Writing Subtest--Written Summary: Sample Responses and a Passage to Practice

(taken from the M-DOE site)

This section of the writing subtest presents a passage for you to summarize in his or her own words. Responses are scored to the extent to which they effectively communicate the main idea and essential points of the passage clearly and concisely, in the candidate's own words. The response should conform to the conventions of edited American English (i.e., be free of grammatical errors) and should be written legibly. More specifically, the candidate's response is scored according to the following performance characteristics:

· FIDELITY: The accuracy and clarity with which the candidate uses his or her own words to convey and maintain focus on the writer's main ideas.
· CONCISENESS: The extent to which the candidate's response is of
· appropriate length, depth, and specificity.
· ORGANIZATION: The clarity of the writing and the logical sequence of the candidate's ideas.
· SENTENCE STRUCTURE: The effectiveness of the sentence structure and the extent to which the sentences are free of structural errors.
· USAGE: The extent to which the candidate's writing shows care and precision in word choice and is free of usage errors.
· MECHANICAL CONVENTIONS: The extent to which words are spelled correctly and the candidate's writing follows the conventions of punctuation and capitalization.

 

Tips: Summary and Paraphrase

· Read the passage carefully. Determine its structure. Identify the author's purpose in writing. (This will help you distinguish between more important and less important information.)

· Reread. This time divide the passage into sections or stages of thought. The author's use of paragraphing will often be a useful guide. Label, on the passage itself, each section or stage of thought. Underline key ideas and terms.

· Write one-sentence summaries, on a separate sheet of paper, of each stage of thought.

· Write a thesis: a one-sentence summary of the entire passage. The thesis should express the central idea of the passage, as you have determined it from the preceding steps. You may find it useful to keep in mind the information contained in the lead sentence or paragraph of most newspaper stories¾the what, who, why, where, when, and how of the matter. For persuasive passages, summarize in a sentence the author's conclusion. For descriptive passages, indicate the subject of the description and its key feature(s). Note: In some case, a suitable thesis may already be in the original passage. If so, you may want to quote it directly in your summary.

· Write the first draft of your summary by (1) combining the thesis with your list of one-sentence summaries or (2) combining the thesis with one-sentence summaries plus significant details from the passage. In either case, eliminate repetition and less important information. Disregard minor details or generalize them (e.g., Reagan and Bush might be generalized as "recent presidents"). Use as few words as possible to convey the main ideas.

· Check your summary against the original passage and make whatever adjustments are necessary for accuracy and completeness.

· Revise your summary, inserting transitional words and phrases where necessary to ensure coherence. Check for style. Avoid a series of short, choppy sentences. Combine sentences for a smooth, logical flow of ideas. Check for grammatical correctness, punctuation, and spelling.

Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum, 5th edition. Laurence Behrens & Leonard J. Rosen, eds. New York: HarperCollins College Publishers, 1994.

 

SAMPLE
The Meaning of the Constitution

How to interpret the U.S. Constitution has long been a subject of debate among lawyers, legal scholars, and other academics. More often than not, such controversies have focused on what the Founding Fathers meant to accomplish during the summer of 1787. According to certain authorities, all judicial decisions concerning constitutional questions should be based upon the framers' original intentions. But is this really possible? Can we determine with reasonable clarity what the founders had in mind? A review of relevant documents and the conduct of participants in the Constitutional Convention suggests that doing so is not quite as easy as some believe.

A major problem that advocates of original intent immediately confront is the poor quality of documentary evidence describing the convention's proceedings. To minimize outside pressure on their deliberations, delegates to the convention adopted rigid rules of secrecy. No reporters were allowed on the convention floor, and the only contemporary newspaper stories we have of the debates are based largely on unverifiable rumors. Moreover, the delegates themselves observed the rule of secrecy with a strictness that is almost inconceivable in our age of journalistic leaks. More than thirty years passed before a first-hand account of the convention's transactions was published.
Of the three accounts that did appear, two are of little or no use to anyone seeking to discover the founders' intentions. One was no more than a straightforward listing of resolutions, motions, and vote tallies; another, though more informative, was thoroughly unreliable.

This leaves us with James Madison's Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787. As a leading figure in the movement to reorganize the central government, Madison was certainly as well qualified as anyone to comment on the convention's proceedings. Indeed, many contemporaries viewed the brilliant Virginian as the "father of the Constitution." He was not, however, a skilled stenographer. And despite the care he bestowed on his notes, they contain significant omissions. Although Madison provided a reasonably detailed account of his own speeches, his description of what others had to say is much more limited. No one can determine with any certainty how much has been lost.
What makes these omissions so significant is the manner in which the founders conducted their work. Hailing from different regions and with different interests, delegates to the convention soon realized that nothing could be accomplished without compromise. Nearly everyone had to give way on some point or another during four months of often heated debate. In the end, few if any participants approved all of the provisions contained in the final document. Indeed, three of the forty-two delegates present at the final session declined to sign the Constitution. The only surprise was that more of them did not refuse.

