CENG 403 - Reading & Writing Across the Disciplines

READING & WRITING ACROSS THE DISCIPLINES

Master Study Guide --- All 24 Texts

Summary · Paraphrase · Critique · Analysis · Synthesis · Close Reading

Arts & Humanities | Social Sciences & Public Affairs | Sciences & Technologies

HOW TO USE THIS GUIDE

This guide covers every text on your syllabus, organized by academic field. For each text you will find: (1) Author & Context, (2) Central Argument / Theme, (3) Key Concepts & Evidence, (4) Rhetorical Mode, (5) Ready-made exam answers, and (6) Tips for Summary, Paraphrase, Critique, and Analysis questions.

Writing Task Reference:

• Summary: Briefly restate the central idea and main points in your own words. Brevity, completeness, objectivity.

• Paraphrase: Restate a specific passage in your own words, same length as original, no omission.

• Critique: Evaluate success of purpose + agree/disagree with argument. Always address both questions.

• Analysis: Apply an analytical principle to the text systematically. Answer 'So what?'

• Synthesis: Connect multiple sources around a central idea. Organize by idea, not by source.

UNIT 1: WRITING SKILLS --- BEHRENS & ROSEN

What Is a Summary?

A summary is a brief restatement, in your own words, of the content of a passage. A good summary has three qualities: brevity (concise), completeness (covers all main points), and objectivity (no personal opinion). It reflects the original's structure and emphasis.

Can a Summary Be Objective?

Objectivity is difficult but achievable. Every summary involves selecting what matters --- which is interpretive. However, conscious effort to suppress personal bias produces a reasonably objective summary. Prior knowledge, professional background, and personal framing all influence how a summarizer selects and presents material.

Types of Writing That Involve Summary

ACADEMIC:

• Critique papers --- summarize to critique

• Synthesis papers --- summarize to show relationships

• Analysis papers --- summarize theory before applying it

• Research papers --- note-taking and reporting

• Literature reviews --- overview of prior work

• Argument papers --- summarize evidence and counterarguments

• Essay exams --- demonstrate understanding of course material

WORKPLACE:

• Policy briefs --- condense complex public policy

• Business plans --- summarize costs and impacts

• Memos, letters, reports --- summarize meetings, procedures, assessments

• Medical charts --- record patient data

• Legal briefs --- summarize facts and arguments

Features of Summary --- Demonstrated Through Alan S. Blinder's "Will Your Job Be Exported?"

• Step 1 --- Read, Reread, Highlight: First read for overall understanding. Reread to identify key ideas, highlight important sentences.

• Step 2 --- Divide into Stages of Thought: Identify the logical sections/progression of the author's argument.

• Step 3 --- Brief Summary of Each Stage: Capture each section's key point in one or two sentences.

• Step 4 --- Write a Thesis: One or two sentences capturing the entire passage's central argument.

• Step 5 --- Draft (Short): Thesis + brief section summaries. Shorter summaries use this only.

• Step 6 --- Draft (Long): Thesis + section summaries + carefully chosen details and examples.

• Key Rule --- Preserve Order and Emphasis: Do not reorganize. Reflect the author's own structure.

• Key Rule --- No Personal Opinion: A summary contains only the author's ideas, never the summarizer's views.

Critical Reading & Critique (Chapter 2)

A critique evaluates a text on two levels:

1. To what extent does the author succeed in their purpose? (effectiveness of evidence, reasoning, clarity)

2. To what extent do you agree with the author? (do you share their assumptions? where do you diverge?)

Evaluating Different Types of Writing

• Informative: Assess accuracy, clarity, and sufficiency of evidence.

• Persuasive: Assess claim, evidence, logical reasoning (logos), credibility (ethos), emotional appeal (pathos). Check for logical fallacies.

• Entertaining: Assess how effectively the author achieves artistic/entertainment goals.

Structure of a Critique

3. Introduction: Identify the text, author, subject. State your overall assessment.

4. Summary: Brief summary of the text (do not over-summarize).

5. Evaluation (Success): Analyze evidence, reasoning, rhetorical strategies.

6. Agreement/Disagreement: State your position with reasons.

7. Conclusion: Synthesize your evaluation.

ARTS & HUMANITIES --- ALL TEXTS

1. Maya Angelou --- "Graduation"

Type: Reflecting (personal essay/memoir) | Field: Arts & Humanities

Author: Maya Angelou (1928--2014), celebrated African-American poet, memoirist, civil rights activist. Known for I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

Central Theme

Angelou describes her eighth-grade graduation from Lafayette County Training School in Stamps, Arkansas. The essay explores the clash between the joy of Black academic achievement and the crushing reality of racial segregation. A white politician's speech --- promising only manual/vocational futures for Black students while reserving higher ambitions for white students --- deflates the ceremony's joy. The redemption comes through Henry Reed's spontaneous recitation of the Negro National Anthem, which restores pride and dignity.

Key Ideas for Exam

• Race & Education: The segregated school has no lawn, tennis courts, or ivy --- physical differences reflect systemic inequality.

• Hope vs. Reality: Graduates' joy is crushed by Donleavy's speech, which reveals the limits placed on Black aspirations.

• Collective Identity & Resilience: The singing of the anthem transforms private humiliation into collective pride. The community reasserts its humanity and dignity.

