Is There Any Knowledge That a Man Must Have?

Academic Writing: Assignment #1 (Summary)

Task: Write a summary of the following article, which is available on Nexus. This composition should be approximately 600 – 700 words (this will yield about two or three pages).

Wayne C. Booth, “Is There Any Knowledge That a Man Must Have?” (1967)

Instructions and Advice

1. Remember to include reference to key concepts in the article. This means you must go
beyond merely recounting the information presented by the author. As we learned in class,
you must abstract the most important ideas and present them in an orderly, effective
manner. For this it may be helpful to ask yourself, both during and after reading, “Why might a reader find this article worthwhile? What is the bigger picture here?”

2. Review and revise your work. Any piece of writing will improve with time spent working.

3. Speak in an objective voice. There is rarely a need to get personally involved in writing
about another author’s work.

4. Be kind to your reader and make it easy to follow your sequence of thought. It is okay to be
sophisticated and thoughtful; however, this still requires you to lay out ideas in a clear,
coherent way. Think about what should be laid out first in the summary, and the order of
ideas to follow, regardless of the exact sequence they are given by the original author.

5. Try to join in with the author in considering the topic under discussion. This will allow you
to enjoy the project and ultimately produce a higher quality piece of work.

Key Elements in a Well-written Summary:
• Lays out the main idea in a clear and coherent manner
• Includes important facts and details
• Is in the writer’s own words
• Quotation marks are used for direct excerpts from the text
• Reflects underlying meaning
• Includes details in logical order
• Uses appropriate reporting verbs

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