Anker Susan. Real Essays with Readings with 2009 MLA Update
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WRITING ESSAYS
Chapter 20 • Writing Summaries and Reports 337
SUMMARY ASSIGNMENT
Read the article that follows, and use the Writing Guide on page 336 to write
a summary of it.
Survey Finds Many Firms Monitor Staff
Your employer could be watching you. Such are the fi ndings of a
new study released last week by the American Management Association
(AMA) in New York. The survey of 1,626 large and midsize compa-
nies found that nearly 80 percent of major U.S. fi rms routinely check
their employees’ e-mail, Internet, or telephone connections, and some
regularly videotape them at work.
“It’s not just a matter of corporate curiosity,” said Eric R. Green-
berg, director of management studies at the American Management
Association. “Personal e-mail can clog a company’s telecommunications
system, and sexually explicit or other inappropriate material downloaded
from the Internet can lead to claims of a hostile work environment.”
Researchers have found that companies are more likely to conduct
random checks versus 24-hour surveillance of messages, phone conver-
sations, or Internet usage. Even so, the AMA advises that employees use
discretion at work.
According to the survey, 63 percent of U.S. companies check
employees’ Internet connections, up 54 percent since last year.
Forty-seven percent read workers’ e-mail, up from 38 percent in
the year 2000. Forty percent have installed fi rewalls to prevent
employees from using the Internet inappropriately, up from
29 percent last year.
When asked whether they had fi red workers because of
inappropriate use of electronic equipment, 27 percent of the
employers said they had dismissed staff for misuse of offi ce
e-mail or Internet connections. Sixty-fi ve percent of the compa-
nies had disciplined offenders. Ellen Bayer, the AMA’s practice
leader on human rights issues, said the fi ndings indicate that
privacy in the modern-day workplace is “largely illusory.”
“In this era of open space cubicles, shared desk space,
networked computers, and teleworkers, it is hard to realistically
hold onto the belief in private space,” said Bayer. She added that
some employees do not understand that their employers have a
legal right to monitor equipment that workers use on the job.
Employers also reported other forms of surveillance, such
as monitoring telephone numbers called (43 percent), logged
computer time (19 percent), and video surveillance for security
purposes (38 percent).
■ This article uses
direct quotations from
personal interviews
conducted by the
writer.
■ For an example of
a summary of an
essay-length piece,
see page 37.
“In this era
of open space
cubicles,
shared desk
space, net-
worked com-
puters, and
teleworkers,
it is hard to
realistically
hold onto
the belief
in private
space,” said
Bayer.
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WRITING ESSAYS
338 Part Three • Special College Writing Projects
“In previous years, the growth in monitoring went hand in
hand with increases in the share of employees gaining access to
e-mail and the Internet,” added AMA’s Greenberg. “This year, the
average share of employees with offi ce connections barely grew at
all, while monitoring of those activities rose by nearly 10 percent.
It is important to note, however, that 90 percent of the companies
engaging in any of these practices inform their employees that they are
doing so.”
But companies don’t have to inform employees of any monitoring
practice. In fact, most U.S. courts have ruled in favor of employers who
routinely monitor telephones, computers, or other electronic equipment
used on the job. It is best not to misuse company media: Your employer
may be watching you.
— Staff reporter, “Survey Finds Many Firms Monitor Staff,”
Boston Sunday Globe, April 29, 2001
MORE SUMMARY ASSIGNMENTS
1. Summarize the cover story of a recent issue of a magazine (print or
online).
2. Summarize the plot of a movie you have seen recently.
3. Summarize an article from today’s newspaper.
4. Summarize an essay or article, either from this book (see Part Eight) or
from another book you use in a course.
5. Summarize Donnie Ney’s argument essay from Chapter 18 (p. 301).
Writing a Report
A report usually begins with a summary that condenses a piece of writing,
a conversation, or an event, and then it moves to some type of analysis.
Recall that a summary is objective: You present a brief version without
stating your opinions. In contrast, a report summarizes key points and also
includes reactions to, opinions about, or recommendations based on the
original piece.
■ For online exercises
on summarizing, visit
Exercise Central at
bedfordstmartins
.com/realessays.
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WRITING ESSAYS
Chapter 20 • Writing Summaries and Reports 339
NOTE: Reports often use quotations for support in both the summary
and the response sections.
In college classes, you may be assigned to write a book report. A stu-
dent, Tiffany Shale, wrote the report that follows on Toni Morrison’s
best-selling novel The Bluest Eye. The numbers in it correspond to the four
basics of a good report.
Before reading Tiffany’s report, read her comments about her process
for completing the assignment.
