Response Essay

Introduction

Students are writing more now than at any point in history. On social media, people are engaging in short conversations in the moment. Text messages are a common form of ongoing exchanges. Emails are now the primary form of business correspondence. It’s likely you have written responses socially, for school, and maybe even on the job. These writing experiences have been shaped by your beliefs and practices as a writer, as well as the feedback you receive from others. Feedback has likely informed your perceptions about writing including the assumptions you have about who can write well, what "good" writing looks like, what writing should feel like, and the steps you take when given a writing task. For this writing project, you will read some works by other profession and academic writers and consider your writing beliefs and how they have been shaped through writing practice. As you study the writing processes of professional and academic writers, you will be tasked with considering how you might respond based on your own experience and will write a response.

Genre Definition

A response essay gives students the space to engage in conversations with others through writing. Graff et al. (2012) explain, "Experienced writing instructors have long recognized that writing well means entering into a conversation with others. Academic writing in particular calls upon writers not simply to express their own ideas, but to do so as a response to what others have said" (p. xx). Entering the conversation means reading multiple texts and figuring out how they relate to others and your experiences. You might also find interesting insights that you hadn’t considered or consider other ways of seeing things.

Response essays, however, require more than just coming up with a quick opinion. Students are expected to gain a “working knowledge” of writing practices and think critically about how the texts are related and synthesize these ideas to show relationships to their own experiences. Writing is, after all, a conversation. For this assignment, you will review attitudes about writing expressed by writers and reflect on their relevance in your own writing life. As you read each work, think about how the work relates to your writing experience and consider what you might say if you were to sit down and talk to the person who wrote the work.

First, make a list of your writing beliefs:

What are some beliefs about writing that you have formed while in school?
How do these beliefs shape the way you see yourself as a writer?
In what ways do you find writing easy? Challenging? Fun? Work? (or other ways you might see writing...)

Next, consider the texts individually. Answer the following questions about the texts as you read and note:

What writing practice is the author talking about?
What is the writer’s main claim about writing or writing practice?
How does the writer present evidence to support their claim?
What assumptions is the writer making?
Why is the writer’s work interesting or important?

Think about the works in the unit as a collective whole:

How are the works in this unit related? What themes are emerging?
In what ways do the writers agree? Disagree? Address different issues about writing?
How do the writers formulate responses to writing problems in different ways? Similar ways?

Finally, reflect on the following questions to help you shape your response:

How does your writing experience relate to the practice shared?
Play the doubting and believing game: What do you disagree with? What do you agree with?
How do the claims of one or more of these writers help you understand writing practices in a broader context or scope?
How might these writers’ ideas help you achieve success as a writer in college?
What experiences can you relate to? That is, have you had similar experiences? If so, do tell.

These questions are to help you get started with your response. This assignment gives you the chance to explore these questions and respond to one of the writing themes expressed in this unit while exploring your own writing process.

Assignment

Consider how your experiences have shaped what you believe to be true about writing. Then, consider what the authors in this unit say about writing. Write a response to one of the concepts or themes from the articles assigned for this unit in which you reflect on writing beliefs or practices derived from one of the readings and how these elements relate to your own writing experiences.

Only works presented below in the “Suggested Readings” may be used for response.

Remember, academic writing is about participating in conversations with others. Consider how your conversation with others might go. Use this lens as a way to shape your ideas and make decisions about how much information you need to include.

Organization

Depending on the writing situation, essays may take on slightly different structures. You have some creative license with this form. Keep in mind that the essay must still fulfill genre expectations for responding to others. Examples can be found here, but keep in mind these are just some representations of responsive genre characteristics: https://www.longwood.edu/staff/mcgeecw/sampleresponsepapers.htm. Essay examples respond to a different prompt and are not the same topic context expected for this assignment. However, these examples offer a sense of the genre conventions of a response essay.

Introduction:

Describe your general reaction to the readings. What did you think—were they entertaining? Confusing? Helpful? Unhelpful? Interesting? Strange? Intriguing? Boring? What composing practices from the readings stood out to you as writing experiences you could somehow relate to? Alternatively, identify “truths” about writing gleaned from the readings that seem important to you.