In light of the foregoing, it is unlikely that we will ever know the founders' original intent. But this is hardly cause for despair. As one eminent jurist has written, the framers' most enduring contribution was the Constitution's "language and spirit. Even if they cannot point the way with precision, their legacy can still guide us."

 

The sample below is an example of a weak response.

In the selection entitled, The Meaning of the Constitution. Interperting the Constitution rases many questions. What did the Founding Fathers mean to do. These are questions we all ask ourselfs, even today.

The major problem with this passage is that, there was no documentery of the debat, so the delegates kept them secret. We can only find out about the convention, in todays newspaper. There are three accounts. One was just a list and one could'nt be trusted.

James Madison was the Father of the Constitution. But he was no good at notes. He wrote a lot of notes on the debats. But also left some stuff out. What we will never know. In the convention, delegats had to debat and compermise. 42 people did not sign and thanks to James Madison we will never know, why?

 

The sample below is an example of a strong response.

 

A number of scholars and lawyers have asserted that jurists must act in accordance with the intentions of the Founding Fathers when applying elements of the U.S. Constitution to contemporary legal issues. When this assertion is examined closely, however, it is clear that determining the goals of the men who created this document in 1787 is a daunting task.

Records, correspondence, and newspaper articles concerning the Constitutional Convention are of limited value to modern interpreters. Strict rules of secrecy were adopted and honored by the participants at the convention. This maintenance of privacy allowed the delegates to engage in genuine discussions without the pressures associated with public scrutiny.

Thirty years after the convention, first-hand reports of the Convention's proceedings were finally published. But what was revealed shed only modest light on what took place or how decisions were reached. Aside from vote tallies, only James Madison wrote in a reliable way about the proceedings. While Madison was a worthy source, he primarily documented his own efforts at the convention.
Madison makes little reference, for example, to the speeches of other delegates, and he omits details concerning the controversies that emerged between men from various regions of the new country. The Founding Fathers were compelled to make difficult compromises, yet no written record exists that can provide insight into the delegates' aims and aspirations.

Thus, it is likely that our understanding of the Founders' original intent will never be wholly clear. Nonetheless, despite our limited knowledge of the convention's proceedings, the essence of the U.S. Constitution is a valuable guide to all who frame or interpret our laws.

A Sample Passage for Practice (1)

The Road to Civil Rights The period immediately following the Civil War was a time of great hope for Blacks in America. It was also a time of momentous constitutional change, as the nation sought to extend those liberties enshrined in the Bill of Rights to all Americans, Black and White. The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery, the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed all citizens equal protection of the laws, and the Fifteenth Amendment declared that no one could be denied the right to vote "on account of race, color, or precious condition of servitude." In subsequent decades, however, it became all too apparent, at least to Blacks and an unfortunately small number of concerned Whites, that the promise contained in these amendments were not being honored. By century's end, racial segregation was still an inescapable fact of American life, in the North as well as the South. At the same time, most southern states had adopted devices such as the poll tax, literacy test, and White primary to strip Blacks of their right to vote. The struggle to close the gap between constitutional promise and social reality would pass through two important stages. In the first stage, organizations such as the NAACP worked through the courts to restore the meaning of the Reconstruction era amendments. These efforts culminated in the 1954 Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, which outlawed segregation in public schools. The decision also stated that separate facilities were inherently unequal, thus providing a legal basis for subsequent suits to desegregate other kinds of public accommodations. As it turns out, the principles enunciated in the Brown decision were more easily stated than enforced. Court orders to desegregate public schools often encountered massive resistance. Seeing this, Blacks and their supports began to adopt new tactics. As they did, the struggle for Black rights entered its second state, a stage that would be characterized by direct action rather than legal challenges, and would be played out in the streets rather than the courts. In turning to civil disobedience, leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr. made it possible for all victims of racial injustice to take action in a way that was direct and forceful, but also peaceable. And through the power of their mortal example, they soon won widespread support for their cause. In response to these developments, Congress took steps to restore the full meaning of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments by passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965. The enactment of these measures by no means marked the end of the civil rights movement. There was still much to be done. Yet the passage of these acts nevertheless had far-reaching significance. The acts not only helped correct social inequities that had persisted far too long, they also showed that the Constitution means something, however long it may sometimes take to give substance to that meaning. This is no small matter in a nation of laws.

