Week 2 · Chapter

Chapter 2 — Critical Reading: Summary & Response

English Composition Free sample edition

The module's primary reading · ~35–45 minutes · Objective 2 (read critically: annotate a text, summarize it accurately and neutrally in your own words, respond to it analytically with reasons, and separate a writer's claim from its support and a summary from a response) · Read it first this week; the lecture, the tutorial, the quiz, and the Writing Studio all build on it.

In plain language

Before you can answer a piece of writing, you have to say fairly what it says. This week you learn to read a text the way a writer reads it, with a pencil in your hand and two questions in mind: what is this writer claiming, and how are they trying to convince me? Then you write a summary (a neutral report of what the text says, in your own words) first. Your response (your own judgment of the text, with reasons) comes second, in its own paragraph. The real text you practice on is President Eisenhower's farewell address of 17 January 1961, which you read at the National Archives.

Why you already care about this

Your apartment building has a group chat. One morning the landlord sends a 2-page letter about repairs. The boiler will be replaced, the hot water will be off for 1 day, and rent will stay the same for the next 12 months. Within 10 minutes a neighbor posts a one-line version: "Landlord is shutting off our water again, typical." Half the building reacts before anyone opens the letter.

That one line is not a summary. It drops the boiler, the single day, and the frozen rent. It adds a verdict ("typical") that the letter never made. And it arrives before anyone has read the original. Every reader in that chat now has to sort out three things the neighbor mixed together: what the letter says, what the neighbor thinks of it, and whether the neighbor got the letter right.

College reading asks you to keep those three things apart, on purpose, every time. You will read articles, reports, speeches, and policies, and you will often be asked to restate one before you answer it. A reader who restates fairly earns the right to disagree. A reader who skips that step argues with a text that only exists in their head.

By the end of this chapter you will be able to:

ask a text the five questions of the rhetorical situation, plus the question of what it claims and how it persuades;
annotate a text by underlining its claim, bracketing its support, marking its turns, and questioning its margins;
tell a text's topic from its claim, and its claim from its support;
write a neutral, complete summary in your own words and catch an opinion-leak;
write a response that agrees, disagrees, or complicates, with reasons about the text;
check a chatbot's summary for judging words and for quotations that do not exist.

Carry this sentence with you: first what it says; then what you think — never both at once.

Where we are

Already covered: Week 1, The Writing Process & the Rhetorical Situation, gave you five questions every piece of writing answers (writer, audience, purpose, genre, context) and the habit of treating writing as a process you loop through.
This week: reading someone else's text critically, annotating it, and writing a summary and a response as two separate jobs.
How they connect: last week you asked the five questions about your own writing; this week you ask them about someone else's, and then you add two more.
Where we're going next: Week 3, The Paragraph, turns the claim-and-support skill you practice here into the way you build your own paragraphs.

Week 1 is the chapter this one leans on. Recall the five questions. Who is writing? Who is the audience? What is the purpose? What genre is it? What is the context, the time and place and situation that called the writing into being? Last week you used them to plan a message of your own. This week you turn them around and point them at a text someone else wrote. You will find that the same five questions open up a reading as well as they open up a draft.

1. Read like a writer: the questions behind critical reading

Think about how you read a text message from a friend. You notice who sent it, what mood they are in, and what they want from you. You read between the lines without trying. Reading a speech or an article critically is the same move, made on purpose and written down.

Critical reading means reading a text the way a writer does. You ask who wrote it, for whom, why, and in what situation. Then you ask what the writer is claiming and how they are trying to convince you. It is also called rhetorical reading, because it treats the text as a set of choices aimed at an audience.

"Critical" here does not mean negative. A critical reader is not hunting for flaws. A critical reader is paying close attention to how the text works.

Worked example — Eisenhower's situation. This week's real text is Eisenhower's farewell address, which you read by link at the National Archives (the link is on the Readings & Resources page). Before you look for the claim, run the five questions from Week 1:

Writer: Dwight D. Eisenhower, the departing president.
Audience: the American people; he spoke to them on national television from the Oval Office.
Purpose: to say farewell and to leave a warning.
Genre: a televised farewell address.
Context: 17 January 1961, three days before he left the presidency.

Now add the two critical-reading questions. What is he claiming? How is he trying to convince his audience? You do not answer those yet. You carry them into your first read, and they tell you what to look for.

Notice what the situation already tells you. A farewell speech from a president who is about to leave office has no election to win. That shapes how an audience hears a warning from him. You will analyze moves like that in depth later in the term; for now, the situation is the frame you read inside.

