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Summary/Response Essays: Overview

A summary/response essay may, at first, seem like a simplistic exercise for a college course. But the truth is that most academic writing requires us to successfully accomplish at least two tasks: summarizing what others have said and presenting what you have to say. Because of this, summarizing and responding are core skills that every writer should possess.

Being able to write an effective summary helps us make sense of what others have to say about a topic and how they choose to say it. As writers, we all need to make an effort to recognize, understand, and consider various perspectives about different issues. One way to do this is to accurately summarize what someone else has written, but accomplishing this requires us to first be active and engaged readers.

Along with the other methods covered in the Reading Critically chapter , writing a good summary requires taking good notes about the text. Your notes should include factual information from the text, but your notes might also capture your reactions to the text—these reactions can help you build a thoughtful and in-depth response.

Responding to a text is a crucial part of entering into an academic conversation. An effective summary proves you understand the text; your response allows you to draw on your own experiences and prior knowledge so that you can talk back to the text.

As you read, make notes, and summarize a text, you’ll undoubtedly have immediate reactions. Perhaps you agree with almost everything or find yourself frustrated by what the author writes. Taking those reactions and putting them into a piece of academic writing can be challenging because our personal reactions are based on our history, culture, opinions, and prior knowledge of the topic. However, an academic audience will expect you to have good reasons for the ways you have responded to a text, so it’s your responsibility to critically reflect on how you have reacted and why.

The ability to recognize and distinguish between types of ideas is key to successful critical reading.

Types of Ideas You Will Encounter When Reading a Text

  • Fact: an observable, verifiable idea or phenomenon
  • Opinion: a judgment based on fact
  • Belief: a conviction or judgment based on culture or values
  • Prejudice: an opinion (judgment) based on logical fallacies or on incorrect, insufficient information

After you have encountered these types of ideas when reading a text, your next job will be to consider how to respond to what you’ve read.

Four Ways to Respond to a Text

  • Reflection. Did the author teach you something new? Perhaps they made you look at something familiar in a different way.
  • Agreement. Did the author write a convincing argument? Were their claims solid, and supported by credible evidence?
  • Disagreement. Do you have personal experiences, opinions, or knowledge that lead you to different conclusions than the author? Do your opinions about the same facts differ?
  • Note Omissions. If you have experience with or prior knowledge on the topic, you may be able to identify important points that the author failed to include or fully address.

You might also analyze how the author has organized the text and what the author’s purposes might be, topics covered in the Reading Critically chapter .

Key Features

A brief summary of the text.

Include Publication Information. An effective summary includes the author’s name, the text’s title, the place of publication, and the date of publication—usually in the opening lines.

Identify Main Idea and Supporting Ideas. The main idea includes both the topic of the text and the author’s argument, claim, or perspective. Supporting ideas help the author demonstrate why their argument or claim is true. Supporting ideas may also help the audience understand the topic better, or they may be used to persuade the audience to agree with the author’s viewpoints.

Make Connections Between Ideas. Remember that a summary is not a bullet-point list of the ideas in a text. In order to give your audience a complete idea of what the author intended to say, you need to explain how ideas in the text are related to one another. Consider using transition phrases.

Be Objective and Accurate. Along with being concise, a summary should be a description of a text, not an evaluation. While you may have strong feelings about what the author wrote, your goal in a summary is to objectively capture what was written. Additionally, a summary needs to accurately represent the ideas, opinions, facts, and judgments presented in a text. Don’t misrepresent or manipulate the author’s words.

Do Not Include Quotes. Summaries are short. The purpose of a summary is for you to describe a text in your own words . For this reason, you should focus on paraphrasing rather than including direct quotes from the text in your summary.

Thoughtful and Respectful Response to the Text

Consider Your Reactions. Your response will be built on your reactions to the text, so you need to carefully consider what reactions you had and how you can capture those reactions in writing.

Organize Your Reactions. Dumping all of your reactions onto the page might be useful to just get your ideas out, but it won’t be useful for a reader. You need to organize your reactions. For example, you might develop sections that focus on where you agree with the author, where you disagree, how the author uses rhetoric, and so on.

Create a Conversation. Avoid the trap of writing a response that is too much about your ideas and not enough about the author’s ideas. Your response should remain engaged with the author’s ideas. Keep the conversation alive by making sure you regularly reference the author’s key points as you talk back to the text.

Be Respectful. We live in an age when it’s very easy to anonymously air our grievances online, and we’ve seen how Reddit boards, YouTube comments, and Twitter threads can quickly devolve into disrespectful, toxic spaces. In a summary/response essay, as in other academic writing, you are not required to agree with everything an author writes—but you should state your objections and reactions respectfully. Imagine the author is standing in front of you, and write your response as if you value and respect their ideas as much as you would like them to value and respect yours.

Distinguish Between an Author’s Ideas and Your Own

Signal Phrases. A summary/response essay, especially your response, will include a mix of an author’s ideas and your ideas. It’s important that you clearly distinguish which ideas in your essay are yours, which are the author’s, and even others’ ideas that the author might be citing. Signal phrases are how you accomplish this. Remember to use the author’s last name and an accurate verb.

Examples of Signal Phrases

Poor Signal Phrases: “They say…” “The article states…” “The author says…”

Effective Signal Phrases: “Smith argues…” “Baez believes…” “Henning references Chan Wong’s research about…”

Drafting Checklists

These questions should help guide you through the stages of drafting your summary/response essay.

  • Have you identified all the necessary publication information for the text that you will need for your summary?
  • Have you identified the text’s main ideas and supporting ideas?
  • What were your initial reactions to the text?
  • What new perspectives do you have on the topic covered in the text?
  • Do you ultimately agree or disagree with the author’s points? A little of both?
  • Has the author omitted any points or ideas they should have covered?
  • Has the author organized their text effectively for their purpose?
  • Have they used rhetoric effectively for their audience?
  • Have your reactions to the text changed since you first read it? Why or why not?

Writing and Revising

  • Does your summary clearly tell your reader the author’s name, the text’s title, the place of publication, and the publication data?
  • Has your summary effectively informed your reader about the text’s main ideas and supporting ideas? Have you made the connections between those ideas clear for your reader by using effective transition phrases?
  • Would your reader think your summary is objective and accurate?
  • You haven’t included any quotes in your summary, right?
  • Does your response present your reactions to the text in an organized way that will make sense to your reader?
  • Does your response create a conversation between you and the author by regularly referencing ideas from the text?
  • Would your reader think that your response is respectful of the author’s ideas, opinions, and beliefs?
  • Have you used signal phrases to help your reader recognize which ideas are the author’s and which ideas are yours?
  • Have you carefully proofread your essay to correct any grammar, mechanics, punctuation, and spelling errors?
  • Have you formatted your document appropriately and used citations when necessary?

Sources Used to Create this Chapter

Parts of this chapter were remixed from:

  • First-Year Composition by Leslie Davis and Kiley Miller, which was published under a CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

Starting the Journey: An Intro to College Writing Copyright © by Leonard Owens III; Tim Bishop; and Scott Ortolano is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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  • How to Write a Summary | Guide & Examples

How to Write a Summary | Guide & Examples

Published on November 23, 2020 by Shona McCombes . Revised on May 31, 2023.

Summarizing , or writing a summary, means giving a concise overview of a text’s main points in your own words. A summary is always much shorter than the original text.

There are five key steps that can help you to write a summary:

  • Read the text
  • Break it down into sections
  • Identify the key points in each section
  • Write the summary
  • Check the summary against the article

Writing a summary does not involve critiquing or evaluating the source . You should simply provide an accurate account of the most important information and ideas (without copying any text from the original).

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Table of contents

When to write a summary, step 1: read the text, step 2: break the text down into sections, step 3: identify the key points in each section, step 4: write the summary, step 5: check the summary against the article, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about summarizing.

There are many situations in which you might have to summarize an article or other source:

  • As a stand-alone assignment to show you’ve understood the material
  • To keep notes that will help you remember what you’ve read
  • To give an overview of other researchers’ work in a literature review

When you’re writing an academic text like an essay , research paper , or dissertation , you’ll integrate sources in a variety of ways. You might use a brief quote to support your point, or paraphrase a few sentences or paragraphs.

But it’s often appropriate to summarize a whole article or chapter if it is especially relevant to your own research, or to provide an overview of a source before you analyze or critique it.

In any case, the goal of summarizing is to give your reader a clear understanding of the original source. Follow the five steps outlined below to write a good summary.

Prevent plagiarism. Run a free check.

You should read the article more than once to make sure you’ve thoroughly understood it. It’s often effective to read in three stages:

  • Scan the article quickly to get a sense of its topic and overall shape.
  • Read the article carefully, highlighting important points and taking notes as you read.
  • Skim the article again to confirm you’ve understood the key points, and reread any particularly important or difficult passages.

There are some tricks you can use to identify the key points as you read:

  • Start by reading the abstract . This already contains the author’s own summary of their work, and it tells you what to expect from the article.
  • Pay attention to headings and subheadings . These should give you a good sense of what each part is about.
  • Read the introduction and the conclusion together and compare them: What did the author set out to do, and what was the outcome?

To make the text more manageable and understand its sub-points, break it down into smaller sections.

If the text is a scientific paper that follows a standard empirical structure, it is probably already organized into clearly marked sections, usually including an introduction , methods , results , and discussion .

Other types of articles may not be explicitly divided into sections. But most articles and essays will be structured around a series of sub-points or themes.

Now it’s time go through each section and pick out its most important points. What does your reader need to know to understand the overall argument or conclusion of the article?

Keep in mind that a summary does not involve paraphrasing every single paragraph of the article. Your goal is to extract the essential points, leaving out anything that can be considered background information or supplementary detail.

In a scientific article, there are some easy questions you can ask to identify the key points in each part.

If the article takes a different form, you might have to think more carefully about what points are most important for the reader to understand its argument.

In that case, pay particular attention to the thesis statement —the central claim that the author wants us to accept, which usually appears in the introduction—and the topic sentences that signal the main idea of each paragraph.

