Week 8 · Chapter

Chapter 8 — Midterm Review & Exam

English Composition Free sample edition

The module's primary reading · ~30–40 minutes · Objective 1 (analyze the rhetorical situation — writer, audience, purpose, genre, and context — and approach writing as a recursive process of invention, drafting, revision, editing, and reflection, distinguishing revision (re-seeing ideas and structure) from editing (sentences and surface)), 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), Objective 3 (develop an arguable, specific thesis and organize an essay around it — unified, coherent, well-developed paragraphs built from a point through evidence to explanation, with an introduction that lands the thesis, transitions that name real relationships, and a conclusion that synthesizes), Objective 4 (compose in multiple rhetorical modes — narration and exposition, rhetorical analysis, and argument — using the appeals (ethos, pathos, logos, kairos) to explain how a real text persuades and the structure of argument (claim, grounds, warrant, counterargument, rebuttal) to build your own, arguing from evidence and representing opposing views fairly) · Read it early this week, before the practice set and the discussion and well before the midterm.

In plain language

This week you look back at Weeks 1 to 7 and see how the first half of the course fits together. Most mistakes a first-year writer makes are a swapped pair (two neighboring ideas mistaken for each other, such as a summary and a response). So this review gives each week one distinction to hold onto, seven in all. You also learn one new move, the three-sentence habit (writing what a text says, how it persuades, and whether you agree as three separate sentences). That habit is the reading skill the research weeks start with.

Why you already care about this

A manager at a print shop asks a new employee to proofread a 2-page flyer. The shop will print 500 copies of it in the morning. After 40 minutes, the employee hands back a flyer with a new headline, a reordered middle, and a different closing offer. The manager wanted the commas checked. The employee re-saw the whole message. Both of them knew what a flyer is. They swapped two neighboring jobs.

You have made a swap like that, and so has every writer. A classmate asks for a summary of an article, and you give your opinion of it. A teacher asks for a thesis, and you hand in a topic. None of these is a deep misunderstanding. Each one trades one half of a pair for the other half. That is good news, because a swap has a quick cure: name the one distinction between the two halves, then test your sentence against it.

Weeks 1 to 7 each taught a pair, and each section below gives you the one test that keeps that pair apart. You run every test on an example you already know. One is the food-drive note from Week 1, and another is the running draft's phone-policy proposal. A third is the speech Martin Luther King Jr. delivered on 28 August 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial. Then you add one new habit for reading, and you head into the midterm.

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

sort a change to a draft as revision or editing;
tell a summary sentence from a response sentence and repair an opinion-leak;
test a topic sentence and a thesis to see whether each one states a claim;
rewrite a telling sentence as a showing one;
tell ethos from logos with the "from anyone?" test, and a label from an analysis;
name the warrant that links evidence to a claim;
write the three-sentence habit (summary, then analysis, then agreement) on a short text.

Carry this sentence with you: name the pair; then test one sentence at a time.

Where we are

Already covered: Weeks 1 to 7: the writing process and the rhetorical situation, critical reading, the paragraph, the thesis, narration and exposition, rhetorical analysis, and argument.
This week: a review of those seven weeks built on seven distinctions, one new reading habit, and the midterm.
How they connect: each week added one pair to keep apart, and the new habit puts three of the course's jobs (summary, analysis, agreement) in a fixed order.
Where we're going next: Week 9, Research: Finding & Evaluating Sources, opens the second half, and the three-sentence habit is how you will read each source before you judge it.

Week 1 gave you the five questions (writer, audience, purpose, genre, context) and the five-stage process. Week 2 taught you to restate a text fairly before you answer it. Week 3 built the paragraph, and Week 4 the thesis. Week 5 taught showing, Week 6 explained how a real text persuades, and Week 7 built an argument with its link spelled out. The midterm covers all of it. If a test below feels shaky, go back to that week's chapter.

1. Revision vs. editing: sort a change by what it changes

Picture a cover letter on its second draft. You move your strongest experience from the last paragraph to the first. Then you fix a misspelled company name. The first change alters what a reader meets first. The second fixes one word.

Week 1 named that difference. It is the course's load-bearing distinction, and revision and editing are the swapped pair writers trade most often:

Revision is re-seeing a draft's ideas, focus, and structure, which changes what the draft says and how it is organized.
Editing is improving a draft's sentences and surface: word choice, sentence shape, grammar, punctuation, and spelling.

The test is one question. Does this change alter what the draft says or how it is organized? If yes, it is revision. If it only touches a sentence's surface, it is editing. The five questions from Week 1 tell you what a revision should change, because a new audience or a new purpose usually calls for new content, not new commas.

