WRITING A SUMMARY-RESPONSE ESSAY

In academic contexts, you are often asked to write response essays (sometimes called reaction papers) in which you select an aspect of a text that particularly interests you and respond to it in writing. That is, you will be asked to read something (a journal article, a chapter in a book, a technical report) and to write a summary and an analysis of what you read. The purpose of this type of assignment is to find out whether you understood what you read, what your response to the content of the text is, and whether you can express your response clearly. Generally, a response to written material consists of two basic parts: A. a summary of the written material B. an analysis of part of all of the material. Here is the typical format of a response essay:  Introduction (The First Paragraph of your essay) 1. State the author’s name and surname 2. State the name of the article (For example: In “The Dangers of the Television” ) 3. Summarize the article and state the author’s main issues/thesis and key supporting points that the author discusses. Use an opening phrase such as: says, discusses, explains, argues, shows. (For example: In “The Dangers of the Television”, Fidler points out that. . .) 4. State your main idea / thesis in which you show your agreement or disagreement at the end of the introduction paragraph. That is your reaction.  Body (The second paragraph)

Your body paragraph or paragraphs should include: 1. major key supporting points to be analysed in that paragraph 2.direct quotes from the article, or paraphrase from the article demonstrating the writer’s point 3. your topic sentence which states agreement or disagreement with the supporting point stated in the article.

4. support for your topic sentence from your own personal experience, facts, statistics, examples 

Conclusion End in conclusion- paraphrasing