In response to Kent Rasmussen's musings, I'd like to offer my two cents, although I normally just lurk. Kent Rasmussen wrote: > What all this comes down to is this: Does reading plot > summaries discourage students from reading actual literary > works? And if so, why? Perhaps a few anecdotes will help > answer this question. Plot summaries are a necessary part of the learning process. I don't have time in my Composition and Literature class to assign a novel (we have to teach three plays, as well as a batch of short stories and poetry); however, when I do assign novels to be read, I will point out to my students that such things exist. I even send them to Cliff Notes for _Hamlet_ because it's a way for them to get at the meat of the story by bypassing the language. If they don't understand the plot, then all my careful lesson about the language and how beautiful it is will fall on deaf ears. How can I ask them to analyze a character when they don't understand who he or she is in relation to the others in the story? > On the other hand, isn't it more likely that my friend's > high school teacher simply didn't write much of an > examination? After all, other high school teachers have > certainly done better. If my students can write a coherent essay based solely on plot summaries, then I haven't given them a very good assignment, and I should fail the courses because they won't have learned a thing. If all the student does is regurgitat the plot, then that shows no effort of thought or planning on his or her part. I offer a great many choices for students to write about, and not one of them will be found on the Internet or in a plot summary or Cliff Notes. > Isn't it just possible that if, in addition to reading Mark > Twain's books, students were to use reference materials like > _MTAZ_ and _The Mark Twain Encyclopedia_, their teachers > could challenge them more deeply? Having reliable plot > summaries to refer to should, after all, make it easier for > them to master story lines and details, leaving them freer > to focus on more important matters, such as Mark Twain's > language, writing techniques, characterizations, and ideas. As an additional consideration, I teach at a community college, where we have many marginal students. They rarely read, so they often read very poorly. I have to teach them how to read the details of the story/play/poem. Students with learning disabilities and other barriers to learning would, I think, benefit greatly from having access to plot summaries so that they can grasp the story easily and then move beneath the words to the themes, ideas, symbols, and connections to other works. Also, plot summaries could point students to the exact chapter they want when they are planning a paper. (I know I wore out my MTP Huckleberry Finn when paging through to find that exact part that I wanted to re-read or quote, and I have a partial photographic memory.) Anyway, the bottom line is that I think students should have access to all of the assistance that is available to them, including great resources such as A to Z and the MT Encyclopedia, and lesser resources such as movies, audio tapes, and yes, Cliff and Monarch Notes. They are never substitutes for the "real thing" but are valuable nonetheless. Just my two cents. Thanks for reading my rather lengthy posting. Renee L. Gross Corning Community College