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Now that you know the key points that the article aims to communicate, you need to put them in your own words.

To avoid plagiarism and show you’ve understood the article, it’s essential to properly paraphrase the author’s ideas. Do not copy and paste parts of the article, not even just a sentence or two.

The best way to do this is to put the article aside and write out your own understanding of the author’s key points.

Examples of article summaries

Let’s take a look at an example. Below, we summarize this article , which scientifically investigates the old saying “an apple a day keeps the doctor away.”

Davis et al. (2015) set out to empirically test the popular saying “an apple a day keeps the doctor away.” Apples are often used to represent a healthy lifestyle, and research has shown their nutritional properties could be beneficial for various aspects of health. The authors’ unique approach is to take the saying literally and ask: do people who eat apples use healthcare services less frequently? If there is indeed such a relationship, they suggest, promoting apple consumption could help reduce healthcare costs.

The study used publicly available cross-sectional data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Participants were categorized as either apple eaters or non-apple eaters based on their self-reported apple consumption in an average 24-hour period. They were also categorized as either avoiding or not avoiding the use of healthcare services in the past year. The data was statistically analyzed to test whether there was an association between apple consumption and several dependent variables: physician visits, hospital stays, use of mental health services, and use of prescription medication.

Although apple eaters were slightly more likely to have avoided physician visits, this relationship was not statistically significant after adjusting for various relevant factors. No association was found between apple consumption and hospital stays or mental health service use. However, apple eaters were found to be slightly more likely to have avoided using prescription medication. Based on these results, the authors conclude that an apple a day does not keep the doctor away, but it may keep the pharmacist away. They suggest that this finding could have implications for reducing healthcare costs, considering the high annual costs of prescription medication and the inexpensiveness of apples.

However, the authors also note several limitations of the study: most importantly, that apple eaters are likely to differ from non-apple eaters in ways that may have confounded the results (for example, apple eaters may be more likely to be health-conscious). To establish any causal relationship between apple consumption and avoidance of medication, they recommend experimental research.

An article summary like the above would be appropriate for a stand-alone summary assignment. However, you’ll often want to give an even more concise summary of an article.

For example, in a literature review or meta analysis you may want to briefly summarize this study as part of a wider discussion of various sources. In this case, we can boil our summary down even further to include only the most relevant information.

Using national survey data, Davis et al. (2015) tested the assertion that “an apple a day keeps the doctor away” and did not find statistically significant evidence to support this hypothesis. While people who consumed apples were slightly less likely to use prescription medications, the study was unable to demonstrate a causal relationship between these variables.

Citing the source you’re summarizing

When including a summary as part of a larger text, it’s essential to properly cite the source you’re summarizing. The exact format depends on your citation style , but it usually includes an in-text citation and a full reference at the end of your paper.

You can easily create your citations and references in APA or MLA using our free citation generators.

APA Citation Generator MLA Citation Generator

Finally, read through the article once more to ensure that:

  • You’ve accurately represented the author’s work
  • You haven’t missed any essential information
  • The phrasing is not too similar to any sentences in the original.

If you’re summarizing many articles as part of your own work, it may be a good idea to use a plagiarism checker to double-check that your text is completely original and properly cited. Just be sure to use one that’s safe and reliable.

If you want to know more about ChatGPT, AI tools , citation , and plagiarism , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

  • ChatGPT vs human editor
  • ChatGPT citations
  • Is ChatGPT trustworthy?
  • Using ChatGPT for your studies
  • What is ChatGPT?
  • Chicago style
  • Paraphrasing

 Plagiarism

  • Types of plagiarism
  • Self-plagiarism
  • Avoiding plagiarism
  • Academic integrity
  • Consequences of plagiarism
  • Common knowledge

A summary is a short overview of the main points of an article or other source, written entirely in your own words. Want to make your life super easy? Try our free text summarizer today!

A summary is always much shorter than the original text. The length of a summary can range from just a few sentences to several paragraphs; it depends on the length of the article you’re summarizing, and on the purpose of the summary.

You might have to write a summary of a source:

  • As a stand-alone assignment to prove you understand the material
  • For your own use, to keep notes on your reading
  • To provide an overview of other researchers’ work in a literature review
  • In a paper , to summarize or introduce a relevant study

To avoid plagiarism when summarizing an article or other source, follow these two rules:

  • Write the summary entirely in your own words by paraphrasing the author’s ideas.
  • Cite the source with an in-text citation and a full reference so your reader can easily find the original text.

An abstract concisely explains all the key points of an academic text such as a thesis , dissertation or journal article. It should summarize the whole text, not just introduce it.

An abstract is a type of summary , but summaries are also written elsewhere in academic writing . For example, you might summarize a source in a paper , in a literature review , or as a standalone assignment.

All can be done within seconds with our free text summarizer .

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.

McCombes, S. (2023, May 31). How to Write a Summary | Guide & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved February 15, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/working-with-sources/how-to-summarize/

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A Guide to Effective Summary Response Essays

Table of Contents

If you’ve been tasked to write a summary response essay but are unsure where to start, don’t worry. We’ve got you covered with this quick guide on the basics of summary response essays. We’ll cover everything from its definition and writing tips to a sample  outline for summary response essay .

This is a less common type of essay that requires a certain style and approach that differs from other types of essays. But with the help of this guide, you’ll be able to make the writing process much easier.

What is a Summary Response Essay

Summary response essays are two-part essays that include a summary of an article, essay, chapter or report and a response to it.

It is not a formal paper or essay because it does not have an introduction, body, or conclusion like other essays. This type of essay instead consists of a summary of the reading followed by a response to the reading.

To better understand this type of essay, it’s best to look at its two parts separately in the next section.

What to Include in Your Essay

The summary is a concise round-up of all the main ideas in an essay or writing. It cites all the relevant details about the work you’re reviewing. Your summary can include the following:

  • Author and the work’s title (typically in the first sentence).
  • The thesis of the essay and its supporting ideas
  • It may use direct quotations to provide forceful or concise statements of the author’s ideas

Most summaries present the main points in the order they were made by the author and continually referred back to the article being summarized. Your summary should not exceed one-third the length of the original work.

Responses are critiques or evaluations of an author’s work. Unlike the summary, it is composed of YOUR opinions for the article being summarized.

This examines ideas that you agree or disagree with. It identifies the work’s strengths and weaknesses by looking at its organization and style. You should use examples and evidence to support the opinions in your response.

A good response must contain

  • Personal experiences

Depending on your stance, these can either refute or support the article you’re responding to.

Steps for Writing a Summary Response Essay

Identify the main idea of the reading .

Create a topic sentence that describes the main idea of your reading for your summary. For your response, create a separate thesis statement that states your opinion on the author’s main idea.

Add supporting details for the summary and response.

Next, identify the supporting facts of the reading. In the summary paragraph, it is important to keep the order of the supporting details. Consider how these points relate to the author’s main idea.

Develop the supporting details for the response paragraph, highlighting how your evidence or personal experience supports the thesis statement you’ve created.

Identify the author’s purpose for writing.

It’s helpful to get to know the goal that the author wants to achieve through their work.

For your summary, try to ask yourself:

  • Why did the author write this?
  • Is there anything specific that the author wants me to know?
  • Does the author want me to do something after reading this? 

And in your response, discuss whether or not the author was successful in achieving the goal of their work.

Write a summary response to the reading .

Given all the data you’ve gathered from the first three steps, you can start writing your summary and the response paragraphs. Make sure to include all the necessary information and be detailed but not flowery. 

General Outline for Summary Response Essay

Summary paragraph.

  • Provide the title and author’s name to introduce the work the essay will discuss. Additionally, state the author’s main idea.
  • Write supporting sentences that describe the supporting details of the work .
  • Let this information come together in a sentence that explains the author’s reason or goal for writing the piece.

Response Paragraph

  • Clearly state your opinions or thoughts about the author’s main idea. Use the thesis statement you created in the earlier steps. You can also ask yourself: Does my opinion regarding the reading relate to the author’s main idea?
  • Put your personal experience into a supporting sentence (or sentences) describing how your opinion or thoughts support or go against the author’s main idea.
  • Write a sentence summarizing this information and explain how your opinion or thought relates to the author’s main idea.

Wrapping Up

A summary response essay typically includes a summary of the reading followed by your thoughts and reactions. It may seem like a long and daunting task, but with a little guidance, you can be confident you’re up for the challenge.

Use the writing tips and  outline for summary response essay  sample in this essay to help you easily get started!

A Guide to Effective Summary Response Essays

Abir Ghenaiet

Abir is a data analyst and researcher. Among her interests are artificial intelligence, machine learning, and natural language processing. As a humanitarian and educator, she actively supports women in tech and promotes diversity.

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24 How do I Write a Response Essay?

Pre-writing steps:

  • Read the essay prompt carefully.
  • Activate schema

Actively read the assigned article.

Analyze the article to determine the rhetorical situation.

  • Consider your own thoughts about the article.
  • Decide how you want to respond.

Conference #1

Structure your essay.

  • Outline the essay you want to write.

Draft a working thesis.

Drafting the essay:

Write a summary of the article as your introduction.

Write 3 or more body paragraphs in response to the article.

Review your draft so far.

Write the conclusion to summarize your thoughts.

Revising steps:

Peer review

Conference #2

  • Revise your essay.
  • Proofread your essay.

—————————————–

Read the essay prompt carefully

  • Highlight or note the important points
  • Ask questions for any part that isn’t clear to you.
  • Retrieve your assigned article.

Activate schema.

  • Skim and scan the article to identify the topic and the author(s).  Look for subtitles and boldly printed words.  Read the author’s bio which is often located at the beginning or at the end of the article.  Identify the publication.  Read the first sentence of each paragraph.  Ask yourself, “Am I familiar with this topic?” This will help you to activate your schema.
  • identify the key points and ideas
  • make note of where you agree or disagree
  • highlight impactful sentences to quote the author later
  • paraphrase the author’s words
  • summarize the article
  • What is the message?
  • What is the context?
  • Who is the author?
  • What is the author’s purpose?
  • What is the structure of the text?
  • Who is the audience?

