Daniel Kies Department of English College of DuPage
Composition English 1101		Contact Form

The Summary and Review Essay

Writing Assignment 1

Objective Let's begin by exploring the nature of reading, writing and literacy itself. In the excerpt from The Gutenberg Elegies, Sven Birkerts presents the conflict between the literacy of the past and the electronic literacy of the future. This conflict played an important part in the formation of Birkerts's notions of literacy and writing. Your objective in this first piece of writing is to compose a summary — a review — of Birkerts's argument. Audience The audience is your online classmates: think of how you want to share your ideas and beliefs with them — strangers though they may be. Reading Read "Into the Electronic Millennium," an excerpt from The Gutenberg Elegies by Sven Birkerts. Note that this chapter repeats itself toward the end. (It must be a copy/paste error.) When you get to the second time that Birkerts writes, "Think of it" (the first sentence in the chapter), you know you are at the beginning of the repetition and that you are done. Instructions Concentrating only on the first section ("Into the Electronic Millennium"), compose a review of that fragment of The Gutenberg Elegies, focusing especially on his critique of electronic media. Consult Understanding Essay Topics: A Checklist for assistance in getting started. This essay should be 500+ words. Support An eForum conference is available to help us share ideas and answer questions about our essays and related work: English 1101 — Online

"The trouble is that essays always have to sound like God talking for eternity, and that isn't the way it ever is. People should see that it's never anything other than just one person talking from one place in time and space and circumstance. It's never been anything else, ever, but you can't get that across in an essay. . . ." Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

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