Worked example — the committee note's change log. In Week 1, a club volunteer wrote a note to a community center's events committee to report a change to the food-drive roster. The note went through 7 changes between its first draft and its final copy.

Count the two kinds: 4 changes were revision and 3 were editing, so 4 + 3 = 7.
Read one revision: the writer moved the roster request from the first sentence to the end, after the reason. That changes the note's order, so it changes what the committee meets first.
Read one edit: the writer added a comma after "Because of a work commitment". That fixes a sentence and leaves the note's content alone.
Name the difference: the first change re-sees the note; the second polishes it.

In words: sort each change by the level it works at, and you will know which pass you are making.

Misconception check — "revising means fixing grammar." Students often think a revised draft is a draft with its errors corrected. It is tempting because the word "revise" gets used loosely for any change. But fixing grammar is editing. Revision asks bigger questions: is the point right, is it in the right place, and does this reader have what they need? The cure is to run the passes separately, the big pass first, so you do not polish a sentence you are about to cut.

Memory hook: revision moves the walls; editing paints them.

2. Summary vs. response: report first, then judge

Your apartment building gets a long letter from the property manager about a repair schedule. A neighbor posts one line in the group chat: "Management is messing with our water again." It sounds like a summary, but it already holds a verdict.

Week 2 kept two jobs apart:

A summary is a short restatement of what a text says: neutral, covering the whole text, and written in your own words and sentences.
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.

The same week kept a claim, the main point a writer asserts, apart from its support and from its topic.

The test for a summary sentence is to look for an opinion-leak, a judging word that slipped into a report. Words like "rightly", "sadly", or "exaggerates" turn a report into a verdict.

Worked example — the leak in a summary of Eisenhower's farewell address. In Week 2 you summarized the address Dwight D. Eisenhower gave on 17 January 1961.

Read the sentence (illustrative): "Eisenhower rightly warns the nation about defense spending."
Find the leak: "rightly" judges the address instead of reporting it.
Find the second problem: "defense spending" is close to the topic, not the address's claim, which is a warning about unwarranted influence.
Repair it: drop the judging word and state the claim in neutral words. If you want to say whether Eisenhower was right, write that in a separate response with reasons.

In words: a summary reports, a response judges with reasons, and one judging word is enough to blur them.

Misconception check — "a fair summary can include my opinion if I am polite about it." Students often think a mild judgment is harmless inside a summary. It is tempting because the opinion feels fair to the writer. But a reader who disagrees with you can no longer trust the report. The cure is the "they say / I say" order from Week 2: represent the text fairly first, then answer it in a sentence of your own.

Memory hook: report it first; rate it second.

3. Topic sentence vs. title: state a point a reader can test

Look at a neighborhood newsletter. One paragraph opens "Our block party." That works on top of a page, but a paragraph needs more. Another paragraph opens "The block party should move to the park, because closing the street blocks two driveways." Now the reader knows what the rest of the paragraph has to prove.

Week 3 drew this line. A topic sentence is the sentence, usually the first in a body paragraph, that states the paragraph's controlling idea, the claim the paragraph sets out to prove. A title only names a subject.

The test is a reader's two words: "Prove it." If a reader could fairly answer your opening sentence with "prove it", the sentence states a claim. If "prove it" makes no sense as a reply, you have written a title or a bare fact.

Once the point is a claim, the rest of Week 3 follows. Unity means every sentence serves that controlling idea, not merely the same subject. Development means the point gets evidence plus explanation, which is the PIE move: Point, Illustration, Explanation, and a closing Link.

Worked example — the running draft's body paragraph. The running draft is an illustrative proposal written for this course, with no named author.

Read the weak opening: "Phones are a problem in lectures." It names a subject and complains about it. "Prove it" has almost nothing to grab, so the sentence works like a title.
Read the revised opening: "The strongest reason for a phone-free default is that the benefit is not spread evenly." A reader can answer that with "prove it", and the paragraph does.
Run the unity check on the weak version: "My roommate's lecture hall has bad Wi-Fi anyway." is the breaker, because Wi-Fi quality is a different subject.
Name the development: the revised paragraph adds evidence (research on schools that banned phones) and an explanation of why that evidence matters for the policy.

In words: a claim at the top gives every other sentence a job, and a title gives them nothing to prove.

Misconception check — "enough facts make a paragraph developed." Students often stack facts and stop. It is tempting because facts feel like proof. But a fact with no explanation leaves the reader to do your thinking. The cure is the explanation sentence, the E in PIE, which says what the evidence proves and why it matters.

Memory hook: a claim invites "prove it"; a title does not.

