Assignment due in class on September 20* from students with last names beginning in A-L

*Since part of the value of the text summary assignment is to help you prepare the reading assignment for a particular class, it may only be submitted in class on the day it is due.  If you have to miss that day's class, please contact the instructor to make alternate arrangements.

1. Before beginning the writing assignment, please read

• Hugo Bedau, Thinking and Writing About Philosophy, pp. 7-10 top [selection in coursepack/book on reserve], on writing summaries to understand reading

• Gordon Harvey, Writing with Sources [coursepack/book on reserve/purchase book], pp. 15-19, on quoting, especially item (f) on p. 17, on "reasons to quote a source directly"
  

• They Say/I Say [coursepack/book on reserve], pp. 38-40, on "signal verbs"
  

2.

Please prepare a written summary (1-1.5 pages** long, approximately 500 words) of:

The purpose of the summary is to lay out what the text says, in roughly the order in which it is said, taking care to mention the aspects that you think are most important or interesting.  Your observations about the text should be backed up with references that allow your reader to see what they are based on; for this purpose, please use in-text parenthetical page references - for an example of these, see Harvey, Writing with Sources, p. 51, under "MLA Basic Rules." 

In your summary please include at least one quoted phrase (e.g., embedded into a sentence of your own) or a quoted sentence that helps you convey a point more effectively or vividly (see e.g., the list of reasons to quote in Harvey, p. 17 item (f)).  Since this summary is short, quote only a phrase or a short sentence at a time, and be sure to make clear what point the quoted phrase/sentence is supposed to illustrate.

Note: Since this is your first reading of this text, and since we have not yet discussed it in class, the summary assignment is simply a first effort at figuring out what it says, and doing it will help you get the most of our in-class work on it.  Your fuller understanding will develop in the course of our class meetings, and with successive re-readings.

**Please print your assignment double-spaced and with one-inch margins, using a 10-12-point font.  Please number and staple the pages you hand in. 

Please keep a copy of your summary to refer to in our class discussions of Locke over the next few meetings.