompensated attentional cost on bedside staff, and that this cost is invisible in most staffing models. Ninety-two words holding a number, a proportion, a scope limit, a refusal to claim cause, and one phrase worth borrowing. Each of those points to a different move.
Eight situations 0 answered
What that move produces
Pick a move above. The sentence it would put in your paper appears here before you find out whether it was the right tool.
0right on
first try Choose by purpose, not by habit. Most students quote because quoting feels safer — and a page of stitched quotations reads as a writer with no sentences of their own.