Consider your own thoughts about the author and their message.

  • What do I think about this topic?
  • Is this author trustworthy?
  • Is the article written to inform or persuade me?
  • If it is written to persuade, on which points do I agree or disagree?
  • Is the author biased?
  • Does the article have an objective or subjective tone?
  • What did I like or dislike about what the author has written in this article?
  • What made the most sense to me? What was confusing about this article?

Decide how to respond.

There are several ways in which to respond to an article.  You may choose a type of response from the following list:

  • Before/After- Discuss your thoughts about this topic before you read the article, then explain what you learned from the article using evidence from the text.
  • Persuasion- Discuss which parts of the articles you found convincing and/or which parts of the article you did not find convincing.
  • Agreement or Disagreement- Discuss an idea that the author presented to which you agree or disagree. If there were two points of view that were presented, explain which one you agree with and explain why.
  • Affect- Explain the emotional effect that the article had on you. Explain why you responded that way including your own background and your own thoughts/ experiences.
  • Association- Share something from the article that is similar to your own experience.  Or relate the information to a different article that you have read before this article.
  • Most students wait until they have a draft, but seriously, this is the best time to talk to a writing tutor about your project.
  • HCC has several options for free tutoring. Best choice: after class, drop in at the Composition and Learning Center (CLC) in Duncan Hall 210. This is staffed by current HCC English professors, and you can talk to one for 10-20 minutes about your assignment and your ideas for your topic, and what to include in your essay.
  • There are also drop-in tutors at the Learning Assistance Center (LAC) in RCF 340.
  • an introduction- a summary paragraph of the article
  • a response- 3 or more body paragraphs responding to the author
  • a conclusion- a concluding paragraph summing up your thoughts.

Outline the essay your want to write.

  • Use the structure of the response essay to determine the order of each paragraph.  Gather your notes. Review the way you chose to respond.   Write a main idea statement for each paragraph of your essay.  Then, list (using bullet points) the details that you want to include under each main idea statement. You can also list relevant quotes from the article that support your ideas.
  • A thesis includes your topic and what you are going to say about this topic.
  • A thesis always has two parts: a topic AND something important about this topic that your essay is going to discuss.
  • A thesis is NEVER a question.
  • Use your notes and the rhetorical situation of the article to write a summary.  Begin with an introductory sentence that introduces the publisher, author, topic, purpose, and the main idea of the article.
  • Next, write a few sentences to describe the key points the author made to support the main idea.
  • End your summary with your thesis.
  • During your pre-writing, you decided how you might want to respond to the article.  Use your outline to draft your body paragraphs.  Use your synthesis skills to corporate relevant quotes from the article into paragraphs to support your ideas.
  • Is your summary of the article concise, objective, and accurate?
  • Do your body paragraphs respond to the article?
  • Do you have a main idea for each of the body paragraphs?
  • Do the sentences in each paragraph support each main idea?
  • This question is extremely important.  If you find that you did not respond to the article in the way you had originally planned, revise your thesis.
  • End your essay by summarizing the main points you shared in your body paragraphs.
  • A classmate; a friend; a relative: ask someone to read over your work. Note their questions as they read.
  • At the very least, read your essay aloud to yourself, stopping when you get tripped up in words or sentences. Consider how to make these rough spots easier to read.
  • Schedule a conference with your instructor, or drop in on their student/office hours, or send them a Zoom request to talk about any questions you have about your draft.
  • You can also drop in at the CLC in DH210 or LAC in RCF 340 to have a conference with a tutor.

Revise your essay

  • Look at your outline: have you forgotten anything?
  • Do a paragraph outline of just main idea sentences for each paragraph: you’ll have a 5-7 sentence summary of your whole essay.

Proofread your essay

  • take on an objective tone?
  •  introduce the article properly?
  • capture the main point of the article?
  • respond to the article?
  • capture your thoughts and opinions?
  • begin with a main idea statement followed by detail?
  • include quotes from the article?
  • concisely review your thoughts about the article?
  • Major grammar errors include run-on sentences, comma splices, and sentence fragments.
  • You are responsible for running Grammarly or another grammar/spellcheck before your essay is submitted.
  • Your instructors want to focus on improving your WRITING—not technical errors that machines can catch easily.
  • Use Modern Language Association (MLA) guidelines for formatting your academic essay and for any in-text citations or a Works Cited page.

College Reading & Writing: A Handbook for ENGL- 090/095 Students Copyright © by Yvonne Kane; Krista O'Brien; and Angela Wood. All Rights Reserved.

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  • M.Ed., Education Administration, University of Georgia
  • B.A., History, Armstrong State University

Most of the time when you are tasked with an essay about a book or article you've read for a class, you will be expected to write in a professional and impersonal voice. But the regular rules change a bit when you write a response paper.

A response (or reaction) paper differs from the formal review primarily in that it is written in the first person . Unlike in more formal writing, the use of phrases like "I thought" and "I believe" is encouraged in a response paper. 

You'll still have a thesis and will need to back up your opinion with evidence from the work, but this type of paper spotlights your individual reaction as a reader or viewer.

Read and Respond

Grace Fleming

For a response paper, you still need to write a formal assessment of the work you're observing (this could be anything created, such as a film, a work of art, a piece of music, a speech, a marketing campaign, or a written work), but you will also add your own personal reaction and impressions to the report.

The steps for completing a reaction or response paper are:

  • Observe or read the piece for an initial understanding.
  • Mark interesting pages with a sticky flag or take notes on the piece to capture your first impressions.
  • Reread the marked pieces and your notes and stop to reflect often.
  • Record your thoughts.
  • Develop a thesis.
  • Write an outline.
  • Construct your essay.

It may be helpful to imagine yourself watching a movie review as you're preparing your outline. You will use the same framework for your response paper: a summary of the work with several of your own thoughts and assessments mixed in.

The First Paragraph

After you have established an outline for your paper, you need to craft the first draft of the essay using all the basic elements found in any strong paper, including a strong introductory sentence .

In the case of a reaction essay, the first sentence should contain both the title of the work to which you are responding and the name of the author.

The last sentence of your introductory paragraph should contain a thesis statement . That statement will make your overall opinion very clear.

Stating Your Opinion

There's no need to feel shy about expressing your own opinion in a position paper, even though it may seem strange to write "I feel" or "I believe" in an essay. 

In the sample here, the writer analyzes and compares the plays but also manages to express personal reactions. There's a balance struck between discussing and critiquing the work (and its successful or unsuccessful execution) and expressing a reaction to it.

Sample Statements

When writing a response essay, you can include statements like the following:

  • I felt that
  • In my opinion
  • The reader can conclude that
  • The author seems to
  • I did not like
  • This aspect didn't work for me because
  • The images seemed to
  • The author was [was not] successful in making me feel
  • I was especially moved by
  • I didn't understand the connection between
  • It was clear that the artist was trying to
  • The soundtrack seemed too
  • My favorite part was...because

Tip : A common mistake in personal essays it to resort to insulting comments with no clear explanation or analysis. It's OK to critique the work you are responding to, but you still need to back up your feelings, thoughts, opinions, and reactions with concrete evidence and examples from the work. What prompted the reaction in you, how, and why? What didn't reach you and why?

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Lindsay Ann Learning English Teacher Blog

Best Summary and Response Essay Strategies for Student Writers

summary-and-response-essay

July 13, 2020 //  by  Lindsay Ann //   3 Comments

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Have you tried summary and response essays in your English language arts classroom? In this post, we’ll explore the benefits of summary and response, and I’ll offer questions you can use to help your students find just what they want to say in a They Say, I Say assignment.

It is my hope as an English teacher that my students will write with frequency and with voice . 

To this end, I frequently ask them to compose written responses to various texts we read in class, from short stories, to poems, to nonfiction articles.

Goals of a Summary and Response Essay

First, I want students to closely read the text . This means reading (and re-reading) for critical understanding of the text, making marginal notes, and marking important passages. As students closely read, they should be thinking about the author’s message, style, and impact on them as readers .

Although a summary-response paper may be intended to demonstrate that students have read the required text(s), I want more than simple reading comprehension . 

I want students to think critically.

Therefore, I teach students to read for comprehension  so that they can join the conversation started by the author. 

In this conversation, students must be prepared to respond and evaluate, adding unique thought and analysis prompted by the original text, extending the author’s thoughts with their own . This is what summary and response essay writing is all about.

To state it simply, I often use the analogy of a dinner table conversation. I tell students that reading a text is like pulling up a chair to the dinner table (the text is the main course). To join the dinner conversation, they must be unique, they must do more than summarize the original text, and they must spend time thinking .

Summary Writing Tips

Writing a summary is a lot like the “echo back” step in a good conversation. It’s a check for understanding. Before I move on to add my own thoughts into the conversation, I want to make sure that first I am hearing and understanding what the other person is saying. 

summary-and-response-essay

This is the “they say” part of response writing. 

➡️ It should be in students’ own words. It should be brief, yet long enough to fully represent the author’s main claim and key supporting points. 

❗️ Summary writing is one of the BEST ways for students to improve their reading comprehension, and with increasingly complex texts, students must learn to represent increasingly complex ideas and nuanced organizational structures used by an author to convey his or her ideas. 

The first step in writing a good summary is to mark the text. I model this for students, showing them how I recognize what a paragraph or section of the text or the text as a whole is about. I talk out loud, state what I wonder and what I notice. Then I ask students to join the conversation by doing the same. 

As I do this, I am emphasizing that this is a conversation students are preparing to join. We have to first understand the message that an author is saying.

  • So, what is this author trying to say? 
  • What points is the author making? 
  • What organizational choices does the author use to convey his or her ideas? 
  • What relationships are directly stated or implied between ideas? 
  • What is the larger context for this conversation? 
  • How does the author’s message fit into the context?
  • What bigger picture significance of this topic does the author discuss or imply?