FOUR BASICS OF A GOOD REPORT
1.
It identifi es the title and author of the original piece in the
fi rst sentence or paragraph.
2. It summarizes the original piece, including the main idea and
key support points or events.
3. It moves to the writer’s reactions to the piece. This part of the
report may relate the piece to the writer’s own experiences,
giving specifi c examples to support the responses.
4. It has a conclusion that evaluates the original piece on a
variety of possible aspects — originality, realism, accuracy,
intensity, interest, and so on. The conclusion usually gives a
thumbs-up or thumbs-down for readers.
■ TEACHING TIP
Suggest strategies
that students can use
to avoid confusing
source material with
their own ideas, which
can lead to uninten-
tional plagiarism. For
instance, while typing
notes in a computer,
students might put
source material in bold
and their own reactions
in regular type. In
their fi nal papers,
they’ll need to cite and
document the source
material.
I knew I had to write a report on this book, so I read it in a
different way than I would have otherwise. I kept a highlighter beside
me when I read and turned down the pages where I highlighted
things that might be important. The passages I highlighted really did
help me write the report. If you note what’s important as you read,
it’s easy to go back at the end and fi nd quotes and key ideas.
Here’s what I did to write the report:
1. I typed some notes about the highlights and their page numbers.
2. I wrote a short outline about what happened in the book.
3. I used the outline to write a summary of the plot. Then I put
some of the highlighted stuff into the summary.
4. I wrote down some of my reactions to the book, including ones
I’d jotted down while reading. I picked the ones I wanted to write
about and wrote the section that gave details about my reactions.
continued
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WRITING ESSAYS
340 Part Three • Special College Writing Projects
Then, I looked at my notes about the highlights and used any I
could to support my reactions.
5. I reread my draft and made changes.
When I started the book, I thought it was stupid and didn’t like
it at all. But I knew I had to read it, and by the end I thought it was
good. I don’t think boys would like it, though. I felt bad for Pecola
and what the world had done to her. Writing the report was hard, but
when I fi nished, I really felt like I had understood the book, and I felt
like I was doing real college work.
■ Note that the pres-
ent tense (Claudia’s
narrative opens;
Pecola is staying)
is used to describe the
actions in a literary
work.
Lasting Lessons in The Bluest Eye
1 In her fi rst novel, The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison writes about a time
when racial and social prejudices were very strong. White people were
more highly valued by society, and many African Americans learned to
hate the characteristics that made them black. In The Bluest Eye, a young
girl is destroyed by a society she longs to be part of.
2 The tragic story of Pecola Breedlove is a fl ashback to 1941 told
by two narrators. One is Claudia, a young girl whose family took in
Pecola after her father burned down the family’s house. Claudia’s narra-
tive opens each of the four parts of the book, which are arranged by sea-
sons, starting with “Autumn” and ending with “Summer.” In “Autumn,”
Pecola is staying with Claudia’s family. In one scene, Frieda, Claudia’s
sister, and Pecola are admiring the image of Shirley Temple on a mug.
Claudia doesn’t like Shirley and talks about dolls she receives every
Christmas. She says, “I destroyed white baby dolls. But the dismembering
of dolls was not the true horror. The truly horrifying thing was the transfer-
ence of the same impulses to little white girls” (22). Eventually, she learns
to stop hating the white baby dolls and loves Shirley Temple. At the end of
Claudia’s autumn narrative, Pecola has started to menstruate. Frieda tells
her that now she can have a baby, when someone loves her. Pecola asks,
“How do you do that? I mean, get somebody to love you?” (31).
The omniscient narrator takes over, telling how Pecola’s parents
have a history of fi ghting violently. During the fi ghts, Pecola wants to
Thesis statement
Topic sentence
Topic sentence
Specifi c example
Direct quotation
with page
reference (see
throughout)
Specifi c example
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WRITING ESSAYS
Chapter 20 • Writing Summaries and Reports 341
disappear and wonders why everyone either ignores or hates her. Every
night, she prays for blue eyes because she believes that if she had blue
eyes, like Shirley Temple or like white girls, people would love her.
As the story continues, the reader learns more about the dismal his-
tory of Pecola’s parents, who have learned to hate themselves and each
other. They neglect Pecola, reinforcing her view that no one loves her and
intensifying her wish for blue eyes, the feature that she believes would
transform her life. In one very ugly scene, Pecola’s father rapes her, and
her mother beats her when learning what happened. Pecola becomes
pregnant, and Claudia and Frieda pray that her baby will be born healthy.
But the baby dies.
