Rachels, “What is Morality?”

Paper 1 (50 points)

Final Draft: Paper due by Friday, January 31stat noon (12:00 PM) through Canvas

Length:
3 – 3 1/2 pages double-spaced; this page requirement includes both the summary and the reflection.
Format:
Formal essay. Include a heading with your name and section and a citation at
the bottom of each essay with the article’s information (MLA or Chicago).
Audience: SUMMARY: Write for a professional, college-educated audience who hasn’t read the article but wants to gain an accurate, thorough overview of the essay and its context.
REFLECTION ESSAY: Write for a general, educated audience, and not for someone who knows the prompt or the readings you reference (for instance, an audience of this type might be readers of the university newspaper; don’t write specifically to me or your NHV peers).
Purpose:
To objectively extract an author’s argument (summarize); to critically explore connections between course materials and your own life and choices (reflection); to understand how context and audience shape style and tone by writing two *separate* but complementary essays.
Style requirement: 12 pt. Times New Roman Font
Double-spaced
One-inch margins
You do not need to put your summary citation on a separate page—a Chicago or MLA-style citation should immediately follow your essay.

For this paper, you will summarize and respond to Rachels, “What is Morality?”

Summary (1.5 – 2 pages):

The summary portion of this assignment asks you to practice professional objectivity by summarizing your chosen article for an audience interested in gaining an unbiased overview of the text. The summary should include no opinion, analysis, or personal observation and should be 100% accurate. The summary should give the reader all of the information they need to understand the thrust of the article and its context. You should include at least one pertinent, important quotation in the summary, but you should not quote Rachels extensively; I am limiting you to a maximum of two quotations, and those quotations should be short. Rachels gives a number of examples in the article; remember that it is more important for you to explain how the author uses the examples to support his main argument rather than trying to summarize each individual example. This type of assignment is deceptively simple in that it requires you to have a deep level of textual understanding before paraphrasing the material for outside readers in your own words.

Reflection (1-2 pages):
Write a separate* reflection essay that responds to Rachels essay in a thoughtful way. In responding, you should think about and use content from class. In other words, concepts like the moral spheres should be put into conversation with the Rachels essay to help elaborate on your thoughtful comments about the article. You are also welcome to refer to lectures and course discussions (keeping in mind you should write for a “general audience”—this is not a journal entry but an essay). Write in clear, compelling, straightforward prose that draws on your own personal style.

*The essay should be separate, but please include both essays in the same document.

Why a Summary and a Reflection?

One of the main purposes of this first assignment is to start to master switching the tone of your writing to match the purpose and the audience. Specifically, in the first part of the assignment, you are meant to be objective and scholarly in your tone. In the second part, you are meant to be subjective while still being somewhat formal. In the first, the purpose is for you to convey information. In the second, your purpose is to present an informed and justified analysis of another person’s writing.

These skills are practical: in your career and life, you will need to be able to read texts and extract and summarize pertinent information. Also, in order to be considered a person with good critical thinking skills, you will be able to respond to others’ ideas in thoughtful, well-justified ways.

Assignment Skillset:

You should improve the following skills after completing this assignment:

• Identifying an author’s thesis, major claims, and supporting evidence
• Accurately conveying the ideas of a text to an audience
• Active and critical reading skills, including note-taking and annotation
• Objectively summarizing another writer’s argument, a skill you will use in creating your own arguments later in the term
• Paraphrasing difficult, complex material while maintaining a neutral academic tone
• Using signal phrases for organization and attribution
• Understanding and avoiding inadvertent plagiarism
• Responding to course materials and the arguments of others using your own critical thinking and inquiry
• Recognizing how context and audience shape writing style and tone

Specific Guidelines and Reminders:

• The summary should come before the reflection
• Make sure the two essays are individually titled. It is fine if these titles are straightforward (i.e. Summary of “What is Morality?”), but try to be a little more creative with your reflection title (you will need to have interesting titles for your other papers, so you may as well start practicing now!).
• The summary is meant to give you an opportunity to practice summarizing in your own words, so be sure to be selective in your use of quotations.
• In the summary, make sure that the author’s name, the author’s title, and the main idea of the article appear in the first few sentences.
• Use present tense verbs when discussing the author and the article.
• You will likely need to read the article several times to be able to do this assignment correctly. Think about outlining the article before beginning to write.
• If you are having trouble summarizing without quoting, try writing off a basic outline, or put the article away and imagine that you are explaining the main ideas of the article to a peer.