English Writing Assignment

Mini-Assignment 1

Writing a Summary

Chapter two of your text, Writing Arguments, offers you a comprehensive, step-by-step approach to writing summaries of what you read. I know you must be thinking that you have been writing summaries since elementary school, and you do not need further instruction, particularly in a college level composition course. However, while you may have written summaries in the past, you may not have been taught how to truly engage with the writing.

As I have already mentioned, the research portion of the research paper is often reduced to a feverish and shallow search for articles that either offer facts that assist you in expressing your point or expert opinions you wish to use in order to support your opinions in a persuasive research paper. It is rare for students to read about issues in order to truly engage with both sides and genuinely seek what is true to them in the issue. Truthfully, there often isn’t time for this type of exploration. Students are often assigned research papers with daunting deadlines, and while it might be nice to have the luxury to be able to pour over the research you have found on your topic of choice, that often isn’t the case.

However, this course is designed to force you to slow down and engage in critical thinking about your chosen issue. You have already been asked to suspend your beliefs and disbeliefs about issues in order to truly reach the core of multiple sides of such issues. I would like you to bring this same spirit of inquiry with you as you research a peer reviewed article from a professional journal and write a summary of it. Before you write this summary, I am asking you to truly engage with the piece, or to get behind it, so to speak. You will be thinking about the writer’s intentions with each point he or she is making.

Pages 39-45 of Writing Arguments offer you the step-by-step approach to writing summaries I would like you to use for this assignment.

Directions:

Step 1: Use prewriting methods or your prior weblog/discussion board posts to choose a topic. You may choose a topic you have used for prior assignments, as all of these smaller assignments are designed to be steps for you to take as you work towards a formal writing assignment. However, you may realize through some of these assignments that you are no longer interested in the topic with which you started out, and you wish to change at this point. Either way it is fine, but after this assignment, hopefully you will have made your choice as to which issue you would like to pursue in a formal essay later in the semester. This is NOT a requirement, just advice.

Step 2: Search the databases available to you through TCC’s library website for an article on the topic of your choice. Most of you have taken English 111 and have undergone a library orientation, familiarizing you with these databases. I would like you to find a peer reviewed professional article (which will include any article you find in the databases) rather than perform a standard web search for this assignment. You will probably have the best luck in finding an article of interest to you in “Opposing Viewpoints,” but you are not limited to this database.

The next few steps are taken from pages 40-41. I have posted them here for clarity. Read through the pages for more details.

Step 3: “Read the argument for general meaning”(40).

Step 4: “Reread the article slowly, writing brief does and says statements for each paragraph (or group of closely connected paragraphs”(40). Please read the detailed example on page 40 before you do this. The “does” and “says” exercise allows you to examine authorial intent as well as content.

Step 5: “Examine your does and says statements to determine the major sections of the argument”(41).

Step 6: “Turn your list…into a prose summary”(41).

Step 7: “Revise your summary until it is the desired length and is sufficiently clear, concise, and complete”(41). Your desired length is between 250-300 words.