English 1301 with Nikki Slack!

In order to practice your skills as a writer and thinker, there will be ten required reading logs this semester.  Many of these reading logs will be in the form of a summary-response.  The summary-responses should be about texts assigned for that day and will require you to both understand the texts and respond critically to them.

The first half of your summary-response will be the summary section, in which you summarize a major point from the selected text that was especially interesting or meaningful to you.  In chapter two of their book They Say/I Say, Graff and Birkenstein explain that “a good summary requires balancing what the original author is saying with the writer’s own focus” (29).  In other words, you will have your intended goal in mind while summarizing one issue from the text.  Don’t try to summarize the entire thing here!

In the second half of the summary-response, you have the opportunity to personally respond to the issue from the text you summarized earlier.  You can react to the reading in relation to past experience, classroom discussion, historical context, and so on.  While this section certainly can be opinionated, it should be so with respect and intelligence.  Instead of writing, “The author is stupid,” write something like, “I do not think that the author’s argument is logical or plausible because…”  This is your chance to work out your thoughts and actively engage the texts we read.

These responses will be graded simply.  Your grade will not be based on grammar, mechanics, or spelling, nor will it be based on whether or not I agree with your ideas about or interpretations of the text.  Your grade will be solely based on whether or not you respond thoughtfully and engage with the text, raising intelligent questions (not limited to plot), making interesting connections, and generally responding in productive ways.

These responses should be about one page in length, typed, double-spaced, 12 pt Times New Roman font, and with 1” margins (standard MLA formatting; use the template on the blog!).