Abandoned and miserable, Pecola visits a sham mystic, begging him
to give her blue eyes. To get rid of a dog he hates, the mystic gives Pecola
a poisoned piece of meat to feed the dog and tells her that if there is a
sign, she will have blue eyes. The dog dies, and Pecola takes it as a sign.
But she is sickened by the dog’s death.
In the fi nal chapters of the book, Pecola is having a conversation with
an imagined friend. She has gone mad. But she believes that she has blue
eyes and that people stare at her in envy. She fears, however, that perhaps
someone else has bluer eyes, but her friend assures her she has “the blu-
est eyes.” Morrison writes, “A little black girl yearns for the blue eyes of
a little white girl, and the horror at the heart of her yearning is exceeded
only by the evil of fulfi llment” (204). Pecola gets her wish only by being
destroyed.
3 When I fi rst started reading The Bluest Eye, I didn’t like it, but now
I realize that it is a fi ne book written by a talented author. One part of
Morrison’s writing that impressed me was her use of symbols, like fl ower
seeds and blue eyes. Claudia’s fi rst narrative begins, “Quiet as it’s kept,
there were no marigolds in the fall of 1941” (6). Claudia and Frieda plant
marigold seeds and believe that if they grow, Pecola’s baby will live. But
they die, and so does the baby. In the last paragraph of the book, Claudia
says, “I even think now that the land of the entire country was hostile to
marigolds that year” (206). The marigold seeds are like Pecola, and just
as the soil was hostile to them, society was hostile to Pecola, and they both
Topic sentence
Topic sentence
Topic sentence
Specifi c example/
support
Specifi c example
Topic sentence
Specifi c example
Specifi c example
Specifi c example
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WRITING ESSAYS
342 Part Three • Special College Writing Projects
die. The author often refers to blue eyes. They symbolize black women’s
wish to look white at a time when society’s racism considered white fea-
tures to be the ideal of beauty.
I learned about history from the book. I knew people were prejudiced
before, but I didn’t know that many African Americans tried to be like
whites. I didn’t know that their attempts showed a self-hatred caused
by racism, or that they hated those who were poorer and “blacker” than
they were. In “Winter,” Claudia writes about Maureen Peal, a new girl
in school whom everyone loves. She is very light-skinned and dresses like
white girls. In one scene, Maureen, Claudia, and Frieda come upon a
group of boys who have surrounded Pecola and are making fun of her.
Maureen breaks it up with just a look, after Claudia and Frieda have
tried without luck. The boys hate Pecola because she is beneath them. As
Morrison states, “It was their contempt for their own blackness that gave
the fi rst insult its teeth. . . . their exquisitely earned self-hatred was . . .
sucked up into a fi ery cone of scorn that had burned for all ages . . . and
consumed whatever was in its path” (65). This book taught me about an
important time that I didn’t know about.
What I most liked about The Bluest Eye is that I related to the story
about people wanting to fi t in, even if it means not being true to them-
selves. At fi rst, Claudia doesn’t love Shirley Temple, but she learns to love
her and to dislike herself. Pecola just wants to be loved and thinks that if
only she had blue eyes, she would be, but trying to be someone she isn’t
destroys her. I think many young people do things just to fi t in because
of pressure from their friends or other people’s ideas of what is good.
Morrison’s book focuses on African Americans, but her lesson about not
trying to be someone else applies to everyone.
4 I think The Bluest Eye is an important book that is very well written.
I would recommend that everyone read it because it has some important
lessons not only about history but also about our lives today. I would like
to read other books that Morrison has written.
Works Cited
Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Penguin, 1970. Print.
Specifi c support
Topic sentence
Topic sentence
Conclusion
Specifi c support
Specifi c support
Works Cited
entry with
publication
information
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WRITING ESSAYS
Chapter 20 • Writing Summaries and Reports 343
Although many reports, like this one, begin with a summary and move
on to an analysis, some writers weave the summary and analysis together.
Look at newspaper or magazine reviews of books, fi lms, and other works
to see different ways that reports are constructed.
Many occasions call for your being able to report on things:
COLLEGE An instructor in a business class assigns you to write a
report based on a campus event, such as a presentation
on marketing trends by a local professional.
WORK Your manager asks you to review software from different
suppliers who want your company’s business. Your
review must recommend which supplier to use.
EVERYDAY You informally review a new restaurant or health club
LIFE for your friends.
Follow the steps in the Writing Guide on the next page to help you with
the report assignments below. Also, review the four basics of a good report
(p. 339). Check off each step in the guide as you complete it.