4. Thesis vs. topic: take a side a reader could argue with

A friend says, "My essay is about campus parking." You ask, "What about it?" That pause is the gap between a topic and a thesis.

Week 4 widened Week 3's test from one paragraph to a whole essay. The thesis is the sentence, sometimes two, that states an essay's main claim. It must pass the two-part test: it is arguable, so a reasonable person could disagree, and specific, so it names what is claimed and often why.

Four impostors sit where a thesis should be and take no side: a topic, a statement of fact, a question, and an announcement. A fifth near-miss is arguable but vague, such as a sentence that says something "has pros and cons".

Worked example — from topic to working thesis. These come from the running draft and the Week 4 impostor sort; all are illustrative.

The topic: "our college's phone policy in lecture classes". It names a subject and takes no side.
The working thesis: "Our college should make lecture sections phone-free by default, with a stated exception for documented accommodations and emergencies, because the benefit falls hardest on the students who struggle most and the cost to everyone else is small."
Run the two-part test: it is arguable, because many students and teachers prefer an open policy. It is specific, because it names who, what, the exception, and why.
Sort the impostors: "Campus parking." is a topic. "New students attend a first-year orientation before classes begin." is a fact. "Should our college move to a four-day class schedule?" is a question. "In this essay I will discuss first-year orientation." is an announcement. None of them takes a side.

In words: a topic tells the reader where you are; a thesis tells them what you will prove.

Misconception check — "a question makes a good thesis because it gets the reader thinking." Students often open with a question and let it stand as the thesis. It is tempting because questions sound engaging. But a thesis answers. A question can be a fine hook, and your answer to it is the thesis.

Memory hook: a topic points; a thesis takes a side.

5. Showing vs. telling: give the evidence, not the feeling

A friend texts, "Worst commute ever." You believe them, but you see nothing. Then they send, "The bus doors froze open, and the driver handed out paper towels for the rain." Now you are on the bus.

Week 5 named the difference:

Telling is writing that names a feeling or a judgment and so asks the reader to accept the writer's word.
Showing is writing that gives the concrete sensory detail of a moment, so the reader experiences it and reaches the feeling without being told it.

The test: does the sentence name a feeling or a verdict, or does it give a detail a reader could see, hear, or feel? The cure from Week 5 still holds. Showing is specific sensory evidence, not more adjectives.

Worked example — the camping trip. Both passages are illustrative and were written for this course.

Read the telling sentence: "Our first camping trip was a disaster." The key word, "disaster", is a judgment. The reader sees nothing.
Read the showing sentence: "The tent poles kept slipping through my wet fingers, and the instruction sheet in my pocket had turned to gray pulp."
Find the senses: touch (wet fingers, slipping poles) and sight (the gray pulp).
Name the effect: the reader now feels the frustration without the word "frustration" appearing.

In words: telling hands the reader a conclusion; showing hands them the evidence and lets them reach it.

Misconception check — "showing means using more adjectives." Students often pile adjectives onto a telling sentence, such as "the cruel, relentless, icy rain". It is tempting because the sentence looks more vivid. But adjectives that name a judgment are still telling. The cure is one concrete detail that does the work, like rain running down the back of a neck.

Memory hook: show the wet fingers; skip the word "miserable".

6. Ethos vs. logos: ask who is doing the persuading

A nurse at a community clinic says, "I've seen hundreds of these cases, so trust me." Another nurse says, "The swelling goes down faster when the ankle sits above the heart, because gravity drains the fluid." Both may be right. They persuade in different ways.

Week 6 taught four appeals as a model, written in this order: ethos, pathos, logos, kairos. Two of them get swapped more than any others:

Ethos is the appeal to the speaker's credibility and character.
Logos is the appeal to reasoning and evidence.

The test is the "from anyone?" test. Would this sentence still convince you if a stranger had said it? If yes, the reasoning is doing the work, and it leans on logos. If the force depends on who is speaking, it leans on ethos. Two neighboring pairs travel with this one. Kairos is timing and pathos is feeling. And a label, a sentence that names an appeal without saying how it works, is not yet analysis.

Worked example — two sorts and one label. The sorts are illustrative; the King fragment is copied exactly from the archived NPR transcript and named here, not re-analyzed.

Sort the first: a surgeon who opens with "in my twenty years" leans on ethos. The force comes from who she is.
Sort the second: a recall notice that explains which part fails and why leans on logos. It would convince you from anyone.
Spot the label (illustrative): "King uses pathos to make the audience emotional." It names an appeal and stops.
Recall the analysis (illustrative): "King's speech persuades by making delay sound like the real danger." The evidence for that claim is that "Now is the time" opens four consecutive sentences, the move Week 6 analyzed.