• Tone Shift: Angelou masterfully shifts from joyful anticipation → crushing disappointment → triumphant recovery.

• 'Reflecting' Mode: The essay reflects on personal experience to make a broader argument about race, dignity, and survival.

2. Amy Tan --- "Mother Tongue"

Type: Reflecting | Field: Arts & Humanities

Author: Amy Tan, Chinese-American novelist. Author of The Joy Luck Club. Writes about the immigrant experience and language.

Central Theme

Tan explores the multiple 'Englishes' she grew up with: the formal English of her writing and education, and the 'broken' or 'limited' English she spoke with her Chinese immigrant mother. She argues that her mother's 'broken' English is not a deficiency but a rich form of expression, and that language shapes identity, opportunity, and social perception.

Key Ideas

• 'All the Englishes': Tan uses multiple Englishes --- they are not errors but distinct communicative registers with different purposes and audiences.

• Language & Power: Her mother is treated with disrespect by institutions (hospitals, banks) because of her 'broken' English. Language determines how people are perceived and treated.

• Language & Identity: Tan's mother tongue shaped how she thinks, imagines, and writes --- even her literary voice.

• Critique of Standardization: Tan challenges the assumption that 'standard' English is superior. Her mother's English is vivid, direct, and precise in its own way.

• Personal → Universal: The essay reflects on personal experience to make broader claims about language, immigration, and cultural identity.

3. Ernest Hemingway --- "A New Kind of War"

Type: Reporting | Field: Arts & Humanities

Author: Ernest Hemingway, Nobel Prize--winning American author. This is war journalism from the Spanish Civil War (1937).

Central Theme

Hemingway reports on the Spanish Civil War from Madrid. He describes the surreal experience of war fought in an urban setting --- civilians and soldiers sharing the same streets, the random violence of shell fire, the contrast between ordinary city life (restaurants, hotels) and the constant threat of death. The 'new kind of war' refers to modern urban warfare where the front line intrudes on civilian life.

Key Ideas

• Reporting Mode: Hemingway uses precise, unembellished description --- his famous 'iceberg theory' (what is not said is as powerful as what is). Concrete details, no sentimentality.

• Contrast as Technique: The comfort of lying in a warm bed vs. the firing in the streets; diners eating vs. shells exploding nearby. These contrasts make the horror vivid.

• Eyewitness Authority: Uses first person and present tense to create immediacy and authenticity.

• The 'New' War: Unlike battlefield warfare, this war blurs civilian/military boundaries --- 'you' (the reader/narrator) are always in the war zone.

4. James Alan McPherson --- "Problems of Art"

Type: Reporting/Fiction | Field: Arts & Humanities

Author: Pulitzer Prize--winning African-American short story writer.

Central Theme

A young Black lawyer, Milford, visits Mrs. Farragot --- a poor Black woman --- to prepare her defense for a license revocation hearing. The story explores perception, judgment, and the gap between how educated professionals perceive working-class or poor people, and how those people actually see and understand the world. Milford repeatedly misjudges Mrs. Farragot, who turns out to be wiser and more perceptive than he assumed.

Key Ideas

• Art & Perception: The 'problems of art' are the problems of seeing accurately --- of not projecting one's own assumptions onto what one sees.

• Class & Race: Milford, educated and professional, patronizes Mrs. Farragot. Her wisdom ultimately outstrips his formal training.

• The Portrait: A cheap dimestore portrait of Jesus becomes a metaphor --- Milford judges it as aesthetically inferior, missing the spiritual and emotional significance it holds for those who value it.

• Reversal: The narrative ends with Milford realizing Mrs. Farragot understood the hearing room's dynamics better than he did.

5. Susan Choi --- "Memorywork" (Fiction)

Type: Explaining (through fiction) | Field: Arts & Humanities

Author: American novelist Susan Choi. This is a short story.

Central Theme

A mother and daughter come to an understanding by examining old photographs together. The story explores how photographs function as triggers of memory, how families construct and suppress narratives about the past, and how the act of 'memorywork' --- deliberately revisiting the past --- can be uncomfortable but ultimately necessary for understanding oneself and one's relationships.

Key Ideas

• Memory & Photography: Photographs are not neutral records --- they are selective, curated presentations of experience that can conceal as much as they reveal.

• Intergenerational Understanding: The daughter comes to understand her mother more fully; the mother must confront memories she has suppressed.

• Fiction as Explanation: Choi uses fiction to illuminate how the human mind processes memory, trauma, and identity.

6. Plato --- "The Cave"

Type: Explaining (philosophical dialogue) | Field: Arts & Humanities

Author: Plato (c.428--348 BCE), ancient Greek philosopher. Excerpt from The Republic, Book VII.

Central Argument

Plato's Allegory of the Cave is one of the most famous philosophical thought experiments. Prisoners are chained in a cave, able to see only shadows cast on the wall by objects passing before a fire behind them. They believe the shadows are reality. When one prisoner is freed and forced to turn toward the fire, he is blinded by the light. Eventually led out of the cave into daylight, he gradually adjusts and sees the real world --- the sun itself represents the highest form of knowledge (the Form of the Good).

Key Concepts

• The Cave = Ordinary Human Experience: We see only shadows (appearances, opinions) not true reality.

