WRITING EXERCISE: SUMMARIZING & PARAPHRASING 120 WORDS VERY IMPORTANT Scenario It is 5:00PM when you get a “Tweet” from a classmate asking for help from anyone in his English class. The class starts at 5:30PM and there will be a quiz on the reading, which he has not done, because his English folder was stolen from him at gunpoint. Therefore, he needs someone to quickly tell him what the reading was all about and the only kind-hearted person, who has done the reading and is also willing to share that knowledge, is you. Assignment After reading “Angelou says King statue paraphrase ‘minimizes the man’” write a “Tweet” for this article. The goal of this assignment is for you to use your summarizing and paraphrasing skills to whittle this 560-word article into a svelte 120-word synopsis in your own words. You must identify the thesis in an efficient manner, in essence simplifying it to the bare bones. Consider yourself an information butcher, chopping away anything that isn’t essential to the essay’s meaning and reworking your individual word choice, so that you aren’t wasting precious character space on elevated verbiage i.e. big words. With the exception of the actual Martin Luther King quote below, you may not use any direct quotes in your tweet. You must rely on summary and paraphrase to relay the important points of this article to your reader. Your response must also provide cue phrases and in-text citations where appropriate. MLK Quote: “If you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter.’’ (46 words) Your Response Length 120 words EXACTLY. This total word count is for the tweet paragraph itself; don’t include the header in the count. Keep in mind that if you elect include the MLK quote in your response that it uses 46 words out of the 120 allotted. I will be focusing on how effectively you summarize and paraphrase the article without sacrificing the meaning, how efficiently you select language to stay within word count and the overall caliber or your writing. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE ARTICLE Angelou says King statue paraphrase ‘minimizes the man’ Change was made to fit free space By Gene Weingarten and Michael E. Ruane The disputed Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial inscription: “I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness.’’ Washington Post / September 1, 2011 WASHINGTON - On Feb. 4, 1968, two months before he was assassinated, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a haunting sermon at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church about a eulogy that might be given in the event of his death. “If you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice,’’ King told the congregation. “Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter.’’ The sermon was so powerful the designers of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington selected those lines to be inscribed on the memorial’s towering statue of the civil rights leader. But because of a design change during the statue’s creation, the exact quotes had to be paraphrased, and now poet and author Maya Angelou, one of the memorial’s best-known consultants, says the shortened inscription is misleading and ought to be changed. Carved on the north face of the 30-foot-tall granite statue, the inscription reads: “I was a drum major for justice, peace, and righteousness.’’ “The quote makes Dr. Martin Luther King look like an arrogant twit,’’ Angelou, 83, said Tuesday. “He was anything but that. He was far too profound a man for that four-letter word to apply. “He had no arrogance at all.’’ He had a humility that comes from deep inside. The ‘if’ clause that is left out is salient. Leaving it out changes the meaning completely.’’ The paraphrase “minimizes the man,’’ she said. “It makes him seem less than the humanitarian he was. . . . It makes him seem an egotist.’’ The drum major reference “wasn’t all that he was,’’ she said. “He would never have said that of himself. He said ‘you’ might say it.’’ She said the quote should be changed to put it in context. Told the quote had to be paraphrased to fit the available space, she replied, “Too bad.’’ The inscription is one of two on the statue, which depicts King with his arms folded standing as if emerging from a huge block of stone. The memorial is on the northwestern shore of the Tidal Basin, just southwest of the National World War II Memorial. The inscription on the statue’s south face says: “Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope.’’ The creators of the memorial had originally intended to use most of the direct “drum major’’ quote, with “Martin Luther King Jr.’’ appearing at the end. The memorial’s executive architect, Ed Jackson Jr., said the quote was originally planned for the statue’s south face, the one viewers first see. But he said planners changed their minds and decided to move the drum major inscription to the north face. They preferred the statue’s other inscription - “Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope’’ - to be seen first, on the south face, because it is the main theme of the memorial’s design. But when they informed the statue’s sculptor, Lei Yixin, he told them he had already prepared the north face for the shorter “despair’’ inscription and that the whole “drum major’’ quote would not fit, Jackson said. Jackson said the project outlined the situation and the solution to the US Commission of Fine Arts, which was overseeing the memorial design. “They didn’t have a problem with it.’’

