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Response PaperProcess
- Read the work. Highlight and take marginal notes
when necessary. Be sure to record both your emotional and intellectual
responses to the piece.
- Establish a clear understanding of the work. What were the main
conflicts in the work? What were the actions and/or feelings of
the main characters? How did the main characters change during the
course
of the work? Why did they change?
-
Brainstorm to decide what point
you will focus on in your response. There are several ways to do
this: Examine your notes, record new ideas, use pro-con column analysis,
or raise and answer questions. According to E.V. Roberts (1995), the
previous suggestions will help you to trace patterns that develop
in the brainstorming process.
- After brainstorming, choose your area
of focus. The section below in italics provides some suggestions
for focusing a response paper
in a literature course. More information about choosing a focus
is available
here.
- Once you have chosen a focus,
develop
a thesis around it. Check your thesis to make sure that it is debatable and
supportable with
evidence from the text.
- Organize an outline of the paper into three
parts:
an
introduction, a body and
a
conclusion.
- Refer back to the
notes that you made in the text.
- Use paraphrase,
summary and direct quotations from the text to support your response. They should not
occur frequently enough to
become a distraction. Consider this rule of thumb: The final draft
should consist of no more than 1/10th borrowed material.
-
Develop
a conclusion that reemphasizes your thesis/response to the work.
- Write the final draft of the response paper.
- Check over the final
draft for grammar and punctuation.
- Use the checklist provided here
to make sure that all main parts of the response paper are logically
covered.
REVIEW
What do you consider to be the most crucial step(s) in the process
of writing your response paper? Why? Justify your response(s).
Continue to Response Paper: Format
Copyright 2003 by the Academic Center and the
University of Houston-Victoria.
Created 2002 by Candice Chovanec Melzow. Revised 2005. |
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