• The Fire = Partial/Derived Knowledge: Fire-lit shadows represent sensory knowledge, which is only a pale imitation of truth.

• The Sun = Ultimate Truth / The Form of the Good: True knowledge is obtained only through reason and philosophical inquiry.

• The Freed Prisoner = The Philosopher: One who turns away from appearances and seeks true knowledge, painful as the process is.

• The Return to the Cave: The philosopher who returns to share knowledge is ridiculed or rejected by those still imprisoned. This represents the fate of truth-tellers in society.

• Epistemology & Education: Plato argues that education is not filling empty minds with facts, but turning the whole soul toward truth.

7. John Berger --- "Hiroshima"

Type: Arguing | Field: Arts & Humanities

Author: John Berger (1926--2017), British art critic, novelist, essayist. Author of Ways of Seeing.

Central Argument

Berger examines paintings made by Hiroshima survivors --- ordinary citizens, not professional artists --- who were invited by a TV station to paint their memories of August 6, 1945. Berger argues that these amateur paintings constitute a unique form of testimony, and that their imagery of hell --- burning bodies, mass suffering, the disappearance of time --- aligns with medieval European depictions of hell. His central argument is that Hiroshima represents a moral threshold: those who ordered the bombing, he argues, knew it would kill civilians and chose to do so. This makes it an act that demands moral reckoning, not neutral 'historical' memory.

Key Ideas

• Art as Testimony: Non-professional art by survivors has a raw, irreducible authenticity that professional art cannot replicate.

• Images of Hell: The affinity between these modern paintings and medieval European hell-imagery is both stylistic and fundamental --- both depict the multiplication of pain, the absence of appeal, and the disappearance of time.

• Moral Argument: Berger argues that calling Hiroshima a 'historical event' allows us to avoid moral responsibility. He insists we must look at the images and reckon with what was done.

• Arguing Mode: The essay is in 'Arguing' mode --- it makes a moral/political claim supported by aesthetic analysis and historical evidence.

8. George Orwell --- "Politics and the English Language"

Type: Arguing | Field: Arts & Humanities

Author: George Orwell (1903--1950), British author. Wrote Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Dual Thesis

Orwell's central argument is circular: bad thinking produces bad language, and bad language then makes it easier to think badly. The relationship is mutually corrupting. His target is primarily political writing, which uses vague, evasive language to disguise brutality and dishonesty.

Five Vices of Modern Writing

• Dying Metaphors: Worn-out metaphors (e.g., 'toe the line,' 'fishing in troubled waters') used out of habit, not thought.

• Verbal False Limbs (Operators): Elaborate verb phrases replacing simple verbs --- 'render inoperative' instead of 'break'; pads sentences.

• Pretentious Diction: Latin/Greek words to dress up simple ideas --- 'utilize,' 'liquidate,' 'phenomenon' --- gives false air of authority.

• Meaningless Words: Political abstractions ('democracy,' 'freedom,' 'fascism') with no agreed meaning, used to manipulate.

• Staleness of Imagery: Pre-fabricated phrases used instead of original thought --- the writer lets language think for them.

How Language Corrupts Thought

When writers reach for ready-made phrases, 'the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning.' Ready-made phrases anaesthetize portions of the brain. Political language --- designed to 'make lies sound truthful and murder respectable' --- is the prime example: euphemisms like 'pacification' (bombing) or 'transfer of population' (forced expulsion) prevent the speaker and listener from thinking clearly about what is actually being described.

Orwell's Six Rules

8. Never use a metaphor, simile, or figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

9. Never use a long word where a short one will do.

10. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

11. Never use the passive where you can use the active.

12. Never use a foreign phrase, scientific word, or jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

13. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

The Self-Referential Dimension

Orwell admits he himself commits the faults he criticizes --- showing that reform is an active, ongoing struggle, not a permanent state of achievement.

SOCIAL SCIENCES & PUBLIC AFFAIRS --- ALL TEXTS

9. N. Scott Momaday --- "The Way to Rainy Mountain"

Type: Reflecting | Field: Social Sciences & Public Affairs

Author: N. Scott Momaday (b. 1934), Kiowa Native American author, professor. Won Pulitzer Prize for House Made of Dawn.

Central Theme

Momaday returns to Rainy Mountain in Oklahoma after his grandmother Aho's death, to reconnect with his Kiowa heritage. The essay weaves together three strands: mythological Kiowa history, documented historical events, and personal memory. It is a meditation on cultural loss, ancestral identity, the relationship between land and people, and how oral tradition preserves what written history cannot.

Key Ideas

• Three-Stranded Structure: Each section combines myth/legend, historical fact, and personal memory --- representing different ways of knowing and preserving culture.

• Land & Identity: The Kiowas were defined by the land --- the Oklahoma plains, Rainy Mountain. The landscape is inseparable from cultural identity.

• Oral Tradition: Momaday argues that stories told aloud carry a truth that written records cannot replicate. His grandmother's voice embodied Kiowa history.

• Loss & Decline: The Kiowas were a great horse-culture civilization. Their defeat and confinement to reservations represents cultural death --- Momaday mourns this while celebrating what survives.

• Pilgrimage: The journey to Rainy Mountain is literal and metaphorical --- a journey to the source of his identity.

