How to Write a Response Paper

Purpose of a response paper

• a way to
• express what you think about a reading in an organized way including:
• Evidence that you have understood what the reading says and does
• Your reaction to the writer’s ideas
• Your evaluation of the reading’s strengths and weaknesses
• find a stance to take with your response
• Do not repeat main points or write a summary
• craft your perspective into the argument
• use something unique/interesting to say about what you read.
• Tell your audience why it's unique and interesting.
 Writing a Response Paper Involves…
1. Critical Reading
• Identifying the ideas, organization, and purpose of the reading

2. Critical Thinking
• Analyzing and evaluating the reading and ideas

3. Reacting in Writing
• Identifying the reading’s key ideas
• Stating opinion about a particular part or all of the reading
• Supporting your opinion with appropriate details, quotations, and
explanations
 Steps to Writing a Response Paper
• Step 1:
• Look for answers to the following questions as you read it the first time:
1. What is the topic and the main problem or issue that the author is addressing?
2. What is the author’s central claim, argument, or point?
3. What assumptions does the author make?
4. What evidence does the author present?
• Step 2:
• as you read it the second time write your ideas and answers to the following
questions:
1. How do I feel about what is being said?
2. Is the author’s claim supported sufficiently?
3. Do I agree or disagree with the author?
4. What are possible counterarguments to the reading’s claims?
 Steps to Writing a Response Paper
•Step 3:
•Write a draft of the summary of the reading… Paraphrase:
• The author’s thesis
• Main supporting ideas
• Important details (only)
•Step 4:
•Write your opinion about or reaction to the reading
•Step 5:
•Write the first draft of the response paper
 Components of a Response Paper
• Introduction Paragraph:
•First Several Sentences:
• Has an engaging & historically relevant hook
• Provides historical background
• Builds up to thesis
•Last Sentence (Thesis Statement) which could:
• Expresses agreement
• partial agreement
• disagreement, or
• evaluates the text (discusses strengths and/or weaknesses)
Body Paragraphs
1. Paragraph one: Supporting detail # 1
2. Paragraph two: Supporting detail # 2
3. Paragraph three: Supporting detail # 3

•A body paragraph should:

• Start with a topic sentence (supporting detail) to explain the opinion you expressed
in your thesis
• contain a clear topic and controlling idea
• relates to the thesis statement clearly
• include sufficient details/examples/quotes from the reading to explain your
point (parenthetically cited)
• And may contain a passage from another quality source (parenthetically cited)
Conclusion
• Conclusion:
• Restate your thesis (point of view)
• Summarize the main idea

• Works Cited:
• Separate page
• Alphabetical
• Spacing
• Hanging Indent
• Sufficient Info. (Cited)
Sample response paper: Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss
Of all of the common assumptions discussed in class, I think one of the most
common is the idea that a children’s text should in some way teach the reader
something. We talked about the term didactic, and how a didactic book strongly
pushes a lesson onto the reader, telling them that they should believe this or
that. Many times a reason for that lesson isn’t even given, as though the young
person reading the book should just accept that lesson because they are told to,
because the other knows better. As I was reading Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss, the
book I selected for the assignment, I was hoping that it wouldn’t be as didactic as
most other children’s books, and that it would be as playful and exciting as I
remember as a child. On the last two pages of the book, however, the absent mother
returns home, the cat has disappeared, the children are behaving nicely, sitting in
chairs, and it is pretty obvious that even though they got into mischief they are still
good children after all. Nothing really has changed at the end of the book. Although
all sorts of things got played with, and the children broke the rules I am sure they
know about (like, “Don’t fly kites in the house”), major boundaries were never
crossed.
 We talked about how the opposite of a didactic book might be
an ambiguous book, or a book that encourages the reader to think about issues, to
make decisions for themselves. In that kind of book, the author usually wants to the
reader to think for herself or himself, to understand that some things are difficult,
even for adults. The author may present a problem and ask you what you think, or
might just never come around to saying exactly what you are supposed to
believe. The last page of Cat in the Hat ends with the narrator saying, referring to
the mother, “Should we tell her about it? / Now what SHOULD we do? / Well . . .
/ What would YOU do / If your mother asked you?” (61). In some ways, this is
probably a pretty ambiguous ending. The author asks the reader that if your mother
left, if someone wanted you to do what you weren’t supposed to, if you did it
anyway, and if you didn’t get caught, would you tell your mother or father
what happened? Most adults wouldn’t tell what happened themselves, but the
question is there anyway, and it seems to be really asking children what they
believe.
 But it doesn’t seem really that ambiguous. If the book were really ambiguous
it would be breaking the Typical Case Prototype of children’s books, and in
almost every other way the book keeps to those prototypes.
As Nodelman describes it, children’s books are typically bright, colourful, funny,
entertaining, and maybe sometimes rhyming. Children’s books portray children
as the way adults typically think of them, as crazy kids who aren’t serious like
adults, or innocent angels who would never really do any harm when they
play. Dr. Suess portrays typical kids, bored by the rain, wanting to do something
wild. Although Seuss’s style is strange, the children even look like the sort of
standard white children that appear in most books, the girl in a dress and ribbon
in her hair. We saw in class how these children are a lot like the standard one’s in
Cassie’s history textbook , and although strange things happen in the book – a
talking cat, a couple of strange things, a lot of things getting thrown around – it is
the kind of play we come to expect in children’s lives, especially in most of the
standard things shown on television and in movies.
 In fact, the children never quite seem to trust the Cat, and they always just sort
of watch him play. The children never really do anything that crazy themselves. The
Fish, who sounds a lot like an adult, is always there to warn them, and in the end
everything gets cleaned up. Of course, the book is fun and playful, and is obviously
one of the most famous and liked picture books ever made, but it is still rather
straightforward. Cat in the Hat reinforces and demonstrates almost all of the typical
assumptions about childhood, and it fulfills all of the typical case prototypes of
children’s books. Examining it made me think about how the book might have
changed in recent years, especially since children are rarely bored when they are at
home any more (with all of the stuff they own to play with). But more than that, it
made me think about why we expect all children’s books to be like this, why it is
always considered one of the best books for children. Although I like typical
children’s books, it makes me also interested in books that don’t do what we
expect. The book was written 1957, and in so many ways children’s books have
become so incredibly different since then. But in a lot of other ways, some good, some
bad, they haven’t changed at all
Reading
•1. "What Happiness Is" by Eduardo Porter (Page # 438)
2. "The Ways of Meeting Oppression" by Martin Luther King
Jr. (Page# 447)
3. "The Automation Deletion" by Hettie O'Brien ( Page #584)