How to Start a Reading Summary Response Paper

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Each semester, you will probably be asked by at least one teacher to read a book or an article (or sentry a TV show or a motion picture) and to write a paper recording your response or reaction to the material. In these reports—often referred to as response or reaction papers—your teacher will about likely look you to do two things: summarize the cloth and detail your reaction to it. The following pages explain both parts of a report.

Function ane: A SUMMARY OF THE WORK

To develop the starting time part of a report, exercise the following:

• Identify the author and title of the work and include in parentheses the publisher and publication date. For magazines, requite the date of publication.
• Write an informative summary of the material.
• Condense the content of the work past highlighting its main points and fundamental supporting points.
• Use straight quotations from the work to illustrate important ideas.
• Summarize the material then that the reader gets a general sense of all key aspects of the original work.
• Practise not talk over in great item whatsoever unmarried aspect of the work, and do not fail to mention other every bit important points.
• Also, keep the summary objective and factual. Do non include in the first part of the paper your personal reaction to the work; your subjective impression volition course the ground of the second office of your paper.

Role 2: YOUR REACTION TO THE WORK

To develop the 2nd part of a study, do the following:

• Focus on any or all of the following questions. Check with your instructor to see if s/he wants you to emphasize specific points.
• How is the assigned piece of work related to ideas and concerns discussed in the grade for which you are preparing the paper? For example, what points made in the class textbook, form discussions, or lectures are treated more fully in the work?
• How is the work related to problems in our nowadays-24-hour interval globe?
• How is the cloth related to your life, experiences, feelings and ideas? For instance, what emotions did the work arouse in you?
• Did the work increase your understanding of a particular issue? Did it change your perspective in any style?
• Evaluate the merit of the work: the importance of its points, its accuracy, abyss, organization, and so on.
• You should also betoken here whether or non you would recommend the work to others, and why.

POINTS OF CONSIDERATION WHEN WRITING THE REPORT

Here are some important elements to consider as you set a written report:

• Apply the four basic standards of effective writing (unity, support, coherence, and articulate, error-gratuitous sentences) when writing the report.
• Make certain each major paragraph presents and then develops a single main point. For example, in the sample report that follows, the outset paragraph summarizes the book, and the iii paragraphs that follow detail iii split reactions of the educatee writer to the book. The student and so closes the written report with a brusque concluding paragraph.
• Support any full general points you brand or attitudes you limited with specific reasons and details. Statements such every bit "I agree with many ideas in this article" or "I found the book very interesting" are meaningless without specific bear witness that shows why you feel as you do. Look at the sample written report closely to see how the main point or topic judgement of each paragraph is developed by specific supporting show.
• Organize your fabric. Follow the basic plan of organization explained above: a summary of 1 or more paragraphs, a reaction of ii or more paragraphs, and a conclusion. Also, use transitions to make the relationships amid ideas in the paper articulate.
• Edit the newspaper carefully for errors in grammar, mechanics, punctuation, give-and-take use, and spelling.
• Cite paraphrased or quoted material from the book or article y'all are writing almost, or from any other works, past using the advisable documentation mode. If yous are unsure what documentation style is required or recommended, ask you instructor.
• You may utilize quotations in the summary and reaction parts of the paper, just do not rely on them too much. Utilise them only to emphasize key ideas.
• Publishing data can exist incorporated parenthetically or at the bottom of the page in a footnote. Consult with your teacher to decide what publishing information is necessary and where it should be placed.

A SAMPLE RESPONSE OR REACTION PAPER

Here is a study written past a educatee in an introductory psychology form. Look at the paper closely to run into how it follows the guidelines for study writing described in a higher place.