All of this starts with the question of “what do you notice?”  

As students make observations, I help them start to weave together these observations so that they can notice patterns and the author’s overall claim or message.

And, with practice, students begin to do this on their own in a summary and response essay.

Best Ways to Respond to a Text

➡️ After students are able to fully understand and represent the author’s ideas and convey this in the “They Say” portion of their response, we add the “I Say” portion of the response. 

summary-and-response-essay

❗️ In the beginning of the year, we focus solely on the “They Say” in writing until students are demonstrating proficiency. As they do this, I frontload “I Say” skills through informal conversation and debates in the classroom. That way, when I ask students to formalize their thoughts in an “I Say” written response, they are ready. 

For the “I Say,” it’s important to recognize the connection between written opinion and voiced response. Some students need to talk through their opinions before fully developing them in writing. 

For students to be able to add their own ideas to the author’s ideas in a summary and response essay, they must first have something unique and important to say. 

➡️ A sign of undeveloped thinking in response is if a student simply regurgitates the author’s ideas without extending these ideas through new examples or divergent thinking. 

❗️ I want my students to say “yes, AND” or “yes, BUT” to the author. I want them to make their own opinions and examples heard as a part of the conversation as if they are sitting down to dinner with the author and discussing the focus topic in detail.

Questions for Response Writing

The following list will help students shape the thinking that they will produce in response to different texts.

➡️ For all of these suggestions, students should always connect back to the original text(s) with in-text citations, quotes and paraphrasing when appropriate ( but be careful not to over-quote or over-paraphrase – you want this paper to be based on the original text, but also a reflection of your own thinking ).

Ways to Say “Yes, And” or “Yes, But” in Response

Ask a Question:  

  • Pose a related question to the author and explain how the author might answer it
  • Generate a question that the text prompts of you and answer it
  • Generate a question that the text prompts of you, and use additional research to extend the author’s ideas

Use Comparison/Contrast:

  • Compare an author’s claim to the claim(s) made in a different text or by a different author
  • Show how an author’s perspective or claim is different from something else or someone else’s idea

Try Analysis:  

  • Explain an emotional response to the piece you had and analyze what made you have this reaction:  was it something about yourself, culture, or society?
  • Explain why you had a hard time connecting with a text or an author’s claim
  • If responding to an older text or a different cultural text, explain how the author’s claim might function or malfunction in today’s society or your culture
  • Explain how this text could be seen differently through another person’s or another theory’s perspective
  • Explain how a controversy or other historical situation may have given rise to the author’s essay
  • Expose how your own bias or assumptions may interfere with your reading experience

Say “Yes, And”:

  • Extend one of the author’s ideas into a broader context discussion.  In other words, what is this idea a part of?
  • Pose an observation or realization this text sparks in you
  • Pose an important word or concept and explain how the author might define it
  • Examine a similar or parallel issue that this text is related to

Use Argumentation For or Against an Idea Offered by the Author:

  • If you turned the subject of this text into a question on which people would vote, how would you vote – and why?
  • State one of the author’s claims and bring in additional outside reasons and evidence (personal or researched) for or against this claim
  • Explain your subtly different definition of a term or perspective of a claim, and why this difference, while subtle, is important
  • Expose an author’s assumption or bias and explain why this assumption or bias weakens or strengthens his/her idea

Use Argumentation For or Against the Way an Author Presents Ideas:

  • Evidence:   Do facts and examples fairly represent the available data on the topic?  Are the author’s facts and examples current, accurate?
  • Logic:   Has the author adhered to standards of logic?  Has the author avoided, for instance, fallacies such as personal attacks and faulty generalizations?
  • Development:   Does each part of the presentation seem well-developed, satisfying to you in the extent of its treatment?  Is each main point adequately illustrated and supported with evidence?
  • Fairness:   If the issue being discussed is controversial, has the author seriously considered and responded to his opponents’ viewpoints?
  • Definitions:   Have terms important to the discussion been clearly defined – and if not, has lack of definition confused matters?

Audience:   Is the essay appropriate for its audience – does it convince who it’s intended to convince?

Wrapping Up

Thanks for reading this post! Phew, it was a long one, but I hope that you found questions that will help your students be successful with summary and response essay assignments. Please leave a comment below to let me know what you thought and if I can help!

Hey, if you loved this post, I want to be sure you’ve had the chance to grab a  FREE copy of my guide to streamlined grading . I know how hard it is to do all the things as an English teacher, so I’m over the moon to be able to share with you some of my best strategies for reducing the grading overwhelm.

Click on the link above or the image below to get started!

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About Lindsay Ann

Lindsay has been teaching high school English in the burbs of Chicago for 18 years. She is passionate about helping English teachers find balance in their lives and teaching practice through practical feedback strategies and student-led learning strategies. She also geeks out about literary analysis, inquiry-based learning, and classroom technology integration. When Lindsay is not teaching, she enjoys playing with her two kids, running, and getting lost in a good book.

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how do you write a summary response essay

How to Write a Response Paper: Understanding the Basics

how do you write a summary response essay

Writing a response paper is an important task for students. It allows them to critically analyze a text, express their thoughts and opinions, and improve their writing skills. In this comprehensive guide, our ‘ write my essay ’ experts will explore the basics of how to write a response paper, pre-writing steps, and crafting a winning introduction, body, and conclusion. So, let's dive in and discover a flawless response paper at the end!

Defining What is a Response Paper

A response paper is a written assignment that requires the student to read a text and respond to it by expressing their views on the topic. It can be a stand-alone assignment or part of a larger project. When writing a response paper, it is important to remember the audience you are writing for. Are you writing for your professor, classmates, or a broader audience? This will help you tailor your writing style and tone accordingly.

Moreover, this kind of academic assignment should not only summarize the text but also provide a critical analysis of its main arguments and ideas. It should demonstrate your understanding of the text and your ability to engage with it in a thoughtful and meaningful way.

Purpose of Crafting a Response Paper

Writing response papers aims to demonstrate your understanding of the text, give your opinions and thoughts, and provide evidence to support your claims. In addition, this type of paper can help you develop critical reading skills and formulate coherent arguments. By engaging with the text, you can identify its strengths and weaknesses, evaluate its claims, and form your own opinions about the topic.

Furthermore, crafting response paper examples can be a valuable exercise in self-reflection. It allows you to articulate your thoughts and feelings about a particular topic and can help you better understand your values and beliefs.

Types of Response Papers

There are various types of response papers, each with its own unique characteristics and requirements. These include:

How to Write a Response Paper

  • Personal response : Here, you express your personal opinions, thoughts, and emotions about the text. This type of paper allows you to engage with the text more personally and explore your reactions to it.
  • Critical response : Involves analyzing, evaluating, and interpreting the text to provide a critique. This type of paper requires you to engage with the text more objectively and analytically, focusing on its strengths and weaknesses and providing evidence to support your claims.
  • Research-based response : Research-based response paper examples involve using external sources to support your claims. This type of paper requires you to engage with the text and supplement your analysis with evidence from other sources, such as scholarly articles, books, or interviews.

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How to Write a Response Paper: Pre-Writing Steps

Before diving into the writing process, laying a strong foundation through effective pre-writing steps is crucial. These initial stages not only provide clarity and structure but also enhance the overall quality of your response. And if you aren’t sure how to write a reaction paper , these steps can also be employed for your assignment.

How to Write a Response Paper

Carefully Read and Analyze the Text

The first step in response paper creation is to carefully read and analyze the text. This involves more than just reading the words on the page; it requires critical thinking and analysis. As you read, pay attention to the author's tone, style, and use of language. Highlight important points, take notes, and identify the author's main argument and themes. Consider the context in which the text was written and how it relates to contemporary issues.

For example, if you are reading a historical document, think about how it reflects the social and political climate of the time. If you are reading a work of fiction, consider how the characters and plot relate to larger themes and ideas. By carefully analyzing the text, you will be better equipped to write a thoughtful and insightful response.

Take Notes and Highlight Key Points

Another important step is to take notes while reading, as it helps you organize your thoughts and ideas. As you read through the text, jot down your reactions, questions, and observations. Highlight key points, evidence, and quotes that support the author's argument. This will make it easier to refer back to specific parts of the text when you are writing your response.

Additionally, taking notes can help you identify patterns and connections between different parts of the text. This can be especially helpful when you are trying to develop your thesis statement and outline.

Develop a Thesis Statement

A thesis statement is a central argument that you will be making in your paper. It should be clear and concise and provide direction for your essay. Your thesis statement should be based on your analysis of the text and should reflect your own perspective.

When developing your thesis statement, consider the main argument of the text and how you agree or disagree with it. Think about the evidence and examples that the author uses to support their argument and how you might use those same examples to support your own argument. Your thesis statement should be specific and focused and should guide the rest of your essay.

Create an Outline

If you want to unlock the most important tip on how to ace a response paper perfection, it lies in creating a well-organized outline. Identify key points, evidence, and arguments that you want to discuss and organize them into a well-written paper format. Your outline should include an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion.

Start by introducing the text and your thesis statement. In the body paragraphs, discuss your main points and provide evidence from the text to support your argument. Use quotes and examples to illustrate your points. In conclusion, summarize your main points and restate your thesis statement. In the following paragraphs, we'll delve deeper into writing each section with more details.

Actual Writing Process with a Response Paper Format

Now that you have completed the essential pre-writing steps, it's time to delve into the actual writing process of your paper. In this section of our comprehensive guide, we will explore how to start a response paper along with developing insightful body paragraphs and culminating in a powerful conclusion.

Engage the Reader In Your Introduction

The introduction is the first impression that your reader will have of your paper. It is important to make a good first impression, so you want to engage them right from the start. There are several ways to do this, such as providing context, using a hook, or starting with a rhetorical question.

For example, if you are writing a paper about the effects of social media on mental health, you might start with a hook like:

'Did you know that the average person spends over two hours a day on social media? That's more time than they spend exercising or socializing in person.' 