Misconception check — reading is passive. Students often think reading is something that happens to you: your eyes go across the page and the meaning arrives. That belief is tempting because it is how easy reading feels. The cure is to treat a hard text as a puzzle you work on. You bring questions to it, and the questions decide what you notice. A reader with no questions sees only words.

2. Annotate: make a map of the text

You probably already mark things you care about. You circle a sale price on a flyer, or you highlight the one line in a lease that says when rent is due. Annotation is that same habit, made into a system.

Annotation means marking a text as you read so that its structure becomes visible. This course uses four marks:

Underline the claim. The claim is the writer's main point.
Bracket the support. Draw square brackets [ ] around the reasons and evidence offered for the claim.
Mark the turns. Put an arrow (→) in the margin where the text changes direction.
Question the margins. Write a question mark (?) and your own doubt beside any line that raises one.

A turn is a place where a text changes direction, often signaled by a word such as "but", "yet", or "however". Writers often sharpen their position right after a turn, so a turn is where a careful reader slows down.

Worked example — annotating the warning. Open the transcript and find the part of the address about the military establishment. Here is what your four marks catch, step by step.

First you meet the concession. Eisenhower says, "We recognize the imperative need for this development." In the margin you write "concedes: the establishment is necessary."
Next comes the turn. The very next sentence opens with a contrast word, the same kind of signal as "but" or "however". You draw an arrow there, because that is where the address pivots from the need to the danger.
Then you find the claim and underline it: "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex."
Around it you bracket the support. The arms industry is permanent and large. The combination of a huge military and a large arms industry is new in American experience. Its influence reaches every level of government.
Finally, you question the margins. Beside the claim you might write, "Guard against it how? Who does the guarding?"

Read only your marks and you have a map: a concession, a turn, a claim, its support, and one open question. That map is what you will summarize.

In practice (your tools). If you read on a screen, your word processor or PDF reader has a highlight tool and a comment tool. Use one highlight colour only for claims, and write the word "claim" in a comment beside it, so the label does not depend on colour. Use comments for your bracket notes and margin questions. If the text is a web page, copy nothing into your notes except the short phrases you mark; write the rest of your notes in your own words.

Misconception check — highlighting everything. Students often think a heavily highlighted page shows careful reading. It is tempting because the colour feels like work. But a page that is all highlight has no map: the claim looks the same as a passing detail. The cure is the four marks. Each one names a job, so you cannot mark a line without deciding what the line is doing.

3. Find the claim: topic versus claim versus support

When a friend asks, "What was that article about?", you probably answer with a topic: "phones in schools". That is a fine answer in conversation. In critical reading it is only the first step, because a topic tells you nothing about what the writer actually says.

The three parts are different jobs:

A topic is what a text is about, stated as a subject rather than a position.
A claim is the main point a writer asserts about that topic, stated as a position a reader could accept or dispute.
Support is the reasons, evidence, examples, and explanations offered to make the claim believable.

A quick test helps. A topic fits after "This text is about…". A claim fits after "This text argues that…". Support fits after "The writer backs this up by…".

Worked example — Eisenhower's topic and claim. The topic of the passage you annotated is the military establishment and the permanent arms industry that grew up beside it. The claim is that the government must guard against the unwarranted influence of the military-industrial complex. The support is what you bracketed: the industry is permanent and large, the combination is new, and its influence reaches every level of government.

Notice that the topic and the claim are not the same size. Many readers remember the address as "a speech about the military". That is its topic. Its claim is narrower and sharper: a warning about unwarranted influence on government.

Worked example — a library-hours proposal. Here is a short illustrative paragraph, written for this course and attributed to no one:

Illustrative. The public library closes at six on weeknights. Most people who work a day shift cannot get there before it closes. A two-month trial of late hours on two weeknights would show whether evening demand is real. The library should run that trial before it decides anything permanent.

Topic: the library's weeknight hours.
Claim: the library should run a two-month trial of late hours before deciding anything permanent.
Support: day-shift workers cannot get there before six, and a trial would show whether evening demand is real.

What changed between the topic and the claim is the verb. A topic has no verb that commits the writer to anything. The claim commits the writer to a position: the library should run the trial.

Misconception check — the topic mistaken for the claim. Students often think that naming what a text is about is the same as naming its point. It is tempting because the topic is usually the first thing you notice and the easiest thing to say. But two writers can share a topic and make opposite claims. The cure is the "argues that…" test: if your sentence does not finish "This text argues that…", you have found the topic, not the claim.

4. Write a summary, and keep the opinion out

Think about the last time someone asked you to cover a meeting they missed. A good recap tells them what was decided, including the parts you did not like. A bad recap tells them how you felt about it. A summary is the good recap.

