14 What Is a Response?
Learning Outcomes
- Define what a written, academic response is.
- Identify the types of support that may be included in a response.
What Is a response?
As discussed in the previous section of this text, a summary conveys the author’s main ideas. It does not include your opinions or thoughts. You may have found it challenging to hold back your ideas when summarizing, especially if you held a strong opinion about the text or could relate personally to the ideas in the text. Now, you have the opportunity to contribute to the conversation by sharing your thinking about the article.
Unlike a summary, a written response to an article is based on your opinions and experiences. This is different from summarizing, where the focus is conveying the author’s general points. A response does one or both of the following:
- It conveys your point of view or position on some aspect of the text or topic.
- It discusses your experiences or connections in relation to the ideas in the text.
The Parts of a Response
A well-written response must include a clear statement of your main point; this is called a topic sentence. You will learn more about that in an upcoming chapter.
A response must also have support that tells more about the topic sentence. Support may include the following:
- Quotes or information from the article
- Your reasoning and commentary about ideas in the article
- Your life experiences
- Your observations of others
- Your prior knowledge
Quotes or information from the article should not be the only support, as that often leads to a repeat of summarization. When quotes and other information from the article are used, they should include your reasoning and commentary or connections to the ideas. A later chapter includes a discussion of how to use these types of support in your written response.