When working with your paper, this hook immediately grabs the reader's attention and makes them interested in learning more about your topic.

Provide Context and Background Information

Once you have engaged the reader, it's important to provide context for the text you are analyzing. This includes information like the author's name, the title of the work, and the publication date. This information helps the reader understand the context of the text and why it is important.

For example, if you are analyzing a poem by Maya Angelou, you would want to provide some background information about her life and work. You might mention that she was a civil rights activist and a prolific writer and that the poem you are analyzing was written in 1969, during a time of great social and political upheaval in the United States.

Present Your Thesis Statement

Finally, it's important to present your thesis statement in the introduction. The thesis statement is the main argument of your paper, and it should be presented clearly and concisely so that the reader knows exactly what your paper is about.

For instance, if you are crafting a response paper example about the effects of social media on mental health, your thesis statement might be something like:

'This paper argues that excessive use of social media can have negative effects on mental health, including increased anxiety, depression, and feelings of isolation.'

By presenting your thesis statement in the introduction, you are setting up the rest of your paper and giving the reader a roadmap for what to expect. This helps them stay focused and engaged throughout your paper.

Meanwhile, you can find out more about how to write an essay format and set the right referencing style for your assignment!

Crafting the Body

One key aspect of ensuring a well-structured and articulate paper is to utilize your typical response paper outline as a reliable roadmap. By following it, you can maintain focus, coherence, and logical flow throughout your response. Moreover, keep the following points in mind as you proceed with crafting the body of your response paper:

  • Use evidence and examples from the text:
  • Incorporate relevant quotes, statistics, or other evidence that supports your opinions and arguments.
  • By using evidence from the text, you can strengthen your argument and demonstrate a deep understanding of the material.
  • Analyze and interpret the text:
  • Demonstrate your critical thinking skills by thoroughly analyzing and interpreting the text.
  • Explain how the text relates to your thesis statement and overall argument.
  • Provide a clear and concise response that showcases your knowledge and understanding of the material.
  • Address counterarguments and alternative perspectives:
  • Acknowledge and address opposing viewpoints to demonstrate your ability to consider different perspectives.
  • Explain why your argument is stronger than the opposing viewpoint.
  • Provide evidence to support your claim and solidify your stance.

Concluding Your Paper

In the conclusion of your response paper example, it is essential to consolidate your reactions, ideas, and arguments regarding the text. Summarize the key points discussed throughout your paper, drawing inferences whenever applicable. 

When uncertain about ​​ how to write a conclusion for a research paper , the first important rule is to refrain from introducing new ideas or reiterating information already presented in the introduction of your paper. Instead, provide a concise and coherent summary that encapsulates the essence of your response, leaving a lasting impression on the reader.

Response Paper Example

To show you how to write a response paper effectively, our essay writer has provided an amazing example below. It will inspire you and help you on your own learning journey. Get ready to explore new ideas and expand your knowledge with our response paper sample.

As we conclude this comprehensive guide on how to write a response paper, you have acquired the essential tools and knowledge to embark on your writing journey with confidence. With a firm grasp of pre-writing strategies, the art of crafting an engaging introduction, organizing a well-structured body, and understanding the significance of supporting arguments and addressing counter arguments with a good response paper example, you are poised to leave a lasting impression.

And if you ever find yourself struggling to find inspiration or facing challenges with any aspect of your essays, order essay online and take advantage of the opportunity to seek assistance from our professional writing service team. By trusting us with your college essays and ordering a response paper, you can confidently navigate your academic journey!

Take the Stress Out of Writing Response Essays!

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How to Write a Response Paper

Last Updated: January 31, 2023 Fact Checked

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For a response paper, you must read a text, understand the point of the text, and determine what your own response to that point is. The response paper is more analytical than argumentative. Moreover, even though you need to write about your personal response, that response must be credible and not emotional. Keep reading to learn more about how to go about writing a response paper.

Understanding the Text

Step 1 Take thorough notes.

  • Highlighting draws your attention to words and passages you found significant in the text you read, but it does not allow you to record your initial thoughts regarding those passages.
  • Take notes on a separate piece of paper. Include paraphrases and quotes taken from the passage as well as your own thoughts about the information you write down.

Step 2 Develop your understanding of the reading by asking questions.

  • What is the main issue that the author or creator is attempting to address?
  • What stance does the author take on this issue? What is the author's main claim or point?
  • Are there any assumptions the author makes in forming his or her claim? Are these assumptions valid or biased?
  • What sort of evidence does the author offer in support of his or her point?
  • What points of the argument are strong?
  • What points of the argument are weak?
  • What are some possible counterarguments to the claims or arguments made by the author?
  • What, if anything, makes the main issue or author's main claim important?

Step 3 Consider the work within a larger body of works, when appropriate.

  • How does this work relate to others within a collection of works on the same topic, or with regards to another work on a similar topic written by a different author?
  • Do the authors of comparable works agree or disagree?
  • Do the authors of comparable works address the same part of the same issue or different aspects of it? Do they view the matter being discussed in a similar or different way?
  • Does the author who wrote the piece you're responding to have past works that address the same topic? How has that author's views become stronger or weaker in comparison to past works?
  • Does the information from one text strengthen or weaken the text you're responding to, and if so, how?

Step 1 Do not drag your feet.

  • Even if you think your ideas would benefit from simmering for a little while before performing a thorough analysis, you should still take the time to write down your initial reaction while it is fresh. In many ways, your initial reaction is the most honest. You can talk yourself into another reaction as time passes, and that other reaction may seem more “intellectual,” but your initial response was your true reaction to the text and should be kept in mind.

Step 2 Ask yourself about your own reaction.

  • How does the text relate to you personally, whether in the past, present, or future? How does the text relate to the human experience as a whole?
  • Does the text agree or disagree with your worldview and sense of ethics?
  • Did the text help you to learn about the topic or understand an opposing view? Were your opinions or previous assumptions challenged or confirmed?
  • Does the text directly address topics that you care about or consider important?
  • Was the text enjoyable or admirable for its genre? In other words, if the text was fictional, was it enjoyable as entertainment or art? If it was historical, was it admirable from the perspective of a historian? If it was philosophical, was it adequately logical?
  • What is your overall reaction? Would you recommend the work to another person?
  • As you progress through these questions, write your answers down. In addition to writing down your answers and reactions, also provide evidence from the text to support these answers. Evidence can be in the form of direct quotations and paraphrasing.

Step 3 Determine which reactions are the strongest.

  • Re-examining your notes
  • Recording new ideas as they come
  • Using pro/con analysis
  • Raising questions about your reactions and using your notes from the text to answer them
  • Comparing your reactions directly to your notes and determining which topics have the most overlap

Step 4 Choose an area of focus or organizing argument.

  • Depending on the requirements of the assignment, you may need to come up with one organizing argument or multiple arguments to discuss. Even when you have multiple points to bring up, however, they should still be somewhat connected to each other.
  • A key difference between a traditional thesis and an organizing argument is that a thesis usually exists to prove a point, fact, or thought. An organizing argument demands that the writer analyze the reading in an ongoing manner. [6] X Research source

Block Response Format

Step 1 Write your introduction.

  • For a four to five page paper, your introduction can extend to one or two paragraphs. For a shorter paper, though, restrict it to a short paragraph made up of three to five sentences.
  • Introduce the work by describing how the work to which you are responding fits in within the broader topic it addresses.
  • You could also introduce the work by explaining your own beliefs or assumptions about the topic the work agrees with before explaining how the work challenges or supports your beliefs.

Step 2 Summarize the work.

  • For a four to five page paper, this section should only take up about two to three paragraphs.
  • Describe the content of the work and present the author's main arguments, especially as they affect your response.
  • The summary should be somewhat analytical in nature instead of a strict retelling. As you present the details of the author's work and argument, you should use an analytical tone and discuss how well the author managed to get those points across.

Step 3 Present and discuss your organizing argument.

  • Note that this response format is best to use when you are focusing on a single major theme or argument in a work. It does not work as well if you are discussing multiple ideas presented by a work.
  • Back up your analysis with quotes and paraphrases. Make sure that each example is properly cited.
  • If you took the time to find textual evidence to support your responses during the prewriting stage, this portion of your paper should be fairly easy. All you really need to do is arrange your argument in a coherent manner and write in the details of the support you have already gathered.

Step 4 Write your conclusion.

  • Even for a four to five page paper, you only need one standard paragraph to accomplish this. For a shorter paper, make this paragraph only three to five sentences long.
  • State how this work has a broader effect on you and to the genre or community in which it is a part.

Mixed Response Format

Step 1 Write an introduction.

  • Your introduction can span one to two paragraphs for a four to five page paper, but for a short one to two page paper, keep the introduction down to a single short paragraph.
  • You can either introduce the work by describing how it fits into the topic it addresses as a whole or by explaining how it impacts your own beliefs on the topic.
  • By the end of the introduction, you should have mentioned your "thesis" or organizing argument.

Step 2 Summarize and agree or disagree with one point.

  • Note that this mixed response format is a better option when you have many loosely connected themes or ideas you want to react to instead of a single overarching one.
  • This method allows you to weave your summary and analysis together more naturally and more cohesively. As you bring up a point or example from the text, address your own interpretation of that point directly following your mention of it.

Step 3 Summarize and agree or disagree with a second point, and so on.

  • Continue on as you did with your first point. As you summarize a point or argument from the original text, immediately follow it with your own intellectual response to the argument.

Step 4 Wrap things up with a conclusion.