Part ane: Summary

Part one: Summary Topic sentence for summary paragraph	A Report on Man'southward Search for Meaning Dr. Viktor Frankl's volume Man'southward Search for Meaning (New York: Washington Square Press, 1966) is both an autobiographical account of his years every bit a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps and a presentation of his ideas nigh the pregnant of life. The three years of deprivation and suffering he spent at Auschwitz and other Nazi camps led to the evolution of his theory of Logotherapy, which, very briefly, states that the master force in human beings is "a striving to find a meaning in one's life" (154). Without a meaning in life, Frankl feels, we experience emptiness and loneliness that lead to apathy and despair. This need for meaning was demonstrated to Frankl time and again with both himself and other prisoners who were faced with the horrors of camp existence. Frankl was able to sustain himself partly through the love he felt for his married woman. In a moment of spiritual insight, he realized that his love was stronger and more meaningful than death, and would be a real and sustaining forcefulness within him even if he knew his married woman was dead. Frankl'southward comrades also had reasons to alive that gave them forcefulness. One had a kid waiting for him; another was a scientist who was working on a serial of books that needed to be finished. Finally, Frankl and his friends plant meaning through their decision to accept and deport their fate with courage. He says that the words of Dostoevsky came frequently to listen: "There is 1 thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my suffering."  When Frankl's prison experience was over and he returned to his profession of psychiatry, he plant that his theory of significant held truthful non only for the prisoners but for all people. He has since had great success in working with patients past helping them locate in their own lives meanings of love, work, and suffering.
Office 2: Reaction Topic sentence for showtime reaction paragraph	One of my reactions to the book was the relationship I saw betwixt the "Capos" and ideas near anxiety, standards, and aggression discussed in our psychology form. The Capos were prisoners who acted equally trustees, and Frankl says they acted more cruelly toward the prisoners than the guards or the SS men. Several psychological factors aid explain this cruelty. The Capos must take been suppressing intense anxiety about "selling themselves out" to the Nazis in return for small favors. Frankl and other prisoners must have been a abiding reminder to the Capos of the courage and integrity they themselves lacked. When our behaviors and values are threatened past someone else interim in a unlike way, i way we may react is with anger and assailment. The Capos are an extreme example of how, if the state of affairs is correct, nosotros may be capable of swell cruelty to those whose deportment threaten our standards.
Topic sentence for 2d reaction paragraph	I recollect that Frankl's idea that pregnant is the almost of import force in human beings helps explain some of the disorder and discontent in the earth today. Many people are unhappy because they are caught in jobs where they have no responsibleness and inventiveness; their work lacks meaning. Many are also unhappy considering our culture seems to stress sexual technique in social relationships rather than human caring. People buy popular books that may help them get amend partners in bed, but that may not make them more sensitive to each other's human needs. Where in that location is no real care, in that location is no significant. To hide the inner emptiness that results from impersonal work and sex, people busy themselves with the aggregating of textile things. With television receiver sets, stereos, cars, expensive clothes, and the like, they try to forget that their lives lack truthful significant instead of working or going to schoolhouse to get a meaningful job, or trying to exist decent human being beings.
Topic judgement for third reaction paragraph	I accept too found that Frankl's idea that suffering can have significant helps me sympathise the behavior of people I know. I take a friend named Jim who was always poor and did non accept much of a family—only a stepmother who never cared for him every bit much as for her own children. What Jim did take, though, was determination. He worked two jobs to save money to go to school, and so worked and went to school at the same time. The fact that his life was hard seemed to make him comport downward all the more. On the other mitt, I can call back of a human being in my neighborhood who for all the years I've known him has done nothing with his life. He spends whole days smoking and looking at cars going by. He is a burned-out case. Somewhere in the past his problems must take become too much for him, and he gave upward. He could have found meaning in his life by deciding to fight his troubles like Jim, simply he didn't, and at present he is a sad shadow of a man. Without conclusion and the desire to face up his hardships, he lost his gamble to make his life meaningful.
Concluding paragraph	In conclusion, I would strongly recommend Frankl's book to persons who care nearly why they are alive, and who desire to truly think about the purpose and meaning of their lives

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Source: http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/rwc/handouts/the-writing-process-1/invention/Writing-a-Response-or-Reaction-Paper

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