Whatever direction you take with your essay, keep in mind this class is highly concerned with positive, ethical forms of communication. This essay is not an opportunity to rant about negative experiences and hate on academic writing; rather, use this essay as an opportunity to consider how what you learned from these articles helps you develop your writing skills. For example, if something from the articles was unhelpful, what else do you want to learn?

Helpful Tip: Introductions are a great place to capture your readers’ attention! In order to engage the reader, textbook author Wilhoit (102) suggests that writers open their response essays with one of the following strategies:

A provocative or interesting question raised by the readings and your response or desire to explore
An interesting quotation from the readings and how the quote gave you insight(s)
A personal anecdote related to the topic of the reading and what you learned from the experience

Think about how your writing is unique to your style, and select an approach or context that fits your writing experience.

At the end of your introduction, write a thesis statement identifying the

theme or topic you are responding to OR
the author and article you are responding to, and
the main points you will be making in response.

The thesis will offer a guiding structure for your response.

Body:

Respond to the work(s) by sharing how your writing experiences relate to the writer’s experiences. This part of the essay requires students to incorporate narrative elements:

Tell your story by giving your own narrative of a writing experience related to those expressed in the work you are responding to.
Summarize the practice or idea presented by the writer.
- NOTE: Even if you agree with the writer, you must cite the writer's idea. Claiming another person's ideas without citing is plagiarism and is unethical.
- Citing someone else's work actually gives you credibility. However, misrepresenting the ideas of others in your writing takes away your credibility.
- Be honest.
- Identify your sources.
Connect points from your narrative by giving specific examples of your writing practice.
- Explain why these ideas/practices are relevant and useful for YOU. For example,
  - How do the practices improve the way you have traditionally approached writing assignments?
  - How do ideas help you re-see or undo bad writing habits you have developed?
  - In what ways do the ideas call into question unhelpful beliefs you have adopted about writing--or about yourself as a writer?
  - What kinds of solutions do the articles offer to problems you have had while writing?
- Discuss how each practice might work in your own writing life.
  - When might you use this practice?
  - How might you revise it to benefit you?
  - How might you combine it with helpful writing practices you already possess?

Paragraphs should begin with a topic sentence stating the main idea or the purpose of the paragraph. The content of the paragraphs should support the topic sentence. Carefully arrange paragraphs according to relationships between ideas or topics. Consider how one point leads to the next point or how one detail helps develop another when organizing the placement of your information.

Helpful Tip: The body of your paper should be guided by a logical organizational scheme. For example, you might work with one author’s ideas during the first half of your paper, and then discuss a second author’s ideas in the second half. Or you might first focus on practices related to where to write, and then address practices related to when to write, etc.

Conclusion:

Bring the response essay back to your general reaction to the text in the introduction. Then, offer insights about what you have learned about responding to other writers. Wilhoit maintains that “closure” is what you are trying to achieve in your conclusion:

To give a sense of closure to your essay, you should also try to mirror the strategy you employed to capture reader interest in the opening of your essay. For example, if you opened your essay with a question, return to that question in your conclusion and provide an answer. If you opened with an anecdote or story, refer back to it in your conclusion, perhaps indicating how that anecdote or story turned out. If you opened with a quotation from the source text, consider closing with a quotation as well (Wilhoit 103).

If you had an epiphany or a-ha moment while writing, tell about that insight in your conclusion. Whatever your approach, try to be succinct and well-spoken, aiming for your last line to pack a memorable punch.

Length & Formatting

Essays should be approximately 750 words (no more than 1000 words; more is not necessarily better), 3 pages. A minimum of 1, maximum of 2 sources may be used. MLA style should guide formatting and citations.

Quantity does not equal quality. Writing must demonstrate clearly connected ideas and should be in your own voice.

Evaluation & Assessment

The competencies addressed in this unit include

Learn and use key rhetorical concepts
Practice writing in a variety of genres
Read a diverse range of texts, attending to the interplay of relationships
Apply critical reading skills
Draw upon strategies to compose texts that synthesize the writer's ideas with the voices of others

Categories of assessment will measure the proficiency of the submission for publication based on the following criteria:

Rhetorical Situation
Narrative Experience
Responsive Synthesis
Voice: Style & Tone
Citations & Articulation

See LMS for details on specific scoring measures.