A summary is a short restatement of what a text says: neutral, covering the whole text including the parts a hasty reader drops, and written in your own words and your own sentences. Three tests come with that definition.

Neutral: it reports the text. It does not rate it.
Complete: it covers the whole text, not only the part you found interesting.
In your own words: you restate the ideas in your own sentences. If a tiny borrowed phrase is worth keeping, it goes in quotation marks.

An opinion-leak is a judging word or phrase, such as "rightly" or "exaggerates", that slips into a summary and turns a report of the text into a verdict on it. Leaks run in both directions. "Rightly" leaks approval. "Exaggerates" leaks disapproval. Both have to go.

Worked example — repairing a leak. Here is an illustrative summary sentence with two problems: "Eisenhower rightly warns the nation about defense spending."

Find the judging word. "Rightly" is the leak. It tells the reader you agree.
Check the claim. "Defense spending" is closer to the topic than to the claim. The address warns about unwarranted influence on government.
Rewrite with a neutral verb and the real claim: "Eisenhower warns that the government must guard against the unwarranted influence of the military-industrial complex."

What changed is that the sentence now reports the address instead of grading it, and it names the claim instead of the topic.

Worked example — the model summary. Here is a model summary of the address, written for this course:

In his farewell address of 17 January 1961, Dwight D. Eisenhower argues that the government must guard against the unwarranted influence of the "military-industrial complex." He grants that a large military establishment and a permanent arms industry are necessary. Still, he warns that their combined influence is new and could threaten liberty unless citizens stay alert and informed. He extends the warning to research, asks the nation not to spend what later generations will need, and calls disarmament unfinished work.

Check it against the three tests. It is neutral: no word in it rates the speech. It is complete: it keeps the concession (that the establishment is necessary) and the address's other warnings, not only the famous phrase. It is in the writer's own words: the only quoted words are the tiny borrowed phrase "military-industrial complex", and it sits in quotation marks.

The other warnings are worth a closer look, because a hasty summary drops them. In your own words, the address also warns that public policy could fall under the control of the experts whom federal research money supports. It warns that the present must not use up what later generations will need. And it calls disarmament unfinished work. You restate those ideas. You do not quote them.

Misconception check — a good summary uses the author's best sentences. Students often think the safest summary is built from the writer's own strongest lines. It is tempting because those lines already sound right. But a string of the author's sentences is quoting, not summarizing, and without quotation marks it is plagiarism. The cure is to put the text away, write the summary from your annotations, and then check it against the original.

Honesty note: a summary is never perfectly neutral. Choosing what to include is already a judgment. That is why "complete" matters so much. The parts you are tempted to leave out are often the parts that make the writer's position fair.

5. Write a response, not a reaction

When a friend asks how a movie was, "It was boring" is a fine answer at dinner. If they push back, though, you start giving reasons: the middle hour had no new information, and the ending repeated the opening. The first answer is a reaction. The second one is a response.

A response is your reasoned evaluation of a text, kept separate from the summary: you agree, disagree, or complicate the writer's claim and give reasons that point to the text itself. A reaction is a statement of how a text made you feel or whether you liked it, without reasons about the text. A reaction rates the text; a response evaluates it.

A response has three honest options:

Agree, and say why the text's reasons hold up.
Disagree, and say which reason fails and why.
Complicate, and say what the text gets right and what it leaves out or leaves open.

Worked example — the model response. Here is a model response to the address, written for this course:

The address persuades largely through its order. By granting the need first, Eisenhower makes his warning hard to dismiss as hostility to the military. Its remedy is thinner than its warning, though: it trusts an informed public to keep watch but says little about how that public would learn enough to do it.

This response complicates. It credits one move (the order of concession and warning) and questions another (the remedy). Every reason points at something in the text. Notice also what it does not do: it does not tell you what to think about military budgets. It evaluates how the address makes its case.

Worked example — reaction or response? Read these two illustrative sentences about a transit agency's plan to raise the bus fare and add more routes (written for this course; no real agency):

"This fare plan is ridiculous and I hate it."
"The plan asks riders to pay more before the new routes exist, so riders who rely on the current routes pay for a benefit they may never use."

The first is a reaction. It reports a feeling. The second is a response. It names a feature of the plan (the order of the fare increase and the routes) and gives a reason the feature matters.

Pause and think. Choose one:

(a) Think of a text you reacted to strongly this month, such as a post, a review, or an email. Write one sentence that turns your reaction into a response by adding a reason about the text.
(b) Think of a text you agreed with without much thought. Write one sentence that complicates it: name something it leaves out.

