To exercise and practice my rhetorical knowledge skills, our class experimented with rhetorical précis. The word “précis” is from the French language, meaning “exact”. Précis are tools writers use to summarize in a concise and efficient way. Instead of writing traditional summaries, our class instead focused on communicating the most important parts of a writing piece: What the writer is doing with the text, an explanation of how the writer develops, structures, and supports the argument, an explanation of the writers purpose, and finally, a description of the intended audience.

On the right hand column, you will see my examples of rhetorical knowledge skills. The first example is a summary from early in the quarter. This example is in a traditional summary form, but my following examples are formatted in a précis structure. Please review these work samples in chronological order, starting with the traditional summary.