You will begin your essay by summarizing the article in 1-2 paragraphs. first sentence of your essay should name the article's title, author, source, and date of publication

INSTRUCTIONS TO CANDIDATES

ANSWER ALL QUESTIONS

1. The Summary: 

You will begin your essay by summarizing the article in 1-2 paragraphs. The first sentence of your essay should name the article's title, author, source, and date of publication. Then, summarize the MAIN points of the essay (not the details). Do not include your own opinion at all in the summary portion. As you are summarizing, you need to begin sentences with attributive tags ("As the article notes ... " or "According to the author ... "). With summary writing, you need to consistently and frequently remind the reader that you are summarizing information from a source. 

You are free to use quotes in the summary, but keep it minimal (one or two quotes at most). Include quotation marks around anything you quote from the article. Do not use parenthetical citations since you are only quoting from one source for this essay (the article you choose). Please do not include any other sources in this essay (no research is required for this assignment). 

Important information about the summary section: 

First, summaries should not include your opinion. You are only summarizing what the article was about, from start to finish and just the main ideas from it. 

Second, make sure to use signal phrases/attributive tags to remind the reader that you are summarizing information from the article. Most sentences should begin with attributive tags. Examples of attributive tags and signal phrases are such sentence starters as, "As Nguyen notes . . . " or "According to Nguyen . . . " or "As defined by Nguyen . . . "

Third, make sure your summary is not longer than 1 page in length (likely 1 or 2 paragraphs).  This length requirement should help you focus on the more important aspect of this essay: your analytical response to it.  

2. The Response: 

While your summary is objective writing, your response is subjective and is your interpretation and opinion of the article. In this section of your paper, here are some things you could write about:

Respond with personal opinion or connection to the information. 

Agree or disagree with portions of the information. 

Find and critique what is missing from the conversation (what did the author leave out? Or what needs more explanation?). 

Important information about the response section:

First, while your summary portion of the essay will be about 1-2 paragraphs, your response portion will be longer: probably 3-5 paragraphs. 

Second, each paragraph in the response section should be making one major point about an aspect of the article (see the three things you could write about above). It's essential that you organize your response by making sure you have a major point to make in each paragraph and that you'll support that point with information from the article and/or your own experience/opinion. 

Third, you need to exhibit critical thinking in the response section: this section of the essay requires that you show some original thinking and questioning about the information from the article. Do not state the obvious. Write about some ideas and views that come to your mind when you read the article. 

3. The Thesis Statement: 

While you can focus on a series of things from the article, you will still have a thesis statement.  Your thesis should be a one or two sentence statement that summarizes the major ideas of your response section. The thesis statement is an arguable statement—it is opinion-based and not factual. The thesis is a summary of the main points you're making in your response. Location of the Thesis Statement: The thesis statement should be the last sentence of the final summary paragraph and is a general statement about your views of the article that you will discuss in your response section.

Examples of a Thesis Statement: 

This article has many convincing statements about the challenges of the pandemic as a parent, but there are also some important things that the author fails to mention.This article was easy to connect with and included excellent examples that held my attention and made me realize things about my own life. This article was not well organized, and only the first half was interesting, but the quotes from scientists made the information convincing. 

4. Organizing your Response: 

Each paragraph in your response should have a main point it's making, and the sentences in the paragraphs should be organized with the following structure:

Topic sentence (1 sentence) - Your paragraph’s point

Support sentences (3-5 sentences) - Sentences that support the point

Concluding sentence (1 sentence) - A concluding sentence that reemphasizes or summarizes the point of that paragraph.

Use the article to support your points. For example, if you write that the author is very convincing when describing the effect of the pandemic on working parents, then provide a quote from the article about this or make a note of a particular word used or what an expert noted in the article. Support your points by referring to the article.

5. The Conclusion

The last paragraph of your essay should be a return to the main ideas of the article/story you summarized/responded to (objectively written). Then, the majority of the conclusion should be a reminder of your point of view on the article and a broad explanation of why your view is justified. End your essay with an engaging, worthwhile sentence that leaves a powerful message or point about the piece you are responding to. 

REMAIN CALM and BE RESPECTFUL

Whichever article you choose, remember that you should be explaining your views in a respectful, even-tempered manner. Your tone matters a lot in this type of paper. 

LENGTH AND OTHER REQUIREMENTS

3–4 pages, double-spaced

Be sure you have the correct MLA formatting for your essay

Your essay should include some quotes from the article (at least 3 quotes). Since you are introducing the article by name, author, and date at the beginning of the essay, you do not need to include in-text parenthetical citations when quoting in the essay itself. 

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