Teacher's Guidelines

[Jonathan]

A 'Writer's Workshop' forum! What a great idea!

I see this as a golden opportunity to share some of my English teacher's writing techniques. He's handed out these sheets of paper to all his students, with 'guidelines' that tell you how to write. It's almost comical how strictly he wants us to follow his guidelines . He doesn't really care what you write about, as long as you use his guidelines. But that's good, it makes it easy for us to get good marks in English. The guidelines might even work on other English teachers, so try them! My teacher would be very happy

Anyway, here are the guidelines. There are different guidelines, depending of what kind of text you're going to write:

Summary-Response Paper. If you're going to read an article or a text, write a summary and include your own views, you should follow these guidelines:[list=1][*] Read the article carefully and mark the main ideas.
[*] Write all the main ideas on a separate sheet of paper.
[*] Select the major ideas from your sheet and arrange them in the same order as the author of the article organised them.
[*] Introduce the summary with a sentence that mentions the author and the title of the article as well as the name of the magazine or book where the article was published.
The introduction also includes the main idea of the whole article.
You can use phrases like:
In the article "Testing the Human Spirit" Jane-Marie Franklyn says that...
"Polar Bear Invasion", an article in TIME by SPencer Davies, states that...
According to author Scott Logan in his article "Natives Fight Back" (Newsweek, February 10, 2002), ...
[*]The body of the summary includes the main ideas arranged in the same order as the author organised them. Remind your reader that you are summarising by using the author's name (or the pronouns he or she) to introduce the main ideas. You can also use the title of the article or a synonym like The article..., The study..., The report...
Use suitable reporting verbs:
"Testing the Human Spirit" describes ...
The report demonstrates that ...
Scott Logan suggests that ...
According to Davies, the study revealed ...
[*] The conclusion of the summary briefly presents the recommendation(s), the solution(s), the result(s), or the prediction(s) of the author of the article.
Scott Logan concluded with a recommendation to ...
Spencer Davies believes that the solution could be to ...
In the end Jane-Marie Franklyn says that ...
According to Peter Bowles, the results of the research is/was that ...
[*]When you read you form positive or negative feelings or opinions about the ideas in the article. You agree or disagree with the author. You have your own thoughts about the ideas in the article. This is what you express in the response paragraph(s).
Make it clear that you move from the objective summary to writing about what you think by using words like
I think that ...
In my opinion ...
I agree with .../I disagree with ...
Logan is wrong ...
Remember to give reasons why you think so.[/list=1]