  • For a four to five page paper, your conclusion should be a standard size paragraph. For a shorter paper, keep this paragraph down to about three sentences.
  • When appropriate, explain how the work has a widespread effect on the genre or community it fits into.
  • ↑ https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/how-to-write-a-response-paper
  • ↑ https://www.hunter.cuny.edu/rwc/handouts/the-writing-process-1/invention/Writing-a-Response-or-Reaction-Paper
  • ↑ https://twp.duke.edu/sites/twp.duke.edu/files/file-attachments/response-paper.original.pdf
  • ↑ https://www.awelu.lu.se/genres/student-writing-genres/response-paper/
  • ↑ http://faculty.washington.edu/momara/Reader%20Response.pdf
  • ↑ https://grammar.yourdictionary.com/writing/how-to-write-a-strong-response-essay.html
  • ↑ https://writing.colostate.edu/comparchive/rst/resource9.cfm
  • ↑ https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/how-to-write-a-reaction-paper
  • ↑ http://writing.colostate.edu/comparchive/rst/resource9.cfm
  • ↑ http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/rwc/handouts/the-writing-process-1/invention/Writing-a-Response-or-Reaction-Paper

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Anna Bauer - SLE Student

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About This Article

If you need to write a response paper, read through the original texts, and take thorough notes, including paraphrases and quotes as well as your own thoughts. As soon as you finish reading the text, start drafting your ideas, since the thoughts will still be fresh in your mind. Open the paper with an introduction stating the major theme in the work you’re responding to, along with an overview of your reaction to it. Include a section briefly summarizing the original text, then go into detail about whether you agree or disagree with the work. Conclude by restating and defending the significance of your stance. For tips on writing a response to a work with multiple themes, keep reading! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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how do you write a summary response essay

How To Write A Summary Response Essay

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A summary response essay is a unique type of writing that combines summarizing a piece of work and responding to it. It’s popular among students and avid readers. This essay type helps you understand texts better and express your thoughts. In a summary response essay, you first condense the content (summary) and then share your insights or reactions (response).

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In this article, we’ll explore:

  • How To Write A Good Summary Response Essay: Learn the secrets to crafting an effective summary response essay.
  • How To Write A Summary Response Of An Article: Tips for summarizing and responding to articles.
  • How To Write A Summary And Response Paper: Step-by-step guide to handle various texts.
  • How To Write A Summary Response Essay Example: Real-world examples to illustrate key points.
  • Conclusion: How Mindgrasp can streamline this process for students and professionals.

Whether you’re a student, an avid reader, or just looking to sharpen your writing skills, this guide will help you create impactful summary response essays with ease.

how to write a summary response essay

how to write a summary response essay

  • To know more about our suite of resources for students, read our other articles:
  • What is the Difference Between Summarizing and Paraphrasing?
  • Tips to Improve Memorization on Exams
  • Writing a Summary and Analysis Essay

How To Write A Good Summary Response Essay

To write an excellent summary response essay, include these key elements:

  • Clear Summary of the Main Points: Capture the essence of the source material.
  • Personal Response with Examples: Present your perspective with supportive evidence.
  • Logical Organization and Structure: Ensure a smooth flow of ideas.
  • Proper Citations and References: Acknowledge the original source.

Clear Summary of the Main Points

  • Begin by concisely summarizing the main ideas of the text. 
  • Focus on the primary arguments, leaving out minor details. 
  • This part should give readers a clear understanding of the original work without having to read it.

Personal Response with Examples

  • Next, articulate your response to the text. 
  • This could be an agreement, disagreement, or a deeper analysis. 
  • Support your viewpoint with examples or anecdotes to make it more compelling. 
  • This personal touch differentiates your essay from a simple summary.

Logical Organization and Structure

  • Organize your essay logically. Start with an introduction, followed by the summary, your response, and then a conclusion. 
  • This structure helps readers follow your thought process and enhances the clarity of your arguments.

Proper Citations and References

  • Always cite your sources. Whether you’re quoting directly or paraphrasing, proper citations are crucial for credibility and avoiding plagiarism. 
  • This shows respect for the original author’s work.

how do you write a summary response essay

how to write a good summary response essay

Mindgrasp’s Role in Your Essay Writing

Mindgrasp can be an invaluable tool for writing your summary response essay. It helps by providing concise summaries of long texts, generating study guides, and even creating flashcards for key points. This AI tool simplifies understanding complex materials, allowing you to focus more on crafting a compelling personal response. With Mindgrasp, you can write better essays more efficiently, making it a perfect aid for students and professionals alike.

“Upload everything from powerpoint's to books or videos and generate anything from summaries to notes, flash cards and quizzes.”

how do you write a summary response essay

How To Write A Summary Response Of An Article

Writing a summary response of an article involves understanding the article’s content and presenting your viewpoints. Follow these steps:

Read and Understand the Article

  • Before writing, read the article thoroughly.
  • Note key points, arguments, and any evidence presented.
  • Understanding the article’s main idea is crucial for an effective summary.

Write a Concise Summary

  • Summarize the main points of the article in your own words.
  • Focus on the core arguments, leaving out less important details.
  • This summary sets the foundation for your response.

Develop Your Response

  • Reflect on how the article’s content resonates with you.
  • Agree, disagree, or analyze the points made in the article.
  • Use specific examples or experiences to support your response.

Combine Summary and Response Coherently

  • Start with the summary, then transition smoothly into your response.
  • Ensure that your response directly relates to the points made in the summary.
  • This coherence makes your essay compelling and easy to follow.

By following these steps, you can effectively write a summary response of an article. The process involves a deep understanding of the article, summarizing its key points, and then articulately responding with your own insights and viewpoints.

how to write a summary response of an article

how to write a summary response of an article

How To Write A Summary And Response Paper

To make your summary and response paper stand out, focus on these key aspects:

Unique Perspective in Response

  • Share a distinct viewpoint that reflects your unique understanding.
  • Avoid generic responses; instead, delve into how the text personally impacts you.
  • This personal touch can make your paper more engaging and memorable.

Critical Analysis and Insight

  • Go beyond mere agreement or disagreement.
  • Analyze the text’s deeper meanings, implications, and the effectiveness of its arguments.
  • This depth of analysis demonstrates your critical thinking skills.

Engaging Introduction and Conclusion

  • Start with an introduction that captivates the reader’s interest.
  • Use a hook, such as a provocative question or an interesting quote.
  • Conclude with a strong statement that summarizes your main points and leaves a lasting impression.

Use of Evidence and Examples

  • Strengthen your response with relevant examples and evidence.
  • Quote the text or bring in external sources to support your viewpoints.
  • This evidence-based approach adds credibility to your paper.

Incorporating these elements into your summary and response paper will make it stand out. By presenting a unique perspective, conducting a thorough analysis, engaging the reader from start to finish, and supporting your points with evidence, your paper can leave a strong, lasting impact.

how to write a summary and response paper

how to write a summary and response paper

How To Write A Summary Response Essay Example

Finding and analyzing examples of summary response essays can greatly aid in writing your own. Here’s how to go about it:

Locate Quality Examples

  • Look for examples in academic databases, university websites, and reputable online educational resources.
  • Libraries and writing centers can also provide well-written essay examples.
  • Ensure that the examples you choose are relevant to the topic and type of text you’re working with.

Analyze the Structure and Content

  • Study how the example essays are structured. Notice the balance between the summary and response sections.
  • Observe how the writers introduce the text, summarize the main points, and transition to their response.
  • Pay attention to the use of citations and how they integrate personal opinions with textual evidence.

Learn from Different Writing Styles

  • Each example will have its unique writing style. Note the differences and what makes each effective.
  • Analyze the tone, language, and the level of formality used in the essays.
  • Understanding varied styles can help you develop a more versatile writing approach.

Apply Techniques to Your Writing

  • Identify effective strategies used in the examples, such as compelling introductions, clear summarizations, and strong argumentative responses.
  • Try to incorporate these techniques into your own writing.
  • Remember, examples serve as guides but your essay should retain your unique voice and perspective.

By studying examples, you gain insights into effective strategies and common structures used in summary response essays. This knowledge will help you craft a well-organized and insightful essay of your own.

how to write a summary response essay example

how to write a summary response essay example

Write Your Best Summary Response Essay With Mindgrasp

To excel in writing your summary response essay, remember these key points:

  • Understand and summarize the main points of the source material.
  • Articulate a personal response with supporting examples.
  • Ensure logical organization and structure in your essay.
  • Use proper citations for credibility.
  • Differentiate your approach when responding to scholarly papers versus articles.
  • Learn from examples to enhance your writing style and structure.

In the fast-paced world of academics and professional writing, AI tools offer significant advantages. They streamline the research and writing process, helping you create high-quality essays efficiently. Mindgrasp stands out as a particularly effective solution. It aids in quickly understanding complex texts, organizing ideas, and even generating outlines for your essays. 

Whether you’re a student juggling multiple assignments or a professional seeking to articulate your thoughts clearly, Mindgrasp simplifies these tasks. By leveraging AI-powered tools, you save time, enhance the quality of your work, and stay ahead in your academic or professional journey. Choose Mindgrasp as your partner for writing impactful and insightful summary response essays.

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How to Write a Critical Response Essay With Examples and Tips

16 January 2024

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A critical response essay is an important type of academic essay, which instructors employ to gauge the students’ ability to read critically and express their opinions. Firstly, this guide begins with a detailed definition of a critical essay and an extensive walkthrough of source analysis. Next, the manual on how to write a critical response essay breaks down the writing process into the pre-writing, writing, and post-writing stages and discusses each stage in extensive detail. Finally, the manual provides practical examples of an outline and a critical response essay, which implement the writing strategies and guidelines of critical response writing. After the examples, there is a brief overview of documentation styles. Hence, students need to learn how to write a perfect critical response essay to follow its criteria.

Definition of a Critical Response Essay

A critical response essay presents a reader’s reaction to the content of an article or any other piece of writing and the author’s strategy for achieving his or her intended purpose. Basically, a critical response to a piece of text demands an analysis, interpretation, and synthesis of a reading. Moreover, these operations allow readers to develop a position concerning the extent to which an author of a text creates a desired effect on the audience that an author establishes implicitly or explicitly at the beginning of a text. Mostly, students assume that a critical response revolves around the identification of flaws, but this aspect only represents one dimension of a critical response. In turn, a critical response essay should identify both the strengths and weaknesses of a text and present them without exaggeration of their significance in a text.

