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Summary Assignment

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on January 9, 2007 at 11:29:36 am
 

Summary Assignment

Due Monday Oct. 2 /Value: 5 %

Suggested length: 400 - 800 words.

Text: Academic Writing: Conflict or Struggle: The Enemies or Preconditions of Basic Writing? Pages 453 - 483.

 

Your research question:

 

The sub-title of Lu's article is framed as a question: Are conflict and struggle the enemies or the preconditions of basic writing instruction? I would like you to write a summary that examines why Lu is asking this question, and of course includes your position in relation to her answer to this question.

 

Objectives: Write a summary which demonstrates:

 

 

1) your skills with using citation and reporting expressions in order to

attribute, characterize, and evaluate.

 

2) your ability to use reporting expressions to ‘take a position’.

 

 

3) your ability to select and cite details and examples to ‘unpack’ abstractions.

 

Evaluation: My criteria for evaluation are:

 

 

1) completeness -- all of the above objectives need to be fulfilled to receive full points.

 

2) analysis -- your summary should demonstrate that you have approached your writing with specific the above questions in mind (remember, writing is a critical thinking tool).

 

 

3) writing skills -- I hope to read summaries that are carefully written and with thoughtful attention for the skills and techniques we are learning in class.

 

 

Example of a Summary of Lu's Article

 

The question: What is Lu's central concern that prompts her to review the historical context of 'Struggle and Conflict' as the enemies of Basic Writing ?

 

A View from the Border

 

   From her viewpoint as a ‘border resident’ who sees education as ‘a process of repositioning,’ Min-Zhan Lu works toward ‘demystifying conflict and struggle in Basic Writing instruction.’ Conflict and struggle are, Lu argues, ‘the precondition of all discursive acts’( Min-Zhan Lu, Conflict and Struggle: the Enemies of Preconditions of Basic Writing? 1992 in Janet Giltrow, ed. Academic Writing 2002; emphasize mine;459).

 

(note: I would expect you to give me some definition of "education as a process of repositioning" - if you wrote this sentence -- and indeed, it would be good practice for you to re-write my sentence with an academic definition of this phrase.)

 

   Beginning with Gloria Anzaldua’s work (Borderlands 1989), Lu provides a context for her understanding of conflicts and struggles on the borders: of ethnicity, gender, class and disciplinary differences, as positive and potentially transformative experiences(Lu 459; emphasises mine). Following Anzaldua, Lu explains that the necessity of confronting conflict and struggle leads to a “tolerance’ for contradiction and ambivalence” and in turn, the border resident develops the ability to “sustain contradiction and turn ambivalence into a new consciousness - ... ." (Anzaldua (79-70) qtd. in Lu; 457). Echoing Anzaldua’s optimistic vision of conflict and struggle in the borderlands, Lu clarifies that this ‘new developing consciousness’ emerges “from the creative motion of breaking down the rigid boundaries of social and linguist paradigms" and most significantly, enables border residents to effect positive ‘inner changes’ as well as ‘changes in society’ (Anzaldua (87) qtd. in Lu 457).

 

   Pointing to an increasing awareness amongst compositionists of the need to review the experience of reading and writing and teaching, in particular the need to tell and listen to stories from the borderlands (Mike Rose, Glynda Hall, College Composition and Communication ), Lu complains that while the research acknowledges the process of conflict and struggle as both painful and constructive (Bartholomae; Fox; Horner; Hull; Rose; Ritchie; Spellmeyer; Stanley), this research has had ‘little influence’ on Basic Writing instruction (458). Lu’s central concern here is the persistence and the rhetorical power of the view of conflict and struggle as the enemy in Basic writing instruction, as ‘something to be dissolved’ or ‘cured’ (Bruffee; Farrell; Shaughnessy cited in Lu; 460). Lu traces the historical emergence (during the open admissions period in the 1970s) and the ongoing persistence of this view of conflict as the enemy, and she locates two assumptions inherent to this view: that student acculturation is inevitable and beneficial (Bruffe; Farrell) (458), and 2: that learning academic discourse does not have to lead to acculturation, but rather by “eliminating students conflicting feelings toward academic discourse” teachers will be able to accommodate but “not weaken existing relationship with home cultures” (Shaughnessy) (458). Lu complains that in both instances the conflicts and struggles of border residents remain the enemy of the Basic Writing teacher with none of the positive and transformative forces that Anzaldua experiences and describes.

 

 

 

Please note: this example is missing a concluding paragraph, because I do not want to influence your own conclusions, I only want to give you an example to assist you with your first academic summary. ''''

And: I have left out a very important part of each citation -- can you tell me what this is in class on Friday ?

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