10. Martin Luther King Jr. --- "Pilgrimage to Nonviolence"

Type: Reflecting | Field: Social Sciences & Public Affairs

Author: Martin Luther King Jr. (1929--1968), civil rights leader, Baptist minister, Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

Central Theme

King narrates his intellectual and spiritual journey from theological liberalism through neo-orthodoxy, existentialism, and Marxism, before arriving at Gandhian nonviolent resistance. Each 'encampment' offered partial truth but ultimately failed to provide a complete answer to the problem of racial injustice.

Stage 1 --- Liberalism: Its Partial Truth and Failure

King was initially attracted to liberalism's optimism about human nature and its use of reason and progress. But liberalism failed to account for the depths of human evil: 'Liberalism had been all too sentimental concerning human nature.' The persistence of racial oppression among liberal Christians proved that humans were not essentially good.

Stage 2 --- Neo-orthodoxy: Its Partial Truth and Failure

After WWI, neo-orthodoxy (Barth, Niebuhr) swung to the opposite extreme: man is defined entirely by sin and the fall. King appreciated neo-orthodoxy's realism about evil but rejected its excessive pessimism. A God who is 'hidden, unknown, and wholly other' offers no hope of redemption for the oppressed in this world. Neo-orthodoxy 'went too far' in the other direction.

The Synthesis --- King's Own Position

King applies Hegelian dialectic: Liberalism (thesis) → Neo-orthodoxy (antithesis) → Synthesis. 'An adequate understanding of man is found neither in the thesis of liberalism nor in the antithesis of neo-orthodoxy, but in a synthesis which reconciles the truths of both.' Man is both capable of good AND evil --- this dual nature makes nonviolent resistance possible: it appeals to the conscience (good) while resisting structural evil.

Later Stages

• Existentialism: Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Jaspers, Heidegger, Sartre, Tillich. King appreciated existentialism's analysis of human anxiety and alienation but rejected its atheism. Paul Tillich's 'finite freedom' concept was especially valuable.

• Marxism: King appreciated Marx's critique of economic exploitation and analysis of structural poverty. He rejected Marxism for its atheism, materialism, and advocacy of violent revolution.

• Gandhian Nonviolence: The final synthesis --- a method that acknowledges evil, appeals to conscience, and provides a practical path that is consistent with Christian ethics and love.

11. William L. Laurence --- "Atomic Bombing of Nagasaki Told by Flight Member"

Type: Reporting | Field: Social Sciences & Public Affairs

Author: William L. Laurence, New York Times science journalist, the only civilian on the Nagasaki bombing mission.

Central Theme

Laurence provides a first-hand eyewitness report of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, from the B-29 'The Great Artiste.' The report is written in vivid, immediate detail --- the eerie St. Elmo's fire on the plane, the search for the target, the blinding flash of the bomb, and the mushroom cloud.

Key Ideas for Exam

• Reporting Mode: Pure reporting --- Laurence records what he witnesses without explicit editorial comment. He focuses on sensory details: light, sound, visual phenomena.

• The Sublime and Horror: The description of the mushroom cloud is written with aesthetic wonder ('a living thing, a new species of being') --- this is both haunting and morally complex. Laurence aestheticizes an act of mass killing.

• Contrast with Berger: Compare Laurence's pilot's-eye-view (detached, observational) with Berger's essay on Hiroshima survivor paintings (ground-level, moral, visceral). This contrast is a common exam synthesis question.

• Eyewitness Authority: Laurence uses his unique position as the sole journalist witness to claim authority.

12. Jon Gertner --- "The Futile Pursuit of Happiness"

Type: Explaining | Field: Social Sciences & Public Affairs

Author: Jon Gertner, journalist. Adapted from New York Times Magazine, 2003.

Central Argument

Gertner reports on research by Gilbert, Wilson, Loewenstein, and Kahneman showing that humans are systematically bad at predicting their future emotional states --- a problem called 'affective forecasting.' We consistently overestimate both the intensity and duration of our emotional reactions to future events (impact bias), which leads us to desire things that won't make us as happy as we think (miswanting).

Key Concepts

• Affective Forecasting: Predicting how we will feel in the future. We overestimate both how good good things will feel and how bad bad things will feel.

• Impact Bias: The gap between what we predict and what we actually experience. A new BMW, a death in the family, a broken wrist --- all matter less, and for less time, than predicted.

• Adaptation: The brain is designed to return to its happiness set point. We adapt to new circumstances --- positive and negative --- far faster than we anticipate.

• Miswanting: Desiring things we believe will make us happy but which won't. We mispredict emotional outcomes and therefore make choices that don't serve our true wellbeing.

• Empathy Gap (Loewenstein): We cannot predict how we will behave in 'hot' emotional states (fear, courage, craving) when we are in 'cold' rational states.

Key Experiments

• Photography: Students whose choice was irrevocable were MORE satisfied than those who could change their minds. Closure produces happiness; options produce doubt.

• Transit/Train: People predicted they'd feel self-blame for missing a train. They did not. We overestimate regret.

• Rick James (Loewenstein): People agreed to dance alone in front of a crowd a week in advance, then reneged when the day arrived --- demonstrating the cold-to-hot empathy gap.