Source Analysis

How to write a critical response essay

1. Questions That Guide Source Analysis

Writers engage in textual analysis through critical reading. Hence, students undertake critical reading to answer three primary questions:

  • What does the author say or show unequivocally?
  • What does the author not say or show outright but implies intentionally or unintentionally in the text?
  • What do I think about responses to the previous two questions?

Readers should strive to comprehensively answer these questions with the context and scope of a critical response essay. Basically, the need for objectivity is necessary to ensure that the student’s analysis does not contain any biases through unwarranted or incorrect comparisons. Nonetheless, the author’s pre-existing knowledge concerning the topic of a critical response essay is crucial in facilitating the process of critical reading. In turn, the generation of answers to three guiding questions occurs concurrently throughout the close reading of an assigned text or other essay topics .

2. Techniques of Critical Reading

Previewing, reading, and summarizing are the main methods of critical reading. Basically, previewing a text allows readers to develop some familiarity with the content of a critical response essay, which they gain through exposure to content cues, publication facts, important statements, and authors’ backgrounds. In this case, readers may take notes of questions that emerge in their minds and possible biases related to prior knowledge. Then, reading has two distinct stages: first reading and rereading and annotating. Also, students read an assigned text at an appropriate speed for the first time with minimal notetaking. After that, learners reread a text to identify core and supporting ideas, key terms, and connections or implied links between ideas while making detailed notes. Lastly, writers summarize their readings into the main points by using their own words to extract the meaning and deconstruct critical response essays into meaningful parts.

3. Creating a Critical Response

Up to this point, source analysis is a blanket term that represents the entire process of developing a critical response. Mainly, the creation of a critical response essay involves analysis, interpretation, and synthesis, which occur as distinct activities. In this case, students analyze their readings by breaking down texts into elements with distilled meanings and obvious links to a thesis statement . During analysis, writers may develop minor guiding questions under first and second guiding questions, which are discipline-specific. Then, learners focus on interpretations of elements to determine their significance to an assigned text as a whole, possible meanings, and assumptions under which they may exist. Finally, authors of critical response essays create connections through the lens of relevant pre-existing knowledge, which represents a version of the element’s interconnection that they perceive to be an accurate depiction of a text.

Writing Steps of a Critical Response Essay

Step 1: pre-writing, a. analysis of writing situation.

Purpose. Before a student begins writing a critical response essay, he or she must identify the main reason for communication to the audience by using a formal essay format. Basically, the primary purposes of writing a critical response essay are explanation and persuasion. In this case, it is not uncommon for two purposes to overlap while writing a critical response essay. However, one of the purposes is usually dominant, which implies that it plays a dominant role in the wording, evidence selection, and perspective on a topic. In turn, students should establish their purposes in the early stages of the writing process because the purpose has a significant effect on the essay writing approach.

Audience. Students should establish a good understanding of the audience’s expectations, characteristics, attitudes, and knowledge in anticipation of the writing process. Basically, learning the audience’s expectations enables authors to meet the organizational demands, ‘burden of proof,’ and styling requirements. In college writing, it is the norm for all essays to attain academic writing standards. Then, the interaction between characteristics and attitudes forces authors to identify a suitable voice, which is appreciative of the beliefs and values of the audience. Lastly, writers must consider the level of knowledge of the audience while writing a critical response essay because it has a direct impact on the context, clarity, and readability of a paper. Consequently, a critical response essay for classmates is quite different from a paper that an author presents to a multi-disciplinary audience.

Define a topic. Topic selection is a critical aspect of the prewriting stage. Ideally, assignment instructions play a crucial role in topic selection, especially in higher education institutions. For example, when writing a critical response essay, instructors may choose to provide students with a specific article or general instructions to guide learners in the selection of relevant reading sources. Also, students may not have opportunities for independent topic selection in former circumstances. However, by considering the latter assignment conditions, learners may need to identify a narrow topic to use in article selection. Moreover, students should take adequate time to do preliminary research, which gives them a ‘feel’ of the topic, for example, 19th-century literature. Next, writers narrow down the scope of the topic based on their knowledge and interests, for example, short stories by black female writers from the 19 th century.

B. Research and Documentation

Find sources. Once a student has a topic, he or she can start the process of identifying an appropriate article. Basically, choosing a good source for writing a critical response essay occurs is much easier when aided with search tools on the web or university repository. In this case, learners select keywords or other unique qualities of an article and develop a search filter. Moreover, authors review abstracts or forewords of credible sources to determine their suitability based on their content. Besides content, other factors constrain the article selection process: the word count for a critical response essay and a turnaround time. In turn, if an assignment has a fixed length of 500 words and a turnaround time of one week, it is not practical to select a 200-page source despite content suitability.

Content selection. The process of selecting appropriate content from academic sources relies heavily on the purpose of a critical response essay. Basically, students must select evidence that they will include in a paper to support their claims in each paragraph. However, writers tend to let a source speak through the use of extensive quotations or summaries, which dilutes a synthesis aspect of a critical response essay. Instead, learners should take a significant portion of time to identify evidence from reliable sources , which are relevant to the purpose of an essay. Also, a student who is writing a critical analysis essay to disagree with one or more arguments will select different pieces of evidence as compared to a person who is writing to analyze the overall effectiveness of the work.

Annotated bibliography. An annotated bibliography is vital to the development of a critical response essay because it enables authors to document useful information that they encounter during research. During research and documentation stages for a critical response essay, annotated bibliographies contain the main sources for a critical analysis essay and other sources that contribute to the knowledge base of an author, even though these sources will not appear in reference lists. Mostly, a critical response essay has only one source. However, an annotated bibliography contains summaries of other sources, which may inform the author’s critical response through the development of a deep understanding of a topic. In turn, an annotated bibliography is quite useful when an individual is writing a critical response to an article on an unfamiliar topic.

Step 2: Writing a Critical Response Essay

A. organization..

Thesis . A thesis statement sentence is a crucial component of a critical response essay because it presents the student’s purpose, argument, and the conclusion that he or she draws from the textual evidence. Also, the thesis statement is the response to the thesis question, which an author creates from assignment instructions. After completing the research stage, students can develop a tentative thesis statement to act as a starting point for the writing stage. Usually, tentative thesis statements undergo numerous revisions during the writing stage, which is a consequence of the refinement of the main idea during the drafting.

Weigh the evidence. Based on the tentative thesis, an author evaluates the relative importance of collected pieces of textual evidence to the central idea. Basically, students should distinguish between general and specific ideas to ascertain that there exists a logical sequence of presentation, which the audience can readily grasp. Firstly, for writing a critical response essay, learners should identify general ideas and establish specific connections that exist between each general idea and specific details, which support a central claim. Secondly, writers should consider some implications of ideas as they conduct a sorting process and remove evidence that does not fit. Moreover, students fill ‘holes’ that are present due to the lack of adequate supporting evidence to conclude this stage.

Create an outline. An essay outline is a final product of weighing the significance of the evidence in the context of the working thesis statement. In particular, a formal outline is a preferred form of essay structure for a critical response essay because it allows for detailed documentation of ideas while maintaining a clear map of connections. During the formation of an outline, students use a systematic scheme of indentation and labeling all the parts of an outline structure. In turn, this arrangement ensures that elements that play the same role are readily discernible at a glance, for example, primary essay divisions, secondary divisions, principle supporting points, and specific details.

Drafting. The drafting step involves the conversion of the one-sentence ideas in an outline format into complete paragraphs and, eventually, a critical response essay. In this case, there is no fixed approach to writing the first draft. Moreover, students should follow a technique that they find effective in overcoming the challenge of starting to write a critical response essay. Nonetheless, it is good practice to start writing paragraphs that authors believe are more straightforward to include regardless of specific positions that they hold on an outline. In turn, learners should strive to write freely and be open to new ideas despite the use of an outline. During drafting, the conveyance of meaning is much more important than the correctness of the draft.

Step 3: Post-Writing

Individual revision. An individual revision process focuses on the rethinking and rewriting of a critical response essay to improve the meaning and structure of a paper. Essentially, students try to review their papers from a perspective of readers to ensure that the level of detail, relationship and arrangement of paragraphs, and the contribution of the minor ideas to the thesis statement attain the desired effect. In this case, the use of a checklist improves the effectiveness of individual revision. Moreover, a checklist contains 12 main evaluation categories: assignment, purpose, audience and voice, genre, thesis, organization, development, unity, coherence, title, introduction, and conclusion.

Collaborative revision. Collaborative revision is a revision strategy that covers subconscious oversight that occurs during individual revision. During an individual revision of a critical response essay, authors rely on self-criticism, which is rarely 100% effective because writers hold a bias that their works are of high quality. Therefore, subjecting an individual’s work to peer review allows students to collect critique from an actual reader who may notice problems that an author may easily overlook. In turn, learners may provide peer reviewers with a checklist to simplify the revision process.

Editing . The editing step requires authors to examine the style, clarity, and correctness of a critical response essay. In particular, students review their papers to ascertain their conformance with the guidelines of formal essay writing and the English language. Moreover, sentence fragments, subject-verb agreement, dangling modifiers, incorrect use of punctuation, vague pronoun references, and parallelism are common grammar issues that learners eliminate during editing. Then, writers confirm that their critical response essays adhere to referencing style guidelines for citation and formatting, such as the inclusion of a title page, appropriate in-text citation, and proper styling of bibliographic information in the reference list. In turn, students must proofread a critical response essay repeatedly until they find all errors because such mistakes may divert the audience’s attention from the content of a paper.

Sample Outline Template for a Critical Response Essay

I. Introduction

A. Summary of an article. B. Thesis statement.

A. First body paragraph

  • The idea for the first paragraph.
  • Evidence for the first point from an article.
  • Interpretation of the evidence.

B. Second body paragraph

  • The idea for the second paragraph.
  • Evidence for the second point from an article.

C. Third body paragraph

  • The idea for the third paragraph.
  • Evidence for the third point from an article.

