Overview:
As our course text and David Bartholomae both point out, we begin to enter intellectual conversations by figuring out what other people in the field are already saying. That is, we must figure out what “They say” and what is already known by those in the field before we begin to determine what “I say.” This process is not limited to academic spaces; we follow much the same process of negotiation when we enter casual conversations or non-academic professions, and it comes in two forms; listening for a while before we put our oar in, as Burke advises, or faking it until we make it, as Bartholomae argues we must. This assignment, then, is intended to act as something of a hybrid approach.
Prompt:
Imagine that a friend of yours has missed the first few weeks of class; they were added to the course late and fell ill just as the semester started. Behind on the course, you decide to help them out by summarizing our first major course reading “Inventing the University,” for them. In an essay of about 3-5 pages, summarize Bartholomae’s argument in the first eight pages of “Inventing the University” and explain in your intro and conclusion how Bartholomae’s argument will be used in our class. That is, explain to your hypothetical friend why we have read this text, in your opinion.
Requirements:
3-5 pages of Times New Roman (or similar), 12-point font, double-spaced text and should include the following:
A restatement of Bartholomae’s purpose and main supporting points;
An overview of the evidence and arguments that Bartholomae uses to support his main points;
A brief description of the organization of Bartholomae’s arguments and any specific techniques (metaphors, anecdotes, references) that you notice;
Which sources Bartholomae references;
A brief description of how Bartholomae concludes his article;
Your summary should NOT include any commentary about or your judgment of Bartholomae argument.
Remember, it is often easy to provide unnecessary detail when writing a summary, especially when the summary is quite long, so this is also an exercise in deciding which details are important enough to include. All of this should expand upon the summary that you have already written in order to provide a more detailed and thorough overview of the “Inventing the University”.
Main Points
How well does the summary explain the main points of the article? The summary should include a description of the topic, purpose, and main arguments/points.
25%
Supporting Points
How well does the summary relate the main evidence used by the author? The summary should include a brief description of each supporting argument and a description of the type of evidence that the summarized work uses to support its main goal.
20%
Clarity
The summary should be clear and concise. The reader should be able gain a cursory understanding of the summarized work and the summary should contain no unnecessary detail.
25%
Organization
The summary should be written in a logical way, with information presented in the same order that Carr presents it in his article. The summary should be divided in a logical way at both the sentence and paragraph level, with information about supporting points appearing alongside their corresponding main points.
20%
Mechanics
The summary should be largely free of spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors.
10%
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