Writing Process

Weeks 1 & 2

Begin by reading. (Suggested readings for this project are at the end of the assignment.) Getting a “working knowledge” of a subject means doing a lot of reading on the topic by scholars who are experts in the field. Besides, reading good writing will give you models for the structures of your own writing stories. For this assignment, you will be required to read a number of pre-selected texts. From these texts, you can begin to choose which readings and themes you want to respond to for your major writing assignment.

Read critically. Use critical reading strategies to draw ideas from the reading. Potential strategies for keeping track of ideas include

Taking notes to capture key or interesting points
Asking questions about the text
Double-entry journals or graphic organizers
Annotating the text in the margins
Highlighting and underlining key passages

Be careful not to overwrite the text; collect the most interesting or thought-provoking elements.

Reflect on the reading. I suggest writing a 5 minute “freewrite” after each reading to get down your initial impressions and responses. *Did you know, this is actually part of doing the writing?

Play the doubting and believing game. By challenging what you didn’t agree with and identifying common ground, you can start exploring where your writing practices intersect with those of the authors and identify some areas of difference or similarity. Reading and writing for inquiry help writers tease out ideas. These will be the building blocks of your essay.

Week 3

Building on notes from the reading, start thinking about how your own beliefs and experiences with writing relate to what you have read. How would you respond to one of the authors or one of the ideas about writing?

Sketch out your ideas.

What will your theme be?
What main points will you focus on to draw out your theme?
How will you support your main points with evidence from the readings?
How will you show connections or departures between your writing experience and those of experienced writers?

Compose a draft of your essay in preparation for peer review. Include narrative details of your own writing experience in response to readings from other writers.

Week 4

Peer Review, Revision, & Publication

Once you complete a draft, you will share your writing with your peers. You will also have the opportunity to review your peers’ work. Consider how your peers have constructed their essays and what you can learn from their writing style. Also, give your peers critical feedback.

Revision means rethinking what you wrote. As you will read in Sommers' text, minor edits are not what I mean by revision. I want you to take a close look at your work and consider both global and small scale revisions before proofreading for publication (submission).

In this context, the publication is your draft submission. Publications are not always final drafts. Some writers go back to their writing and rework, refine, and sometimes even resubmit extensive revisions as an updated revision or new edition. While you don’t have the option to submit a revised edition after you have published your work for this assignment, I want you to have the experience of submitting your work in pre-press condition.

Works Cited

Ballanger, Bruce. The Curious Writer, concise 5th ed., Pearson, 2017.

Elbow, Peter. Writing with Power: Techniques for Mastering the Writing Process. 2nd ed. NY: Oxford UP, 1998.

Graff, Gerald, Cathy Birkenstein, & Russel Durst. They Say I Say. 2nd ed., W. W. Norton, 2012.

Macleod, Shawn."Paragraph Structure." Smrt English, https://youtu.be/NLzKqujmdGk.

"Response Paper" Thompson Writing Program, Duke, https://twp.duke.edu/sites/twp.duke.edu/files/file-attachments/response-paper.original.pdf

Wilhoit, Stephen. A Brief Guide to Writing from Readings. Pearson, 2016.

Response Essay

Introduction

Genre Definition

Assignment

Organization

Introduction:

Body:

Conclusion:

Length & Formatting

Evaluation & Assessment

Writing Process

Weeks 1 & 2

Week 3

Building on notes from the reading, start thinking about how your own beliefs and experiences with writing relate to what you have read. How would you respond to one of the authors or one of the ideas about writing?

Week 4

Works Cited

Suggested readings:

ThInking of something you want to say? Send it!

Response Essay

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Introduction

Genre Definition

Assignment

Organization

Introduction:

Body:

Conclusion:

Length & Formatting

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Evaluation & Assessment

Writing Process

Weeks 1 & 2

Week 3

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Building on notes from the reading, start thinking about how your own beliefs and experiences with writing relate to what you have read. How would you respond to one of the authors or one of the ideas about writing?

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Week 4

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Works Cited

Suggested readings: