Assignment Author
Rodney HerringAttribution
Bradley IrishContext of Assignment
Brad Irish has written the following sample Research Summary, which I've asked him to allow me to post here because I consider it a terrific model for students. It truly offers an example of the best work we can expect the students to do. The article summarized is "They Die in Brooks County," available in the controversy stubs section of eFiles.
If we were summarizing the article for our peers, we might point out the limitations of the argument--that it's little more than documentary (indeed Brad's RS uses this word, though not in a pejorative sense, when paraphrasing the author's thesis), and that while it thus makes sense for it to be an article that's little more than a list of changes Brooks County has experienced, it would be a more incisive piece of journalism if it were a little more self-conscious of its greatest virtue: what Brad describes in the final sentence as the "crucial, but largely untold story in the grander saga of America’s immigration crisis." But all that would be more than we need--or should expect--from students who don't analyze rhetoric for a living.
So this RS basically identifies McConahay's thesis in the final sentence of the first paragraph; it then provides us with some of the examples she uses, which count as evidence (for her and for Brad), and it does this last in a way that students will do (they will look for a linear development of the argument)--but without getting hamstrung by the article's chronology. In other words, this RS gives in to just enough of that temptation to follow the order of the original argument that this isn't the kind of virtuosic performance that would mystify students, making them wonder where such a summary could come from, but it resists the temptation enough to show students that they can't be the slaves of chronology. Which is to say it has done the really difficult task (making the RS virtuosic in another sense): it provides a perfect model for students. It won't be unrealistic to expect a RS from them that approximates this one in its quality, but Brad hasn't set the bar so high as to intimidate them.
Pedagogical Goals of the Assignment
* Models for students the kind of summarization required in their reasearch summary papers
* Can be used as a sample paper in discussion with students
Assignment Description
See attachment.