Determine which parts of the text can be dropped without undermining the ability to convey the author’s central idea.

Writing a 300 word Precis on John Locke article.

Assignment Description:

A précis is a short, strictly expositional assignment. You should not offer your own analysis or evaluation of the text. Instead, you will aim to clearly and concisely explain what the author is saying.

There’s a 300-word limit. It will be strictly enforced. If you write 372 words, the final 72 words will be struck from your précis. If you write 301 words, the final word will be struck.

There’s no need to include a bibliography or citations. The full text is included in the document below. So, this document is all you need to complete this assignment.

Tips:

To understand the nature of this assignment, imagine you’re the author of the text below. If you were forced to reduce your work to 300 words, what would you write? What’s the main idea? What can be cut? How many examples or supporting reasons can you include? Space is limited. This means your précis will look quite different from the text your précis is about.

Your précis will be 300 words but the text it’s about is much longer. So, not everything in the text can make it into your précis. You will need to determine which parts of the text can be dropped without undermining the ability to convey the author’s central idea. So, a second or third example offered by the author probably shouldn’t be included in your précis. It’s better to fully explain fewer examples or supporting reasons than to provide cursory explanations of many examples.