 

A Sample Passage for Practice (2)

Why Do Dogs Bark? It is a common error to imagine that a barking dog is threatening you. It may be making a loud noise that appears to be aimed directly at you, but this is misleading. For the bark is a canine alarm and is meant for other members of the pack, including the human pack to which the dog belongs. The message of the bark is "There is something strange happening over here. Be alert!" In the wild it has two effects: It causes puppies to take cover and hide, and it arouses adults to assemble for action. In human terms it is rather like the sounding of a bell, beating of a gong, or blowing of a horn to announce that "someone is approaching the gates" of a fortress. The alarm does not yet tell us whether the arrivals are friends or foes, but it ensures that necessary precautions can be taken. This is why loud barking may greet the arrival of a domestic dog's master, as well as the intrusion of a burglar. Once the new arrival has been identified, the barking is then replaced either by a friendly greeting ceremony or by a serious attack. Out and out attack is, by contrast, completely silent. The fearlessly aggressive dog simply rushes straight at you and bites. Demonstrations of police dogs attacking men pretending to be fleeing criminals confirm this. As the man with the heavily padded arm runs away across the field and the police dog is released by its handler, there is no barking, no sound at all. The silent bounding of the big dog quickly ends with its clamping its jaws onto the padded arm and clinging on tightly. It is equally silent when fleeing. The dog trying desperately to escape keeps quiet as it scampers off into the distance. Vocalizations are essentially indications of conflict or frustration. The fact that they nearly always accomplish aggressive encounters with dogs means simply that even the most hostile of canines is usually also slightly afraid. The complete silence of the all-out attack of the police dog is less common than the snarling attack. Snarling, with the lips retracted to display the canine teeth, is typical of the dog who is strongly aggressive and only mildly fearful. The slight tinge of fear is what converts the silent attack into a snarling one, but this is not a dog to be trifled with. The urge to attack is still much too strong in relation to the urge to escape. A snarling dog is a postman's nightmare. Next, in order of increasing fear, is the growling dog. Growling is slightly more fearful than snarling, but the risk of attack remains great. The growler may feel more on the defensive and there remains a high level of aggression, sufficient to explode into a full attack at any moment. When the balance tips a little further away from pure attack and fear begins to gain the upper hand, the growling begins to alternate with barking. The low growl "expands" suddenly into a loud bark. This is repeated: growl-bark, growl-bark. The message from such a dog is "I would like to attack you (growl) but I think I will call up reinforcements (bark)." If the fear element grows stronger and begins to dominate the aggression, inside the brain of the dog, then the growling element in the display disappears and barking alone is heard, loudly and repeatedly. It may continue for an irritatingly long time, until either the strange element causing it has vanished, or the human "pack" has come to investigate what is going on. The unique characteristic of domestic dog-barking is that it is delivered in machine-gun bursts: rau-rau-rau …rau-rau-rau-rau-rau…rau…rau-rau-rau, and so on, in an excited stream of powerful noise. This is something that we owe to ten thousand years of selective dog breeding, and not to the wild ancestry of our domestic animals. Wolves bark, but the noise they make when they do so is far less impressive. The first time you hear barking in a wolf-pack, you recognize it immediately for what it is, but find it hard to believe that it can be so modest and abbreviated. Wolf barking is not particularly loud, or particularly common, and is always monosyllabic. It is best described as a staccato "wuff" sound. It is usually repeated a number of times, but it never develops into the noisy machine-gun fire so typical of the wolf's domestic descendants. Curiously enough, it has been reported that wolves kept near domestic dogs actually learn to give the amplified dog bark after a while. So, clearly the transition from wuff to superbark is not too difficult. Despite this learning ability, it is highly likely that, back in the early centuries of the dog's domestication, there was a fairly rapid selection by ancient dog owners for an improved "barker" to act as a canine burglar alarm. Building on the modest wolf-wuff, they selected the loudest and most persistently vocal pups from their litters, until the present, noisy guard dogs were developed. Today almost all dog breeds contain the genetic qualities that give them an improved bark, some breeds being more impressive than others in this respect. Only the Basenji, or African barkless dog, seems to have escaped this trend completely. This particular breed was developed as a small, silent hunting dog in ancient Egypt over five thousand years ago and in its long domestic history has apparently never been put on guard duty. To sum up, it can be said that the well-known saying that "his bark is worse than his bite" is based on a canine truth. For the dog that barks is not usually brave enough to bite, and the dog that bites does not bother to bark up reinforcements with the canine alarm. from Desmond Morris, Dog Watching (1986)