In words: ethos asks who; logos asks why; and a label names a move without explaining it.

Misconception check — "any sentence with an expert in it is ethos." Students often tag every sentence that mentions a doctor or a scientist as ethos. It is tempting because experts carry authority. But an expert who explains a mechanism is offering logos. The cure is the "from anyone?" test: strip the speaker's name and see whether the sentence still persuades.

Memory hook: who says it is ethos; why it holds is logos.

7. Warrant vs. evidence: say why the evidence counts

A tenant tells the building board, "The laundry room is full every evening." The board member asks, "So what?" The tenant has evidence. What the tenant has not said is why that evidence should lead to a later closing time.

Week 7 named the missing piece with the Toulmin model, Toulmin (1958), The Uses of Argument. The course keys four of its parts: claim, grounds, warrant, and rebuttal.

The grounds are the evidence and reasons an argument points to in support of its claim.
The warrant is the usually unstated assumption that links the grounds to the claim; it explains why that evidence counts for that particular point.

The test is the reader's "So what?" When a reader asks it, they want your warrant. Evidence alone is not an argument; a pile of facts proves nothing in particular until a warrant says what they are evidence for.

Worked example — the running draft's argument map. The running draft is illustrative and has no named author.

The claim: lecture sections should be phone-free by default.
The grounds: the draft's body paragraph reports research on schools that banned phones, which found the gain in exam results concentrated among the lowest-achieving students.
The warrant: "a college should adopt a low-cost practice whose benefit lands on the students who most need it." Without it, the finding tells the committee nothing to do.
The counterargument: steel-manned, it names accessibility needs, emergencies, and adult students who manage work by phone. The straw man to avoid (illustrative) is "People who oppose the policy only want to scroll through social media during lectures."

In words: the grounds are what you point to, the warrant is why the pointing counts, and the counterargument you answer must be the strongest one.

Misconception check — "mentioning the other side weakens my argument." Students often leave out objections so the case looks airtight. It is tempting because a counterargument feels like handing the reader a reason to disagree. But a reader who disagrees already has that reason. Answering the strongest objection builds your ethos, and building a straw man instead is a fallacy.

Memory hook: grounds point; the warrant says why.

8. Add the three-sentence habit: summary, analysis, agreement

Picture a club treasurer reading a budget proposal from another officer. The first thing out of her mouth is, "I agree with this." The other officers look at each other. Agree with what, exactly? And why?

This is the one new move this week. Weeks 2 and 6 gave you three jobs a reader can do: report what a text says, explain how it persuades, and judge whether it is right. The three-sentence habit puts them in a fixed order, each in its own sentence: summary, then analysis, then agreement.

The order matters. You summarize first, so you answer the text the writer wrote and not a straw man of it. You analyze second, so you see how the text is trying to move you before you decide. You agree or disagree last, with a reason that points to the text. Skipping the first two is the agreement collapse, the slip in which "I agree with this" stands in for both the summary and the analysis.

Worked example — the habit on the running draft's revised body paragraph. All sentences are illustrative and were written for this course.

Summary: "The paragraph argues that the benefit of a phone-free default lands mostly on the students who struggle most, citing research on schools that banned phones, and it adds that an exception for documented needs does not undo the policy." It covers the whole paragraph, including the exception, and it judges nothing.
Analysis: "The paragraph persuades mainly through logos: it sets one research finding beside a sentence that turns the finding into a reason a committee can act on, and its last sentence answers the exception objection before a reader can raise it." It explains how the paragraph works.
Agreement, one way: "I agree that the uneven benefit is the draft's strongest reason, because a rule that helps the students with the least slack answers the question a curriculum committee has to ask."
Agreement, the other way: "I am not yet persuaded, because the research the paragraph describes comes from schools, and a college lecture hall may not work the same way."
The agreement collapse: "I agree with this paragraph because phones are distracting." It skips the summary and the analysis, and its reason is about phones, not about the paragraph.

In words: either agreement sentence earns its place, because the two sentences before it show the reader what you are agreeing with. The course takes no side on the phone policy; it asks only that your side come third and carry a reason.

The habit works on King's speech too. Week 6's summary sentence, "King tells the crowd that the nation made a promise it has not paid and that the time to pay it is now.", is sentence one. Week 6's claim about delay is sentence two. Sentence three is yours to write, and an analysis paragraph leaves it out.

Honesty note: the habit is a classroom model, a simplification you can hold in one hand. Real readers often feel agreement first. The habit does not ask you to feel things in order; it asks you to write them in order.

