For your first writing assignment, you will summarize three of the essays on Ms. Marvel that are posted on Blackboard. Each summary should be no longer than a paragraph, though for some of you these paragraphs may feel longer than you’re used to (If some teacher told you the number of sentences in a paragraph is three to five, you have my permission to punch that person in the nose; there is no set number of sentences in a paragraph).
For each of the essays you’ve read this semester, you were supposed to have—either in your head or written down—tried to get the essay back into it’s original outline. It should have looked something like this:
Thesis: (The idea that the writer is trying to prove is true)
Topic: (The first piece of evidence the writer used to prove the this is true)
Topic: (The second piece of evidence)
Topic: (The third piece of evidence)
OR
You could think of it this way:
Thesis: (A is true)
Topic: (A has to be true because B is obviously true and B suggests that A is true)
Topic: (A has to be true because C is also obviously true and C suggests that A is true)
Topic: (Finally, A has to be true because D is true and D suggests A is true)
Having done this will make writing a summary infinitely easier. Use the explanations of summary on Blackboard to help you with the exact structure, but you’ve got the basic structure already. You just need to connect the sentences in the outline and, for each, probably give a single example.
If you get stuck at the end of your summary, look at the conclusion of the essay you’re summarizing. The conclusion should tell you why the thesis was important. (We haven’t discussed this yet, but if you’ve read up to the conclusion, you should be convinced that the writer’s thesis is truly, but you should be left with one question: So what? The conclusion should answer this. It should tell you why you should care about this idea). Summarizing the answer to that so-what question is a strong way to end a summary.