Description: Portraying People, Places, and Things

Summary Quiz for “Eating Chili Peppers”

Question 13.49

1. Read “Eating Chili Peppers” and summarize the selection below. Be sure to put the summary in your own words and to avoid using the sentence structure of the reading selection. Remember that your summary should restate the author’s main idea (or thesis) and that it should include only the author’s most important supporting ideas. When you have completed your summary, “submit” your work.

Here is an example summary of this reading selection:

Jeremy McClancy describes the experience of eating chili peppers as akin to burning your mouth with a blow torch: the burn grows from the lips to the entire body, causing everything from sweat glands and eyes to stomach, heart, and lungs to react. He explains that chili is a nonaddictive stimulant that wards off common colds and has been used medicinally for a variety of ailments. The appeal of eating chilies, he claims, is akin to the appeal of scary movies or rollercoasters—exciting but not dangerous, an experience that distracts us temporarily from the rest of our normal experiences.

Your summary will differ from this one in the way it is written, but it should include roughly the same information.