Norman Foerster

Outlines and Summaries: a Handbook for the Analysis of Expository Essays Norman Foerster

Although the author believes that the training afforded by the preparation of analytical outlines and summaries in accordance with the instruction given in this book has most of the merits of training in argumentation and may very well supplant the latter, and although he believes that it goes far toward teaching students to read intelligently and to remember what they read, he desires to state his opinion that, in the study of such essays as those in this volume and in the many compilations of expository essays, there is always grave danger that formal structure will be greatly overstressed, and that the class-room will become a place for exercise in logic-chopping. It is easily forgotten that the true center in the teaching of expository essays is a realization of the total significance of the thought. This must be carefully distinguished, not only from an image of the framework of the thought, as if literature were a matter of building blocks, but also from a blind memory of phrases, as if literature consisted of a mass of formulae. To the latter error, such an essay as Matthew Arnold s Literature and Science lends itself with particular aptness; of ten students who, after reading it attentively, are certain that they understand it, perhaps not one has obtained so much as a glimpse of the full significance of the ideas. The author is indebted to Dr. Frederick
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)

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