Gilbert's Paradox

Gilbert suggests that even if he could eliminate forecasting errors, he might not. Our 'caricatures of the future' --- inflated assessments of how good or bad things will be --- may serve a functional purpose: they motivate us. Without them, we might shrug and say 'it won't really make a difference,' losing the drive to act. 'Maybe it's important for there to be carrots and sticks in the world, even if they are illusions.'

13. Monica M. Moore --- "Nonverbal Courtship Patterns in Women"

Type: Explaining (empirical research) | Field: Social Sciences & Public Affairs

Author: Monica M. Moore, professor of psychology. This is an academic research article.

Central Argument

Moore presents an ethological study of nonverbal solicitation behaviors in women observed in naturalistic social settings. She catalogs 52 distinct nonverbal signals women use in courtship contexts --- including glancing, hair flips, smiling, touching, dancing --- and argues these function as courtship signals that attract and maintain male attention.

Key Ideas

• Explaining Mode: This is an academic research article using empirical methodology. It uses an ethogram (catalog of behaviors), consequential evidence, and contextual validation.

• Naturalistic Observation: Moore observed women in bars, libraries, and other social settings --- not lab environments --- to study behaviors in their natural context.

• Gender & Behavior: The study implies that women play an active (not passive) role in initiating courtship through nonverbal signals --- challenging popular assumptions about passive femininity.

• Academic Register: Uses technical terminology (ethogram, proxemics, solicitation behaviors). Note how scientific language differs from literary language.

• Contrast with Martin: Like Emily Martin's essay, Moore's study challenges gender stereotypes --- but from within empirical science rather than by critiquing it.

14. Malcolm Gladwell --- "The Naked Face"

Type: Explaining | Field: Social Sciences & Public Affairs

Author: Malcolm Gladwell, staff writer for The New Yorker. Author of Blink, The Tipping Point.

Central Argument

Gladwell profiles the work of Paul Ekman and his late mentor Silvan Tomkins, who devoted their careers to understanding the human face as a map of emotion. Ekman developed FACS (Facial Action Coding System) and the concept of 'microexpressions' --- involuntary, fleeting facial expressions that reveal true emotions before the conscious mind can suppress them. The essay explores whether faces can be 'read' accurately, and the implications of this for lie detection, security, and psychology.

Key Ideas

• Microexpressions: Fleeting (1/25 of a second) facial expressions that reveal genuine emotion before social masking kicks in. They can be trained to detect.

• Universal Emotions: Ekman's research (cross-cultural, including isolated tribes) suggests that at least 7 basic emotions (happiness, sadness, fear, disgust, anger, surprise, contempt) are universal, expressed identically across cultures.

• Tomkins' Legacy: Tomkins believed emotion was the primary code of human life and that faces were the key. He could identify trauma and personality from photographs.

• Thin-Slicing: Related to Gladwell's concept in Blink --- rapid, unconscious assessment based on minimal information.

• Ethics of Face Reading: The ability to read faces raises questions about privacy, surveillance, profiling, and the accuracy of our interpretations.

15. Jonathan Swift --- "A Modest Proposal"

Type: Arguing (satire) | Field: Social Sciences & Public Affairs

Author: Jonathan Swift (1667--1745), Anglo-Irish satirist. Author of Gulliver's Travels.

Central Argument

Swift's 'A Modest Proposal' is one of the most famous examples of irony and political satire in English literature. Swift, horrified by English indifference to Irish poverty and famine, adopts the persona of a rational, dispassionate economist who 'proposes' that the Irish solve their poverty problem by eating their babies. By using the cold logic of economic reasoning to advocate something monstrous, Swift exposes the moral bankruptcy of those who treat the Irish poor as less than human.

Key Ideas

• Irony & Satirical Mode: The 'proposal' is not meant to be taken literally. Swift uses mock-logic to expose real injustice. The horror of the proposal = the horror of the actual English policies.

• The Persona: Swift adopts a persona of a reasonable, well-meaning public benefactor --- never revealing his true outrage. This detachment is what makes the satire devastating.

• Logical Structure as Weapon: Swift uses all the formal apparatus of policy argument (statistics, projections, benefits, objections answered) to make the absurdity more condemning.

• Arguing Mode: Technically an 'argument' --- but the real argument is the inverse of the stated one. The 'proposal' argues against itself by proving its own monstrousness.

• Social Critique: Targets English landlords and policies, English indifference to Irish suffering, and the dehumanizing logic of economic exploitation.

16. Thomas Jefferson --- "The Declaration of Independence"

Type: Arguing | Field: Social Sciences & Public Affairs

Author: Thomas Jefferson (1743--1826), primary author of the Declaration; 3rd President of the United States.

Central Themes

• Natural Rights: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.' Rights are inherent, not granted by government.

• Social Contract Theory: Governments exist to secure natural rights, deriving their 'just powers from the consent of the governed.' When government fails this purpose, the people have the right --- and duty --- to abolish it.

• Catalogue of Grievances: 27 specific abuses by King George III, each beginning 'He has...' --- this functions as evidence in a legal argument proving the king has violated his contract.

• Revolutionary Legitimacy: Rebellion is justified only when there is 'a long train of abuses' proving a 'design to reduce them under absolute Despotism.' This is a carefully limited right of revolution.

• Enlightenment Philosophy: Draws on Locke's Second Treatise --- natural law, consent, right of revolution. Jefferson translates Enlightenment theory into political action.