Misconception check — a response means saying whether I liked it. Students often think a response is a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down. It is tempting because that is how we talk about movies and meals. But liking is not a reason anyone else can check. The cure is the "because" test: every response sentence should be able to continue "…because the text…" and point at something on the page.

6. Keep the order: they say, then I say

In a good group project meeting, someone usually says, "So what I'm hearing is…" before they disagree. That sentence slows everyone down and proves they listened. It also makes their disagreement land, because nobody can say they missed the point.

That is the move this section names. The they say / I say order means you state another writer's view fairly first and only then give your own position. The name of the move comes from Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein's book They Say / I Say (2006). In writing, the order is simple to state and hard to keep: the summary comes first, and the response comes second.

Worked example — checking the order. Look back at the model summary and the model response for the address.

The summary comes first and contains no verdict.
The response comes second and starts its own paragraph.
The response gives reasons about the text.

All three hold, so the order is kept. If you moved the sentence "Its remedy is thinner than its warning" into the summary, the summary would leak, and the reader could no longer tell where Eisenhower stopped and you started.

The order matters even more when you disagree. Suppose a classmate summarized the address as "Eisenhower was against the military" and then disagreed with that. They would be arguing with a position the address does not take. Eisenhower calls the establishment necessary before he warns against it. A reader who drops that half builds a weaker opponent than the real one.

Misconception check — arguing before restating. Students often think the fastest way to a strong response is to start disagreeing in the first sentence. It is tempting because the disagreement is the interesting part. But a response that skips the fair restatement usually attacks a distorted version of the text, a straw man, and a reader who knows the text stops trusting you. The cure is the order: they say, then I say.

A caveat: the they say / I say order is a classroom model, a simple pattern you can hold in one hand. Real writers sometimes weave summary and response together. You will be able to do that well once you can do the plain version on demand.

7. Check the machine: a chatbot's summary and its quotations

Chatbots are fast at summarizing. Paste in a long text, ask for a summary, and a tidy paragraph comes back in seconds. That speed is useful for a first pass. It is also where this course's first AI-critique habit begins, because a chatbot's summary has two weak spots.

It editorializes: a chatbot's summary often slips in judging words: "powerful", "famous", "prophetic", "flawed". Those are opinion-leaks, the same defect you learned to repair in Section 4.
Its quotations may not exist: a chatbot can put words in quotation marks that the writer never wrote. The line will sound right, and it may even be close to a real one. Close is not good enough. A quotation is either exactly what the text says or it is not a quotation.

The rule for this course is plain: the tool drafts; the writer judges. You may use a chatbot to get a first summary, but you check it against the real text before any of it goes into your work.

Worked example — the two-step check. Suppose you ask a chatbot to summarize Eisenhower's farewell address, and its paragraph includes a judging adjective and a sentence in quotation marks.

Strip the leaks. Circle every word that rates the address rather than reporting it, and replace each with a neutral verb or cut it.
Search every quotation. Open the National Archives transcript and search for the quoted words exactly. If the words are not there, the quotation does not exist, and it comes out of your summary.
Check the claim and the concession. Make sure the summary names the warning about unwarranted influence and keeps the concession that the establishment is necessary.

What changed is that the summary now reports only what the text says, and every quoted word can be found on the page.

In practice (your tools). In a web browser, open the transcript page and use the find command (Ctrl+F on Windows, Command+F on a Mac). Type a short, distinctive part of the quoted words, not the whole sentence, so a small difference in punctuation does not hide a real match. If the words are on the page, compare the quotation letter for letter. If they are not, the quotation fails.

Misconception check — a quotation is real because it is formatted. Students often think that a sentence in quotation marks, with the speaker's name beside it, must have come from the text. It is tempting because formatting looks like evidence. But a chatbot produces formatting and wording separately, and it can produce perfect formatting for words nobody said. The cure is the search: a quotation counts only after you find it in the real text.

One more limitation to keep in mind. Even a summary with no leaks and no fake quotations can still be incomplete. A chatbot may report only the famous part of a text. Run the completeness test from Section 4 on its output, the same as on your own.