WRITING EXERCISE: SUMMARIZING & PARAPHRASING 120 WORDS VERY IMPORTANT Scenario It is 5:00PM when you get a “Tweet” from a classmate asking for help from anyone in his English class. The class starts at 5:30PM and there will be a quiz on the reading, which he has not done, because his English folder was stolen from him at gunpoint. Therefore, he needs someone to quickly tell him what the reading was all about and the only kind-hearted person, who has done the reading and is also willing to share that knowledge, is you. Assignment After reading “Angelou says King statue paraphrase ‘minimizes the man’” write a “Tweet” for this article. The goal of this assignment is for you to use your summarizing and paraphrasing skills to whittle this 560-word article into a svelte 120-word synopsis in your own words. You must identify the thesis in an efficient manner, in essence simplifying it to the bare bones. Consider yourself an information butcher, chopping away anything that isn’t essential to the essay’s meaning and reworking your individual word choice, so that you aren’t wasting precious character space on elevated verbiage i.e. big words. With the exception of the actual Martin Luther King quote below, you may not use any direct quotes in your tweet. You must rely on summary and paraphrase to relay the important points of this article to your reader. Your response must also provide cue phrases and in-text citations where appropriate. MLK Quote: “If you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter.’’ (46 words) Your Response Length 120 words EXACTLY. This total word count is for the tweet paragraph itself; don’t include the header in the count. Keep in mind that if you elect include the MLK quote in your response that it uses 46 words out of the 120 allotted. I will be focusing on how effectively you summarize and paraphrase the article without sacrificing the meaning, how efficiently you select language to stay within word count and the overall caliber or your writing. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE ARTICLE Angelou says King statue paraphrase ‘minimizes the man’ Change was made to fit free space By Gene Weingarten and Michael E. Ruane The disputed Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial inscription: “I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness.’’ Washington Post / September 1, 2011 WASHINGTON - On Feb. 4, 1968, two months before he was assassinated, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered a haunting sermon at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church about a eulogy that might be given in the event of his death. “If you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice,’’ King told the congregation. “Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter.’’ The sermon was so powerful the designers of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington selected those lines to be inscribed on the memorial’s towering statue of the civil rights leader. But because of a design change during the statue’s creation, the exact quotes had to be paraphrased, and now poet and author Maya Angelou, one of the memorial’s best-known consultants, says the shortened inscription is misleading and ought to be changed. Carved on the north face of the 30-foot-tall granite statue, the inscription reads: “I was a drum major for justice, peace, and righteousness.’’ “The quote makes Dr. Martin Luther King look like an arrogant twit,’’ Angelou, 83, said Tuesday. “He was anything but that. He was far too profound a man for that four-letter word to apply. “He had no arrogance at all.’’ He had a humility that comes from deep inside. The ‘if’ clause that is left out is salient. Leaving it out changes the meaning completely.’’ The paraphrase “minimizes the man,’’ she said. “It makes him seem less than the humanitarian he was. . . . It makes him seem an egotist.’’ The drum major reference “wasn’t all that he was,’’ she said. “He would never have said that of himself. He said ‘you’ might say it.’’ She said the quote should be changed to put it in context. Told the quote had to be paraphrased to fit the available space, she replied, “Too bad.’’ The inscription is one of two on the statue, which depicts King with his arms folded standing as if emerging from a huge block of stone. The memorial is on the northwestern shore of the Tidal Basin, just southwest of the National World War II Memorial. The inscription on the statue’s south face says: “Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope.’’ The creators of the memorial had originally intended to use most of the direct “drum major’’ quote, with “Martin Luther King Jr.’’ appearing at the end. The memorial’s executive architect, Ed Jackson Jr., said the quote was originally planned for the statue’s south face, the one viewers first see. But he said planners changed their minds and decided to move the drum major inscription to the north face. They preferred the statue’s other inscription - “Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope’’ - to be seen first, on the south face, because it is the main theme of the memorial’s design. But when they informed the statue’s sculptor, Lei Yixin, he told them he had already prepared the north face for the shorter “despair’’ inscription and that the whole “drum major’’ quote would not fit, Jackson said. Jackson said the project outlined the situation and the solution to the US Commission of Fine Arts, which was overseeing the memorial design. “They didn’t have a problem with it.’’