Although this guide is geared to reports about texts, you can also use
it when writing about fi lms, events, and other nontext sources. First, note
the key parts of the fi lm, event, or whatever you are reporting on, and then
jot down your reactions. Next, work through this guide, beginning with
the “Review” step.
REPORT ASSIGNMENTS
1. Read an essay that your instructor assigns from Part Eight of this book,
and write a report on it.
2. Write a review of a book that you have read for either this class or
another one.
3. Write a review of a movie or live performance that you either very much
liked or very much disliked.
4. Write a report that includes a summary of and reaction to a recent or
proposed change in your town or on your campus.
5. Write a report of a class that you have taken recently.
■ In reports, writers
typically analyze and
evaluate. For more on
these and other typical
college writing skills,
see pages 38–40.
■
DISCUSSION
Ask students to dis-
cuss other occasions
in college, work, and
everyday life where
they might be asked
to write a report. List
students’ responses on
the board.
■
TEACHING TIP
Give students a list of
campus or local events,
and suggest that they
attend the same event
but write separate
reports. Students can
compare and contrast
their responses to the
same event.
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WRITING ESSAYS
344 Part Three • Special College Writing Projects
WRITING GUIDE: REPORT
STEPS IN WRITING REPORTS HOW TO DO THE STEPS
Focus.
■
■ Read with the idea in mind that you will be writing a report
on the piece.
Read the piece you are to
report on.
See Chapter 2 for advice on
reading.
■
■ As you read, highlight key points or put a check mark ()
next to them.
■
■ Note the title and any headings, words in boldface or
italics, and boxed information or diagrams.
Review your highlighting and
make notes.
See Chapter 2 for advice on
taking notes while reading.
■
■ Jot down the author’s main idea and key points for the
summary part of the report.
■
■ Think about your reactions to the piece: What do you want
to say about it? What did you learn? How does it relate to
your experience? Would you recommend it to others? Why
or why not?
■
■ Write down your reactions and support for them.
■
■ Note any sentences in the text that you may use in the
report, including page numbers (if you are reporting on a
print work).
Make an outline.
See Chapter 7 for more on
outlining.
■
■ Organize your report, starting with the summary and
explanation of major events and moving to your reactions to
the piece. Or you can interweave the summary and analysis
if that organization is more logical for your subject.
Draft the report.
See Chapter 8 for more on
drafting.
■
■ Write the summary, referring to the original but using your
own words.
■
■ Write the reaction part of the report, evaluating the piece as
well as relating it to your own experience.
■
■ Use material from the original to explain or support your
ideas.
■
■ If you quote directly from the original, make sure to use
quotation marks and page numbers (if you’re reporting on a
print source). For more on using quotations, see page 363.
■
■ Write an introduction that includes a thesis statement with
your stance on the piece.
■
■ Write a concluding paragraph that restates your opinion of
the piece and makes a recommendation.
■
■ Title your report.
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WRITING ESSAYS
Chapter 20 • Writing Summaries and Reports 345
STEPS IN WRITING REPORTS HOW TO DO THE STEPS
Revise the draft.
See Chapter 9 for more on
revising.
■
■ Read your draft.
■
■ Make sure it includes the author’s main idea and key points.
■
■ Consider your reactions and add details, either from your
own experience or from the original piece.
■
■ Add transitions to help your reader move smoothly from one
key point to another.
■
■ Make sure you have given enough examples so that readers
who haven’t read the piece can understand the main idea.
■
■ Check to make sure it follows the four basics of a good
report.
Edit your work.
See Parts Four through Seven
for editing advice.
■
■ Check for errors in grammar, spelling, and punctuation.
■
■ Ask yourself: Is this the best I can do?
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346
You Know This
You have done
your own research.
• You go online
to learn more
about an issue
or product that
interests you.
• You go online
to research a
health question
or problem.
21
Writing the Research Essay
Using Outside Sources
This chapter will guide you through the process of writing a research
essay. Throughout the chapter, we show how one student, Messelina Her-
nandez, worked through key steps in the process. Messelina’s completed
research essay on mandatory school uniforms appears on pages 376–79.
■ Visit
bedfordstmartins
.com/researchroom
for complete resources
to help you write
and document a
research paper.
■ Tammy S. Sugar-
man, a librarian at
Georgia State Univer-
sity, provided many
useful suggestions for
this chapter.
STEPS TO WRITING A GOOD RESEARCH ESSAY
1.
Make a schedule.
2. Choose a topic.
3. Find sources.
4. Evaluate sources.
5. Avoid plagiarism by taking careful notes.
6. Write a thesis statement.
7. Make an outline.
8. Write your essay.
9. Cite and document your sources.
10. Revise and edit your essay.
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