Argumentative Structure

14. Preamble: Philosophical premises (natural rights, social contract)

15. Indictment: Specific grievances against King George (evidence)

16. Conclusion: Declaration of independence, mutual pledge

The structure = premise → evidence → conclusion. A model of formal argumentation.

The Central Tension

Jefferson's universal language ('all men are created equal') stands in profound contradiction with the existence of slavery in the colonies. Jefferson himself owned slaves. This contradiction has driven centuries of debate about the document's meaning, scope, and moral authority.

SCIENCES & TECHNOLOGIES --- ALL TEXTS

17. Carl Sagan --- "Can We Know the Universe? Reflections on a Grain of Salt"

Type: Reflecting | Field: Sciences & Technologies

Author: Carl Sagan (1934--1996), astrophysicist, cosmologist, author of Cosmos.

Central Argument

Sagan explores whether the universe is knowable. He uses the metaphor of a grain of salt: a single microgram contains ~10^16 sodium and chlorine atoms --- more than the total number of connections in the human brain (10^14). So we cannot, in principle, fully know even a grain of salt. However, Sagan argues that science doesn't require knowing every detail --- it works through laws, patterns, and regularities. Understanding a law allows us to understand millions of instances without memorizing each one. The capacity for scientific understanding is itself a form of joy.

Key Ideas

• The Grain of Salt Argument: One microgram of salt has more atoms than the brain has connections. In that sense, the universe is 'intractable.' But laws and patterns allow us to know far more than our memory capacity suggests.

• Scientific Method: Science examines the world 'critically as if many alternative worlds might exist' --- it asks not just what is, but why what is is, and not something else.

• 'Understanding Is a Kind of Ecstasy': Sagan argues that the joy of understanding --- even of a blade of grass --- is one of the uniquely human pleasures. Science is an emotional and aesthetic experience, not just technical.

• Reflecting Mode: Personal meditation that moves from observable phenomena to large philosophical questions. Uses first person, wonder, and personal experience as argumentative tools.

• Limits of Knowledge: Sagan is honest that some questions (what lies beyond the universe?) remain genuinely unanswerable, and that this is not a failure but an invitation.

18. Robert Frost --- "Design"

Type: Arguing (poetry) | Field: Sciences & Technologies

Author: Robert Frost (1874--1963), major American poet.

The Poem

'I found a dimpled spider, fat and white, / On a white heal-all, holding up a moth / Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth ---' The octave describes a white spider on a white heal-all flower, holding a dead white moth. The sestet asks: what brought these three white things together? Was it 'design of darkness to appall'? The final couplet: 'What but design of darkness to appall? --- / If design govern in a thing so small.'

Key Ideas

• The Problem of Evil Design: The poem asks: if a benevolent God designed the universe, why do we find these small but disturbing arrangements --- predator, prey, chance meeting --- that suggest a 'design of darkness'?

• The Conditional ('If'): The key word. If there is design in small things, it seems malevolent. But if there is NO design, then there is no moral order at all. Both options are unsettling.

• Argument About Intelligent Design: Frost wrote this long before the modern debate, but the poem engages the same question: does the universe show evidence of purposeful design?

• Irony: The 'design' being considered is one of death and predation. The word 'dimpled' (usually associated with babies/innocence) applied to the spider is deeply ironic.

• Science & Poetry: Frost translates a scientific/philosophical problem into compressed, beautiful poetic form --- showing how poetry can 'argue' by showing rather than stating.

19. Bruno Bettelheim --- "Joey: A Mechanical Boy"

Type: Reporting | Field: Sciences & Technologies

Author: Bruno Bettelheim (1903--1990), Austrian-American psychologist, Director of the Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School, University of Chicago.

Central Theme

Bettelheim describes Joey, a nine-year-old boy with severe infantile autism who believed himself to be a machine. Joey functioned 'as if by remote control, run by machines of his own powerfully creative fantasy.' He strung imaginary wires from electrical outlets before eating, cycled through gears until he 'exploded,' and could only exist when his 'machinery' was running. Bettelheim traces Joey's condition to complete emotional abandonment --- his mother 'never knew she was pregnant' and his birth 'did not make any difference.' Joey's recovery required a gradual reinterpretation of himself as human.

Key Concepts

• Autism & Delusion: Joey constructed a mechanical self as defense against unbearable humanity. The machine provided predictability, control, and freedom from the need for human connection.

• Reinterpretation: The cure was not behavioral but cognitive/narrative --- Joey had to reinterpret who he was. He had to be helped to construct a new self-narrative.

• Machine Age: 'Joey's story has a general relevance to the understanding of emotional development in a machine age.' Bettelheim suggests broader cultural implications.

• Parental Abandonment: Unlike other schizophrenic children whose parents had 'ambivalent' rejection, Joey was completely ignored --- which produced a uniquely severe form of the illness.

Framework for the Reinterpretation Essay

• Before College --- The Old Terms: What identity, beliefs, or assumptions defined you before higher education? (E.g., fixed ideas about success, social roles, what you were capable of.)

• What Called Those Terms into Question: What texts, people, ideas, or experiences disrupted those prior frameworks?

• The Change that Has Occurred: What new framework, understanding, or identity has emerged?

