Summary | english 101 | New Jersey City University

Find this under READINGS “FOR EC1. Before you begin reading, if you don’t know what the words mean, you should look them up in a dictionary app: “ossified,” “oligarch,” “capital gains,” “chimera,” “conflagration,” “kindling,” and “pragmatism.” Write them down if it will help you remember.

Keep in mind that this was written in 2016. So when he talks about demonstrations in the streets near the end, he is talking about the “arab spring” demonstrations in the Middle East. You may need to look that up to get a little background to help with understanding. Consider the end of this article. He says that the 1% learn, but too late. What do you think he’s hinting at in that statement?

Summary format is the same. Start with the title, author, publication, and date. Then tell what you think the main idea of the article is. Then go on to explain. As usual, you should have at least two direct quotes in this summary. Explain the quotes. Put them in quotation marks so readers can tell the difference between what the author is saying and what you are saying. This is important. Pay attention to grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Don’t copy the entire thing word for word. Break it down and just keep the good stuff. Trust your judgment about what that is. Inequality Is a Serious Social Problem Income Inequality, 2016 From Opposing Viewpoints in Context, summary of 300-400 

Economic Inequality has Accelerated

Title, Author, Publication, Date. (Note the dates of these articles. Important for when you make your argument later). You can just Google these terms for clarification: “caste system,” “gilded age,” “Horatio Alger.” When he talks about a “leftist rag” in the beginning and refers to “Business Week,” he is using heavy irony (look up irony if you don’t know) because Business Week is absolutely not leftist or liberal. It is a conservative rightist magazine, the opposite of a leftist rag. He also refers to their writers as “commies,” short for communists, again heavily ironic.

Start off with the main idea. Again , you will need at least two direct quotes from the article. Quotation marks around the direct quotes so readers know the difference between what you say and what the author says. It will also keep you from getting confused when you go back to this material to assemble your essay.