III. Conclusion

A. Summary of three points that form a body section. B. Closing remarks.

Uniqueness of a Critical Response Essay Outline

The presence of a summary in the introduction and an interpretation for each piece of evidence are defining features of a critical response essay. Typically, the introduction, being one of 5 parts of an essay , does not contain a succinct summary of a source that an author uses in body paragraphs. In this case, the incorporation of a summary in the introduction paragraph provides the audience with specific information concerning the target article of a critical response. Specifically, a critical response essay differs from other response papers because it emphasizes the provision of reasonable judgments of a text rather than the testing and defense of one’s judgments. In turn, authors of a critical response essay do not provide evaluation for their judgments, which implies that critical responses may be different but correct if a specific interpretation is reasonable to the audience.

Expanding an Outline Format Into a Critical Response Essay

1. introduction.

The introductory paragraph in a critical response essay consists of two primary sections: a summary of an article and a thesis statement. Firstly, a summary of an article consists of the text’s central argument and the purpose of the presentation of the argument. Basically, students should strive to distill the main idea and purpose of the text into a few sentences because the length of the introduction is approximately 10% of the essay’s word count. Then, a summary provides the audience with adequate background information concerning an article, which forms a foundation for announcing the student’s primary idea. In this case, writers may include an additional sentence between a summary and a thesis statement to establish a smooth flow in the opening paragraph. However, learners should not quote thesis and purpose statements because it results in a fragmented introduction, which is unappealing to readers and ineffective.

  • All body paragraphs have in a critical response essay four main elements: the writer’s idea, meaningful evidence from a reading text, interpretation of the evidence, and a concluding statement.

A. Writer’s Idea

The writer’s idea for a paragraph appears in the first sentence of a paragraph, which is a topic sentence. For example, if students know how to write a topic sentence , they present readers with a complete and distinct idea that proves or supports a thesis statement. In this case, authors should carefully word their topic sentences to ensure that there is no unnecessary generalization or spillovers of ideas from other paragraphs. Notably, all the topic sentences in the body of a critical response essay share a logical relationship that allows the audience to easily follow the development of the central idea of a paper.

B. Evidence

Students should provide evidence that supports the idea that they propose in the topic sentence. Basically, the evidence for all body paragraphs is the product of critical reading of an article, which allows writers to identify meaningful portions of a text. During the presentation of evidence, learners should ascertain that the contextual meaning of paraphrases or quotations is not lost because such a strategy will harm interpretations that follow after it. In turn, critical response essays must not contain lengthy or numerous quotations unless the meaning or intended effect of a quotation is not replicable upon paraphrasing.

C. Interpretation.

Interpretation segments of paragraphs allow authors to explain the significance of the evidence to the topic sentence. In a critical response essay, the interpretation is the equivalent of an author revealing the possible assumptions behind a text paraphrase and commenting on whether or not he or she finds them reasonable. Moreover, students make inferences concerning their meaning in the context of the entire narrative and its relation to the paragraph’s idea. In turn, learners should refrain from reading too much into a piece of evidence because it may result in false or unreasonable inferences.

D. Concluding Sentence

The concluding statement is the final sentence of any paragraph. In this case, the primary role of the concluding sentence is to emphasize the link between the topic sentence, evidence, interpretation, and the essay’s central idea. Also, the concluding statement should not contain an in-text citation because it does not introduce new evidence to support the topic sentence. Therefore, authors use concluding sentences to maintain the unity between body paragraphs and a critical response essay in its entirety.

3. Conclusion

The conclusion comprises of three core elements: a restatement of a thesis statement, a summary of the main points that authors present in body paragraphs, and closing remarks. In particular, the first statement of the conclusion draws the attention of the audience to the central idea, which an author proposes in a thesis statement. Then, students review the main points of a critical response essay to demonstrate that written arguments in body paragraphs adequately support a thesis statement. Moreover, writers should summarize the main points of a paper in the same order that they appear in the main part to guarantee that logical pattern in the body is readily discernible in summary. Finally, learners make their closing remarks, which creates a sense of wholesomeness in a critical response essay or ties a paper to a larger relevant discourse.

Example of Writing a Critical Response Essay

Topic: American Capitalism: The New Face of Slavery

I. Sample Introduction of a Critical Response Essay

Capitalism is a dominant characteristic of the American economy. In this case, Matthew Desmond’s article “In Order to Understand the Brutality of American Capitalism, You Have to Start on the Plantation” discusses the role of slavery in shaping contemporary business practices. Specifically, the author attempts to convince the audience that the brutality of American capitalism originates from slavery. In turn, Desmond lays a strong but simple foundation for his argument, which ensures that the audience can conceptualize the link between plantation slavery and contemporary American capitalistic practices.

II. Example of a Body in a Critical Response Essay

A. example of the first body paragraph: american capitalism.

Early in the article, Desmond informs readers of the high variability in the manifestation of capitalism in societies, which creates the impression that American capitalism is a choice. For example, Desmond (2019) argues that the brutality of American capitalism is simply one of the possible outcomes of a society built on capitalistic principles because other societies implement the same principles in a manner that is liberating, protective, and democratic. Moreover, Desmond begins his argument by eliminating a popular presumption that exploitation and oppression are unavoidable outcomes of capitalism. In turn, this strategic move to establish this fact is in the introductory section of the article because it invites the audience to rethink the meaning of capitalism. Furthermore, its plants doubt regarding the ‘true’ meaning of capitalism outside the context of American society.

B. Example of the Second Body Paragraph: American Capitalism: Slavery and American’s Economic Growth

After establishing that the perception of capitalism through the lens of American society has some bias, Desmond proceeds to provide detailed evidence to explain the attempt to camouflage the obvious link between slavery and America’s economic growth. For instance, Desmond (2019) notes the role of Alfred Chandler’s book, The Visible Hand, and Caitlin Rosenthal’s book, Accounting for Slavery, in breaking the link between management practices in plantations and modern corporations by suggesting that the current business practices are a consequence of the 19th-century railroad industry. In this case, Desmond uses this evidence to make a logical appeal to the audience, which makes his argument more convincing because he explains the reason behind the exclusion of slavery in the discourse on modern industry. As a result, Desmond dismisses one of the main counterarguments against his central argument, which increases his persuasive power.

C. Example of the Third Body Paragraph: Input vs. Output Dynamic

Desmond emphasizes the link between slavery and American capitalism to readers by using the simple input vs. output dynamic throughout the article. For example, Desmond (2019) compares the Plantation Record and Account Book to the heavy digital surveillance techniques in modern workplaces because they collect data, which the employers use to maximize productivity while minimizing inputs. In particular, the comparison reveals that employers did not stop the practice of reducing laborers into units of production with fixed productivity thresholds. Moreover, the constant repetition of the theme of low input and high output dominates the body paragraphs, which makes it nearly impossible for readers to lose sight of the link between slavery and business practices under American capitalism. In turn, the simplification of the underlying logic in Desmond’s argument ensures its clarity to the audience.

III. Sample Conclusion of a Critical Response Essay

Desmond carefully plans the presentation of his argument to the audience, which allows readers to follow the ideas easily. In particular, the author starts with a call for readers to set aside any presumptions concerning capitalism and its origin. Then, Desmond provides the audience with an alternative narrative with support from seminal texts in slavery and economics. On the whole, Desmond manages to convince the audience that the American capitalistic society is merely a replica rather than an aberration of slavery.

Citing Sources in a Critical Response Essay

A critical response essay contains specific thoughts of the article’s author and direct words of the text’s author. In this case, students must conduct proper documentation to ensure that readers of critical response essays can distinguish between these two types of ‘voices.’ Moreover, documentation prevents incidents of plagiarism. Usually, instructors mention a referencing technique that students should use in writing a critical response essay. However, if assignment instructions do not identify a specific documentation style, writers should use a referencing technique that is acceptable for scholarly writing in their disciplines.

In-text citation:

  • Parenthetical: (Desmond, 2019).
  • Narrative: Desmond (2019).
  • Desmond, M. (2019, August 12). In order to understand the brutality of American capitalism, you have to start on the plantation . New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/slavery-capitalism.html
  • Parenthetical: (Desmond par. 1).
  • Narrative: Desmond argues . . . (par. 1).

Works Cited:

  • Desmond, Matthew. “In Order to Understand the Brutality of American Capitalism, You Have to Start on the Plantation.” New York Times , 14 Aug. 2019, www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/slavery-capitalism.html.

3. Harvard Referencing

  • Parenthetical: (Desmond 2019).

Reference List:

  • Desmond, M 2019, In order to understand the brutality of American capitalism, you have to start on the plantation . Available from: <https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/slavery-capitalism.html>. [27 August 2020].

4. Chicago/Turabian

In-text citation (footnote):

  • 1. Matthew Desmond, “In Order to Understand the Brutality of American Capitalism, You Have to Start on the Plantation,” New York Times, August 14, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/slavery-capitalism.html.

Bibliography:

  • Desmond, Matthew. “In Order to Understand the Brutality of American Capitalism, You Have to Start on the Plantation.” New York Times. August 14, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/slavery-capitalism.html.

Final Provisions on a Critical Response Essay

  • Critical reading is a precursor for writing an effective critical response essay.
  • Students must conduct adequate research on a topic to develop a proper understanding of a theme, even if only one article appears on the reference list.
  • Notetaking or annotation is a good practice that aids students in extracting meaning from an article.
  • Writers should plan for all activities in the writing process to ascertain that they have adequate time to move through all the stages.
  • An outline is an organizational tool, which learners must use to establish the sequence of ideas in a critical response essay.
  • The purpose of a critical response essay has a significant impact on the selection of evidence and the arrangement of body paragraphs.
  • Students should prioritize revision and editing, which represent opportunities to refine the content of an essay and remove mechanical issues.
  • Collaborative and individual revision are equally important because they play different roles in the writing of a critical response essay.
  • Evidence selection is dependent on the purpose and thesis statement of a critical response essay.

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