• What Is at Stake: What is lost, what is gained? What risks are involved in changing one's fundamental self-understanding?

20. Eric Schlosser --- "Why McDonald's Fries Taste So Good"

Type: Reporting | Field: Sciences & Technologies

Author: Eric Schlosser, investigative journalist. Author of Fast Food Nation.

Central Theme

Schlosser investigates the industrial chemistry behind McDonald's french fries. What makes them taste so good is not the potato, the cooking method, or the restaurant equipment --- but a carefully engineered blend of chemical flavor compounds added to the oil. Schlosser reveals that most of what we consider the 'taste' of processed food is actually engineered in flavor factories, not kitchens.

Key Ideas

• Reporting Mode: Investigative journalism --- Schlosser follows the supply chain from potato field to flavor laboratory, using first-hand visits, interviews, and factual data.

• The Flavor Industry: A secretive industry in New Jersey manufactures the chemical flavors added to virtually all fast food. 'Natural flavors' and 'artificial flavors' are legally distinct but chemically similar.

• Industrial Food System: McDonald's fries transformed American potato agriculture --- it is now the largest potato buyer in the US. The essay critiques how industrial food production has homogenized taste while hiding the complexity of production.

• Consumer Deception: The 'natural' taste we associate with McDonald's fries is an illusion constructed in a chemistry lab. This raises questions about authenticity, labeling, and consumer consent.

• Cultural Significance: Fries are 'almost sacrosanct' to McDonald's --- the essay uses this specific detail to explore broader questions about food, culture, and capitalism.

21. Jamie Shreeve --- "The Other Stem-Cell Debate"

Type: Reporting | Field: Sciences & Technologies

Author: Jamie Shreeve, science journalist, founding editor of Genome.

Central Theme

Shreeve reports on chimeric research --- the creation of organisms combining genetic material from two or more species, particularly the insertion of human cells into animals (e.g., human brain cells into monkey brains). He focuses on Dr. Eugene Redmond's work at St. Kitts, transplanting human neural stem cells into vervets with simulated Parkinson's disease. The 'other' stem-cell debate is not about embryos, but about how much human material can be added to an animal before it raises profound ethical questions.

Key Ideas

• Chimeras: Organisms made from cells of two or more species. Not new (lichen = fungus + algae), but new lab chimeras raise unprecedented ethical questions.

• The Moral Question: At what point does adding human cells to an animal cross a moral threshold? If an animal had enough human brain cells, could it develop human-like consciousness? What would we owe it?

• The Medical Promise: Chimeric research offers potential treatments for Parkinson's, spinal injury, and other conditions. The ethical debate is between medical benefit and moral risk.

• Reporting Mode: Shreeve uses scene-setting, expert interviews, and narrative to make complex bioethics accessible to general readers.

22. James Jeans --- "Why the Sky Is Blue"

Type: Explaining | Field: Sciences & Technologies

Author: Sir James Jeans (1877--1946), British mathematician, physicist, astronomer.

Central Argument

Jeans uses the analogy of a seaside pier to explain light scattering. Large waves (long wavelengths = red light) pass around pier columns with little disruption; small waves (short wavelengths = blue light) are scattered in all directions by the columns. In the atmosphere, air molecules are the 'columns' that scatter sunlight. Blue light (short wavelength) is scattered much more than red light, filling the sky. At sunrise/sunset, light travels through more atmosphere, scattering away the blue and leaving only red and orange.

Key Ideas

• Analogy as Explanation: The pier/wave analogy is the key rhetorical technique --- abstract physics made accessible through a concrete, familiar image.

• Explaining Mode: The goal is clarity and comprehension. Jeans builds from the familiar to the unfamiliar, step by step.

• Rayleigh Scattering: The scientific phenomenon --- shorter wavelengths scatter more than longer ones when they encounter particles smaller than the wavelength.

• Science Writing: Jeans demonstrates how scientific explanation requires translating technical phenomena into language and analogies accessible to non-experts.

23. David Livingstone Smith --- "Natural-Born Liars"

Type: Explaining | Field: Sciences & Technologies

Author: David Livingstone Smith, philosopher and cognitive scientist at the University of New England.

Central Argument

Smith argues that lying is a fundamental feature of human nature, deeply embedded in our evolutionary biology. We lie not because we choose to be immoral but because deception has historically conferred survival and reproductive advantages. Lying is not uniquely human --- plants and animals deceive too --- but human deception is uniquely sophisticated because it extends beyond verbal falsification to self-deception, performance, and social manipulation.

Key Ideas

• Evolutionary Basis of Lying: Homo sapiens who lied effectively had reproductive advantages. Lying helped navigate complex social systems. It is built into our biology, not just our psychology.

• Scope of Deception: Deception extends far beyond verbal lies: makeup, clothing, fake smiles, false emotions, omissions, spin. We 'lie' constantly through nonverbal means.

• Self-Deception: We also lie to ourselves --- a talent that helps us accept our own fraudulent behavior. Self-deception reduces cognitive dissonance.

• Animal Deception: Mirror orchids mimic female wasps to attract pollinators. Hog-nosed snakes fake death. Deception is a universal biological strategy.

• Research Evidence: Feldman study: 60% of people lied at least once in a 10-minute conversation; average 2.9 lies. Knox/Schacht: 92% of college students lied to sexual partners.