Key terms

Critical reading — Reading a text the way a writer does: asking who wrote it, for whom, why, and in what situation, and then asking what the writer is claiming and how they are trying to convince you. (first used: 1. Read like a writer: the questions behind critical reading)
Annotation — Marking a text as you read so that its structure becomes visible: you underline the claim, bracket the support, mark the turns, and write questions in the margins. (first used: 2. Annotate: make a map of the text)
Turn — A place where a text changes direction, often signaled by a word such as "yet", "but", or "however"; a careful reader marks it in the margin because the writer's position often sharpens there. (first used: 2. Annotate: make a map of the text)
Topic — What a text is about, stated as a subject rather than a position; a topic names an area, such as a library's hours, without saying anything that a reader could argue with. (first used: 3. Find the claim: topic versus claim versus support)
Claim — The main point a writer asserts about a topic, stated as a position a reader could accept or dispute; it is the sentence the rest of the text is working to make believable. (first used: 3. Find the claim: topic versus claim versus support)
Support — The reasons, evidence, examples, and explanations a writer offers to make a claim believable; support answers the reader's question "why should I accept that?" (first used: 3. Find the claim: topic versus claim versus support)
Summary — A short restatement of what a text says: neutral, covering the whole text including the parts a hasty reader drops, and written in your own words and your own sentences. (first used: 4. Write a summary, and keep the opinion out)
Opinion-leak — A judging word or phrase, such as "rightly" or "exaggerates", that slips into a summary and turns a report of the text into a verdict on it. (first used: 4. Write a summary, and keep the opinion out)
Response — Your reasoned evaluation of a text, kept separate from the summary: you agree, disagree, or complicate the writer's claim and give reasons that point to the text itself. (first used: 5. Write a response, not a reaction)
Reaction — A statement of how a text made you feel or whether you liked it, without reasons about the text; a reaction rates the text, while a response evaluates it. (first used: 5. Write a response, not a reaction)
They say / I say — The order of represent-then-answer: you state another writer's view fairly first and only then give your own position; the move's name comes from Graff and Birkenstein (2006). (first used: 6. Keep the order: they say, then I say)

Summary

Critical reading asks the five questions, then asks what the text claims and how it persuades.
Annotate with four marks: underline the claim, bracket the support, mark the turns, question the margins.
The topic is what a text is about; the claim is what it says about that; support makes the claim believable.
A summary is neutral, complete, and in your own words.
An opinion-leak is a judging word inside a summary; replace it with a neutral verb.
A response agrees, disagrees, or complicates, with reasons about the text; a reaction only rates it.
Keep the order: they say first, then I say.
Strip a chatbot summary's judging words and search the real text for every quotation it gives you.

Check your understanding

Work these before looking at the answers — they are ungraded, and the answers (with reasoning) are at the bottom of the page.

Read this illustrative paragraph (written for this course): "Our neighborhood's empty lot has sat fenced for three years. A community garden there would give the twenty families on the block a place to grow food. The city already lends tools to garden groups. The block association should apply for a garden permit this spring." Name the topic, the claim, and the support.
Find and repair the opinion-leak in this illustrative summary sentence of a company memo: "The memo sensibly moves the weekly staff meeting from the morning to the afternoon so that the sales team can attend."
Here are two illustrative sentences about a new campus parking plan. Sort each as a reaction or a response, and say why. (a) "Ugh, the new parking plan is the worst." (b) "The plan raises the price of the closest lot but does not say how the extra money will be spent, so students cannot judge whether the higher price buys anything."
An illustrative memo announces a four-day work schedule. It says the longer days will be hard for employees with child care, and then it argues that the schedule should still be adopted because it cuts commuting by one day a week. A coworker summarizes it as "The memo says a four-day week is great for everyone." What did the summary drop, and why does that make it unfair?

Answers (worked reasoning — read after attempting)

The topic is the empty lot, or more precisely, what to do with it; it fits after "This paragraph is about…". The claim is that the block association should apply for a garden permit this spring; it fits after "This paragraph argues that…" and takes a position a neighbor could dispute. The support is the rest: the lot has sat empty for three years, a garden would give twenty families a place to grow food, and the city already lends tools to garden groups.
The leak is "sensibly". It tells the reader the summarizer approves. Replace it with a neutral verb: "The memo moves the weekly staff meeting from the morning to the afternoon so that the sales team can attend." What changed is that the sentence now reports the decision and its stated reason without grading it.
Sentence (a) is a reaction. It reports a feeling and gives no reason anyone could check. Sentence (b) is a response. It names a feature of the plan (a higher price with no stated use for the money) and explains why that feature matters to students. The test is "because": only (b) points at something in the text.
The summary dropped the concession, the memo's own admission that the longer days will be hard for employees with child care. It also added a verdict the memo never made ("great for everyone"), which is an opinion-leak. A fair summary keeps both halves: "The memo grants that longer days will be hard for employees with child care but argues for a four-day schedule because it cuts commuting by one day a week." Dropping the concession makes the memo look careless when it was not.

Next up in this module: the Readings & Resources page, the lecture tutorial, the practice set, and the quiz. Next week, a paragraph method (point, illustration, explanation) turns claim and support into your own writing.

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