One more check belongs here. A chatbot asked to "analyze" a paragraph often hands back a summary, or opens with praise such as "This is a strong, persuasive paragraph." Sort its sentences with the three tags. Praise alone is agreement with no reason; restating alone is summary passed off as analysis.

Why this matters next week: in Week 9 the text in front of you is a source you might use. A source-evaluation paragraph that collapses into "I agree with this site" has skipped the reading. The three-sentence habit keeps it honest.

Pause and reflect. Choose one: (a) which of this week's seven pairs do you swap most often in your own drafts, and what test will you run to catch it? (b) when you last read something you strongly agreed with, what would your summary sentence and your analysis sentence have said?

Misconception check — "analysis means saying whether I agree." Students often treat the analysis sentence as the place for their opinion. It is tempting because most school writing about a text has asked, "What do you think?" But the analysis sentence explains how the text works on its audience, and your opinion has its own sentence, the third. Caveat: some assignments ask only for one or two of the three jobs; read the prompt and write the sentences it asks for, in this order.

Memory hook: says, then how, then whether; never whether first.

Key terms

swapped pair — Two neighboring ideas that a writer mistakes for each other, such as a summary and a response or a topic and a thesis; naming the one distinction between them is the cure. (first used: 1. Revision vs. editing: sort a change by what it changes)
three-sentence habit — The reading discipline of writing what a text says, how it persuades, and whether you agree in three separate sentences, in that order: summary, then analysis, then agreement. (first used: 8. Add the three-sentence habit: summary, analysis, agreement)
agreement collapse — The slip in which a sentence such as "I agree with this" stands in for both the summary and the analysis, so the reader judges a text without first reporting it fairly or explaining how it works. (first used: 8. Add the three-sentence habit: summary, analysis, agreement)

Summary

Most writing errors are a swapped pair; name the distinction and test one sentence at a time.
Revision re-sees ideas, focus, and structure; editing fixes sentences and surface.
A summary reports what a text says; a response judges it with reasons about the text.
A topic sentence states a claim a reader could answer with "prove it"; a title only names a subject.
A thesis is arguable and specific; a topic, a fact, a question, and an announcement are impostors.
Showing gives sensory evidence; telling names the feeling.
Ethos persuades through who is speaking; logos persuades through reasoning that would convince from anyone.
The grounds are what you point to; the warrant is why they count.
The three-sentence habit runs summary, then analysis, then agreement, each in its own sentence.

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.

A lab partner makes two changes to a methods paragraph: she moves the safety step from the end to the beginning, and she corrects "there" to "their" in one sentence. Sort each change as revision or editing, and explain your test.
A student's paragraph about a community garden opens "The community garden." Rewrite it as a topic sentence that states a controlling idea, then say how you would check it.
A transit rider writes to the city: "The number 14 bus skipped my stop twice this month, so the city should add a second bus on that route." Name the grounds, the claim, and a warrant that would link them.
Here are three illustrative sentences about a neighborhood newsletter's article on a park cleanup. Label each one summary, analysis, or agreement, then put them in the order the three-sentence habit asks for.
- (a) "I agree that the cleanup should be monthly, because the article shows the trash returns within weeks."
- (b) "The article reports that volunteers cleared the park in one morning and proposes holding a cleanup every month."
- (c) "The article persuades mainly through pathos, opening on a child's ruined soccer ball before it gives any figures."

Answers (worked reasoning — read after attempting)

Moving the safety step is revision, because it changes the paragraph's order and so what a reader meets first. Correcting "there" to "their" is editing, because it fixes one word's surface and leaves the content alone. The test is the Week 1 question: does the change alter what the paragraph says or how it is organized? This item catches the "revising means fixing grammar" swap.
One good rewrite: "The community garden should add a tool shed, because members now carry tools from home on the bus." Check it by asking whether a reader could answer it with "prove it". A reader can, so the sentence states a controlling idea the paragraph can prove. The original, "The community garden.", only names a subject, so it works as a title.
The grounds are the skipped stops (twice this month). The claim is that the city should add a second bus on that route. One warrant: "a route whose bus regularly skips stops does not have enough service for its riders." Without a warrant, a reader can ask "So what?" and the rider has no answer. This item catches the "evidence alone is an argument" swap.
Sentence (b) is summary: it reports what the article says. Sentence (c) is analysis: it explains how the article persuades and through which appeal. Sentence (a) is agreement: it judges the proposal and gives a reason that points to the article. The habit's order is (b), then (c), then (a). Writing (a) first would invite the agreement collapse, because the reader would meet your verdict before knowing what the article says.

Next up in this module: the lecture, the slide deck, the Readings & Resources page, the practice set, the discussion, and the midterm — and next week the three-sentence habit becomes the first test you run on every source.

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