Building Textual Support

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Source: Hands planting a tree, istockphotos

In any written response to a text, you will be expected to use some of the author’s words in your argument. This does not mean you’re going to let the author make the argument for you. You must make the quotes you use your own by embedding them in your own sentences and explaining what you take them to mean and how you think they add to your position. Quotes, like plants, require a well prepared context. They die if left to fend for themselves.

Some statements like those you might find in a student essay appear below. They concern Forster’s position on tolerance. Below each student statement is a quoted passage from Forster. Try to make an embedded quotation that combines the student statement with Forster’s words.

Pair #1

Forster writes that people who don’t know each other can’t love each other. There is no way, he says, that a person on one side of the globe will love a person on the other side.

“The idea that nations should love one another, or that business concerns or marketing boards should love one another, or that a man in Portugal should love a man in Peru of whom he has never heard—it is absurd, unreal, and dangerous.”

The quote supports the summary statement, but the two together make an awkward reading experience. Can you embed enough of the quote into the statement so that not only does the student statement align with Forster’s words, but it also doesn’t leave his words dangling?

Give it a try. Unify the Student Statement and the Quotation above using your notes. When you’re finished, check your understanding to see one possible revision. Use this same process for the Student Statement/Quotation pairs that follow.

Check Your Understanding

Sample Response:

Forster writes that people who don’t know each other can’t love each other. There is no reason, he says, that “a man in Portugal should love a man in Peru of whom he has never heard.”

Pair #2

Instead of trying to do the impossible and put into the business of public affairs the spirit of love, we should do the reasonable thing, according to Forster, and base public affairs on tolerance.

“In public affairs, in the rebuilding of civilization, something much less dramatic and emotional is needed, namely, tolerance.”

Rewrite this pair using your notes so that some of the quote is embedded into the statement.

Check Your Understanding

Sample Response:

Instead of trying to do something impossible like put the spirit of love into public affairs, we should do “something much less dramatic and emotional,” according to Forster. He argues that we should base public affairs on tolerance.

Pair #3

Forster claims that since we can’t know and often don’t like most of the people in the world, our choices are either to kill them or to tolerate them.

“There are two solutions. One of them is the Nazi solution. If you don’t like people, kill them, banish them, segregate them, and then strut up and down proclaiming that you are the salt of the earth. The other way is much less thrilling, but it is on the whole the way of the democracies, and I prefer it. If you don’t like people, put up with them as well as you can.”

Rewrite this pair using your notes so that some of the quote is embedded into the statement.

Check Your Understanding

Sample Response:

Forster claims that since we can’t know and often don’t like most of the people in the world, our choices are either to “kill them, banish them, segregate them” or else “to put up with them as well as [we] can.”

Over time you will begin to use quotes automatically when you respond to texts. Just remember: if any
connections in your essay between your reasoning and Forster’s text are weak or unsupported, embed quotes to strengthen them.