Week 6




















                  The Open Road . . . West



Welcome back to class. Hope you had a good weekend.

Today I'll return any and all graded narratives and the midterm work.  Those who missed the
midterm will have to make it up, perhaps in the latter part of today's class.

 
We will be composing a response of 350 words to one or another of the ideas P.M. Forni writes about in
the chapters photocopied for you last week.  The idea is to present some of the content of his work
in your own words and with a little use of direct quotation to support your reading and illustrate
his writing.  Together we will read some of each chapter to look at the structure he is using
and the sources of his ideas.  You will use your own experiences and observations in the presentation
to convey what you think is most important, interesting, or relevant.

If you all brought a topical article on a subject you'd love to write about, we can discuss these as a group
and/or in small groups or pairs and you could build essay 4 around your preferred topic, 
basically using summary to present the contents and main thrust and then building a discussion (in writing) 
on the topic's import. Your fellow students' comments and perspectives could be worked into the essay what 
others think, too.


We will review how to include title, author, and one or two quotations from
the text to show some of the original.

 ..........................
Summary/Response Checklist:

Make sure that you identify the author’s name, the title of the article, essay, chapter and/or book from
which the summary is drawn.  Reference these in your opening lines. 
Include one or two direct quotations to show the original textual matter and lend support to your claims.
The formatting of these items is demonstrated on the handout accompanying the photocopied
chapter "Think the Best." See the example passage below:

     In Choosing Civility,  P.M. Forni used both process description and cause/effect mode to argue
that we ought to think well of others, as a matter of practice, because in doing so we
encourage them to be and do their best, and we ourselves. “Believing that they are good, 
I want to be good for them,” he wrote of his students in the chapter titled "Think the Best."



-----------------------------------------------------Summary Response Sample Introductions




In P.M. Forni’s Choosing Civility, specifically the chapter “Think the Best,” he reminds readers that we all have a spark of
 the divine in us, or at least that it helps to think that way, elevates us and all who we come in contact with us. In epigraph,
 he quotes Paul of Tarsus:  “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” 
 I am reminded of a something Abraham Lincoln wrote, and here I paraphrase, if you look for the worst in man you will
surely find it



In A Streetcar Named Desire, Blanche famously says, “I have always depended on the kindness 

of strangers.”  And we all do in so many ways, which is the central idea that P.M. Forni 


develops in the chapter “Think the Best.” The chapter is one of twenty-five in the book 


Choosing Civility.  We find salvation in others, he implies.  He quotes in epigraph the



Apostle Paul:  “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers [. . . ].”

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