• Hand in Essay 1
• An introduction to Essay 2

• Analyze the context and audience for Essay 2
• Look at "evaluating" as a way to respond to an academic context
• Introduce Academic Summary as part of responding to the context
• Practice academic summary with Zoellner

Connection to course goals: The first few activities emphasize the importance of context when writing a text. By comparing the first two essays, students can see the different expectations of different contexts. Introducing more "academic skills" is necessary to meet the new, more academic context for the second essay.

INTRODUCTION: Devise a brief introduction that explains what they'll be doing today in class and why.

1. Introduce Essay 2
• Hand out assignment sheet
• Let them read it over.
• Highlight due dates, logistics, etc.

(5 min)

2. Analyze the context for essay 2 by comparing it with Essay 1. Put their responses on the board so they can see how the contexts differ.
• What was the context for our first essay?
• Explaining my reaction to the class as an audience
• Based on the assignment sheet, how is the context for this essay different? Who is the audience? What is your purpose?
• Audience is a sociology professor - more academic context -- different expectations
• Purpose is to evaluate an essay for use in their class

(5-10 min)

3. Consider how changes in audience will affect their writing.
• Given the change to a more formal and unknown academic audience, how do you anticipate this affecting your choices in writing Essay 2? What will you do differently? (NOTE: Here we're looking for things such as a more formal tone, different types of evidence, etc.)

(5 min)

Transition: Since you'll be evaluating an essay in a more academic context, let's look at the PHG reading as one approach to this task.

4. Review the "Evaluating" reading from the PHG.
• What are the main steps in the process of evaluating? List these steps on one half of the board, so you can refer back to the process during later activities. Be sure to save room for the expectations of academic summary (#5).
• State overall claim
• Describe the person, place, object, TEXT, etc. being evaluated
• Clarify your criteria
• State a judgement for each criterion
• Support each judgement with evidence
• Balance with both + and - judgements

(5 min)

Transition: In many ways, this is what you're being asked to do to meet the context for Essay 2. Let's walk through the second and third steps to begin to develop the context in which you'll be writing.

5. Introduce academic summary as a response to this context - fits #2
• Why do we summarize?
• Show we understand what we're responding to
• Set-up the reader for response
• Accuracy
• Credit where credit is due
• Why would we need to summarize in terms of this specific context? What does it do for your audience/purpose?
• Shows prof you understand the essay
• Shows you can be fair and objective
• Sets-up your evaluation

(5 min)

6. What are the main parts of an academic summary?
• Generate list of summary points from the PHG. List these on the other half of the board (NOTE: you should have steps of evaluation up on the first half) so you can use them to analyze the summaries they will write in their groups):
• cite author and title of text
• indicate the main ideas of the text
• use direct quotes of key words, phrases, or sentences
• include author tags
• avoid summarizing specific examples or data
• report the main ideas as objectively as possible
• You may want to emphasize again the focus on the main ideas. A reader needs to know what the text is about, not what happens in the text. Keep this list on the board so they can use it for the next activity.

(5 min)

Transition: Now that we've seen how summary is a part of this rhetorical context, let's practice academic summary.

7. Practice academic summary with the Zoellner essay from PHG.
• Divide the class into 4 or 5 groups.
• Give each group an overhead, and an overhead pen.
• In your groups, write an academic summary of the Zoellner essay. Feel free to use the list on the board as a basis for your summary.

(10 min)

8. Present summaries. Have them put their summaries on the overhead, and ask the class if they meet the expectations for an academic summary that are listed on the board. Be sure they are:
• Focusing on ideas not events (especially since Zoellner is a narrative)
• Presenting the ideas accurately and objectively
• Have the author and title in the summary
• Aren't using too many quotes or including minor details

(10 min)

After they've presented their summaries, refer back to the list of steps in evaluating. They've just completed step 2 - describing the object they'll evaluate.

9. Conclusion: Summarize, or perhaps ask a few students to summarize, the main concepts from today's class. What did they learn? How does it relate to their assignment? We'll move on to the next steps of evaluation on Friday.