Essay/Portfolio: Summary/Response Essay

A summary captures the main ideas and supporting points of a source while omitting unnecessary details. A summary should be at least 50% shorter than the original, if not much shorter than that.

For this essay, you will be summarizing, and then explaining (responding to) how you surmise that these texts are talking about the effects of education, especially as readers and thinkers. You will also be expected to participate critically in the conversation. In other words, your goal is to summarize the text you choose, but then also contribute some insights of your own to the discussion by constructing a thesis based on your perspective.

Your essay should be about three pages long, typed and double-spaced in Times New Roman 12-point font. It should also adhere to all MLA guidelines in terms of formatting and citation.

Prewriting

• Choose one of the four essays we have analyzed in class: Plato's "Allegory of the Cave," Woolf's "What if Shakespeare Had Had a Sister," Douglass's "Learning to Read and Write," or Orwell's "Politics and the English Language."

• Use the outline we developed in class on September 15 to help you structure the first part of your essay, the summary.

• Use your annotations of the text to help you structure the second part of your essay, your response.

Writing

• Give your paper a title that reflects the main idea of your essay.

• Your essay should have an introductory paragraph that puts your chosen essay in context. What issue does the essay you are writing about address? Why is that issue important? Who is the author? What is his/her credibility? End this introduction by giving a one-sentence summary of the author's main point and some idea of how you will respond to it.

• In the body paragraphs of the first part of the paper (1.5-2 pages), summarize the essay you have chosen. Consider what the author has to say and how s/he says it.

• In the body paragraphs of the second part of your essay (1.5-2 pages), respond to the essay you have chosen. What do you think of the author's argument? Do you agree with it? Disagree? Both? Why? Why do you think the issue is important? How can you relate to it personally? Do you have experience of what the author is talking about?

Your portfolio must contain all the following components in hard copy:

• An outline of your paper.
• The peer reviews that a classmate wrote about your paper.
• The annotated paper done by your peer reviewer.
• Brief self-analysis: a short note to me (handwritten is ok) about the problems and successes of the paper. What did you try to do? What worked well? What didn't work so well? What specifically would you like me to comment on? What did you change from draft to revision?

We're using MLA style of documentation in this class; see Pearson Writer (search "MLA documentation" in the Writer's Guide) for a refresher on this. Also, refer to the Writing Responsibly section about writing Summaries for more explanation and examples.