Steps for Written Responses, #2

Steps for Written Responses

Steps for written responses:

1)      Briefly summarize the essay.

2)      Find key quotes/passages.

3)      Think about your own ideas and experiences in regard to education and write them down.

4)      Take the above info and write one or two paragraphs blending your own ideas and experiences with the author’s. Be sure your written response contains the following:

a.       Title of essay in quotes and name of author.

b.      A key personal experience.

c.       A connection between the two. For example:  Have you had a similar or contrasting experience?

d.      One direct quote from the essay (Be sure to provide quotation marks and explain it to the reader).

Think of writing Task Three in stages. You may use the model above to write your essay as I am doing with my essay. I have begun to outline my personal experiences first.

The essays I have chosen to use for my Task Three paper include:  “Sister Flowers” by Maya Angelou and “Becoming Educated” by Barbara Jordan.

The focus for my paper includes:  Who are persons who took me aside as Sister Flowers did for Maya Angelou and what does becoming educated mean to me as it meant for Barbara Jordan?

“Sister Flowers” by Maya Angelou

“Then I met, or rather got to know, the lady who threw me my first life line.” (92)

“She was one of the few gentlewomen I have ever known, and has remained throughout my life the measure of what a human being can be.” (93)

“I hear that you’re doing very good school work, Marguerite, but it’s all written. The teachers report that they have trouble getting you to talk in class.” (94)

“Your grandmother says you read a lot. Every chance you get. That’s good, but not good enough. Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with the shades of deeper meaning.” (95)

“Becoming Educated” by Barbara Jordan

“So I was at Boston University in this new and strange and different world, and it occurred to me that if I was going to succeed at this strange new adventure, I would have to read longer and more thoroughly  than my colleagues at law school had to read. I felt that in order to compensate for what I had missed in earlier years, I would have to work harder, study longer, than anybody else.” (212)

“Finally I felt I was really learning things, really going to school. I felt that I was getting educated, whatever that was. I became familiar with the process of thinking. I learned to think things out and reach conclusions and defend what I had said.” (213)

“I had learned at twenty-one that you couldn’t just say a thing is so because it might not be so, and somebody brighter, smarter, and more thoughtful would come out and tell you it wasn’t so. Then, if you still thought it was, you had to prove it. well, that was a new thing for me.” (213)

“I cannot, I really cannot describe what that did to my insides and to my head. I thought:  I’m becoming educated finally.” (213)