Writing about texts

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Writing about texts

• Summary and/ or Analysis

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Summary Do You Get It?

• Neutral in tone
• Demonstrates that you understand the authors key
  ideas
• If a cartoon or Web site, the summary
  demonstrates understanding of creators purpose
  and design

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Analysis Is the argument valid?

• How the texts parts contribute to the central
  argument or purpose
• Judge the evidence presented
• Judge the overall effect

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Read Actively

• Annotate the text

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What is annotation?

• Engaging with the work
• Use a pencil
• Underline key ideas / concepts
• Use symbols to mark them !, , gt,or
• Scribble your insights all over the paper
• On 1st reading
• On rereadings
• Changed your mind? erase and replace

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Example

• One Lunch at a Time
• What kind of a title is that?
• Check out the visual
• Who are the authors?
• GEORGE MCGOVERN and ROBERT DOLE

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The First Paragraph

• In the summer of 1968, CBS television
  broadcast a powerful hour-long documentary
  titled, Hunger USA. The cameras peered into
  the dismal pockets of hunger and misery populated
  by poor American families. Hollow cheeks and
  rickety legs plagued children and adults alike.

Emotional appeal
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2nd paragraph

• The most moving scene was filmed in a school
  where all students even those who were too poor
  to pay for a meal were required to go to the
  cafeteria at lunchtime. One 9- or 10-year-old
  boy was asked how he felt standing at the rear of
  the room watching his better-off classmate eat.
  Lowering his head, the boy confessed softly, Im
  ashamed.

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3rd paragraph
Authors have solid credentials.

• Thirty years later, a child going hungry in an
  American school is practically unheard of.
  Thats because of the overwhelming success of
  bipartisan legislature we sponsored in the 1970s,
  while we were both U.S. senators, which ensures a
  nutritious meal at school for all children,
  including Americas poorest.

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3rd, cont.

• While hunger has not yet been eradicated in the
  United States, the lives of a whole generation of
  American schoolchildren have been improved thanks
  to that program.

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4th paragraph

• Now we have the opportunity to reach an even
  higher goal to implement a similar plan for the
  300 million poor children in the world who either
  receive no meal at school or do not even attend
  class.

But what works in the U.S. might not work in
other cultures.
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Completing the article

• Now turn to page 480 in your Bedford Handbook
• Pay close attention to the annotations marked on
  the article.
• When you read to class include the notes that
  have been made
• What do you think of the annotations?
• Be ready to discuss these notes.