• Explaining Mode: Uses research data, evolutionary biology, and examples to systematically explain a phenomenon --- typical of explaining mode writing.

24. Emily Martin --- "The Egg and the Sperm"

Type: Arguing | Field: Sciences & Technologies

Author: Emily Martin, professor of anthropology at NYU. Feminist science critic.

Central Argument

Martin, an anthropologist, argues that scientific descriptions of human reproduction are not culturally neutral --- they encode and perpetuate gender stereotypes. The sperm is described as active, heroic, and goal-directed; the egg as passive, waiting, and fertile only for limited time. Martin shows that even when newer research revealed the egg actively grips the sperm, scientists re-described this as the egg 'entrapping' the sperm --- still framing female biology as threatening or passive.

The Arguing Mode in the Essay

• Claim: Scientific language about reproduction encodes gender stereotypes, depicting male biology as active/dominant and female biology as passive/inferior.

• Evidence: Direct quotations from medical textbooks and scientific articles showing gendered metaphors (sperm as 'remarkable,' egg as 'wasteful'; menstruation as 'debris' and 'failure').

• Counter-narrative: Alternative scientific findings --- the egg actively grips the sperm; the zona pellucida can capture both weak and strong sperm --- are available but ignored or distorted in mainstream descriptions.

• Rhetorical Analysis: Martin exposes the gap between what the biology shows and how it is described. The same facts can be described without gender stereotyping --- scientists choose not to.

• Larger Implication: If even science --- the most 'objective' form of knowledge --- encodes gender bias, then this bias pervades all institutions. The essay is ultimately about epistemic power: who gets to define reality?

MASTER EXAM STRATEGY

Writing a Summary --- Step-by-Step

17. Read the passage fully for overall understanding.

18. Identify the central idea (thesis) --- what is the author's main point?

19. Divide the text into stages of thought (logical sections).

20. Summarize each stage in 1-2 sentences.

21. Write a thesis sentence: central idea in your own words.

22. Combine thesis + stage summaries. Adjust length to requirement.

23. Check: no personal opinion, preserves author's order and emphasis, in your own words.

Writing a Paraphrase --- Step-by-Step

24. Select the specific passage to paraphrase.

25. Read it carefully. Understand every word and phrase.

26. Without looking at the original, rewrite it in your own words, same length.

27. Check: same meaning, no direct quotation, different sentence structure.

28. Do not summarize (shorter) or add your own ideas.

Writing a Critique --- Step-by-Step

29. Brief summary (2-3 sentences max).

30. Question 1: Does the author succeed? Evaluate: Is the purpose clear? Is evidence sufficient? Is reasoning sound? Are there logical fallacies?

31. Question 2: Do you agree? Identify which assumptions you share or reject. Give reasons.

32. Conclusion: Overall judgment with nuance.

Writing an Analysis --- Step-by-Step

33. Identify the analytical principle (a framework, theory, or definition).

34. State the principle clearly in your own words.

35. Apply the principle systematically to the text --- section by section or element by element.

36. Answer the 'So what?' question: why does this analysis matter?

37. Avoid summary --- analysis requires interpretation, not just description.

Writing a Synthesis --- Step-by-Step

38. Identify the central idea that connects your sources.

39. Formulate a thesis that makes a claim about all sources together.

40. Organize by idea (not by source --- never write 'Source A says... then Source B says...').

41. Use each source as evidence for your central argument.

42. Acknowledge differences between sources honestly.

43. Cite sources appropriately.

Quick Text Reference for Exam Types

Essential Vocabulary by Text

• Orwell: dying metaphors, verbal false limbs, pretentious diction, meaningless words, impact bias of language, political euphemism

• MLK: liberalism, neo-orthodoxy, synthesis, dialectic, existentialism, Gandhian nonviolence, social gospel, Reinhold Niebuhr

• Gertner/Affective Forecasting: affective forecasting, impact bias, adaptation, miswanting, empathy gap, happiness set point

• Martin (Egg & Sperm): gender bias in science, epistemic power, narrative in science, arguing mode, counter-narrative

• Plato: allegory, Forms, epistemic levels, appearance vs. reality, philosophical education

• Swift: irony, satire, persona, political satire, logical reduction to absurdity

• Jefferson: natural rights, social contract, consent of the governed, unalienable rights, Enlightenment, right of revolution

• Bettelheim: infantile autism, mechanical delusion, reinterpretation, therapeutic environment, schizophrenia

• Behrens & Rosen: summary, brevity, completeness, objectivity, stages of thought, critique, logos, ethos, pathos

• Smith: deception, evolutionary biology, self-deception, Homo sapiens, natural selection

• Sagan: scientific method, Rayleigh-like reasoning, grain of salt argument, 'Understanding is ecstasy'

• Jeans: scattering, wavelength, analogy, Rayleigh scattering, explaining mode

• Momaday: oral tradition, Kiowa, mythological time, personal memory, three-stranded structure

• Berger: witnessing, moral responsibility, images of hell, testimony, arguing mode

• Angelou: segregation, dignity, collective identity, tone shift, graduation, Black resilience

• Tan: multiple Englishes, language and power, immigrant identity, mother tongue, standard vs. non-standard

You are thoroughly prepared. Trust your study. Good luck!