Critical Response Essays Text

Jonathan Friesen - Writing Coach

Read the article through a second time, making sure you've grasped the author's points and intentions and making notations in the margins that might help you in the writing process. Highlight all of the arguments or quotations that you plan to focus on in your paper. This will save you the time and effort of having to search through irrelevant information during the writing process. On what points do you agree with the author? on what points do you disagree? what is lacking or flawed in the argument? research peer reviewed journals for other critiques of the same topic, as well as any direct responses to your author. Internet databases are great for this, as are educational library databases and card systems. Be sure and take notes and copy any pages with particularly important information or potential quotations.

The outline can be rough, even bare boned, but it should guide you through your argument with references both to your author and the outside sources from step 5 of section 1. Use your outline as a guide, but be sure to have your references handy as well as your marked up copy of the article. Review your draft and your notes and revise any places that seem loose in their arguments or support. Write a works cited page or bibliography, depending on your professor's style preferences. If you are asked to include a full bibliography, include every source that you referenced while researching for your essay. on writing concise critical/creative response essays as you know, you must write two short critical response essays in this section of novels and tales.

Argumentative Essay Phrases

What follows here are the requirements for your critical response essays and more general advice on writing short analytical/persuasive essays of this kind. One last introductory note: you may substitute a creative response essay or, more simply put, a short story that responds to one or more of the stories we've read for one of these papers. If you choose the creative response option, you must get approval from and meet with me more on this option a little lower on the page. The assignment sheet for this semester's cre 1 is now up and running: critical response essay 1.

The assignment sheet for this semester's cre 2 is now up and running: critical response essay 2. At the most general level, in your critical response essays you must present an argument about or offer an interpretation of at least one of the texts we've read in class. You should have a central question that you are trying to answer in your essay, and you should be working to persuade your audience that your answer is plausible by offering whatever evidence seems most relevant to your argument and audience. For some essays in this course, you will be asked to choose your own topic and generate your own question. When considering which question s to write on, keep in mind that your critical response essays should center on at least one of the following two subjects:

    ghosts.

    Note that you don't have to answer all or even any of these questions in your paper. They are intended to get you started thinking about possible topics and approaches within the general subject of ghosts and narrative. When you do have the option to choose your own topic, you will be required to email me at least a week in advance the question you want to try to answer in your paper.

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    Because the paper length for your critical response essays is so short, compression and conciseness are key. But don't bite off more than you can chew it should be possible for you to answer the question you choose within the page limits of the assignment. This means that you have to choose your question particularly carefully, as well as rank the evidence for your argument so that you focus on the most telling moments in the text. Finally, you must be particularly ruthless about syntax and diction make every word count, and cut or revise any words or phrases that aren't doing important work for your argument. However, this kind of revision for conciseness should take place only after you have fully explored your ideas, the best ways of communicating them, and the best means of persuading your audience that they are true/plausible. First get your ideas down, then put them as effectively as possible, and only then revise for length, precision, and conciseness. Note: i've numbered the paragraphs in this section to correspond to the numbering in the previous section.

    The best way to make sure you are making an argument or offering an interpretation is to generate questions that you have about the texts we've read, choose one, and set out to answer it for yourself. You should choose a question that's interesting to you and that you believe you can show to be interesting to your classmates the audience you should imagine for your essay. Moreover, you should choose a question that's truly debate able, a question to which you can imagine several possible answers. Your job is to sort through the possibilities and convince your audience that your answer is the most plausible. Much of this sorting process will take place before you ever sit down at a keyboard or desk to compose your paper. You should reread the story ies you're writing on, mark significant passages, write questions or observations in the margins, take notes, brainstorm, make up lists or charts, doodle, try to produce an outline, free write whatever pre writing process works best for you at getting your interpretive juices flowing.

    When you move on to the drafting and rewriting stages, remember that a key part of persuading your audience that your answer is plausible and your evidence is relevant is anticipating how they might react to your answer and evidence. By imagining possible objections or counter examples and then either explicitly or implicitly forestalling them in the written essay, you show your audience that you are taking them seriously and that you have thought carefully about the question. It's much more persuasive to deal with a major objection or counter example to your argument than to pretend it doesn't exist.

    In fact, one of the best ways to make your own thesis stronger is to try advancing a thesis that contradicts yours. Some people find this process of imagining counter evidence and counter arguments more helpful to do early in the pre writing stage, others when revising their first draft. Find out what works best for you by trying out different approaches this semester. You will most likely find that you need to write a first draft that is much longer than the page limit in order to a figure out precisely what your main argument is and b figure out how best to convince your readers of the plausibility of your argument. Therefore, it is in your best interest to give yourself time to not only write that longer first draft but also to go through a serious re vision process to select, prioritize, reorder, condense, and cut in light of putting your ideas as clearly, concisely, precisely, and persuasively as you possibly can. The upshot of this is that you should never, ever, decide not to pursue a line of thought in writing because doing so will take you over the page length.

    Hl English Paper 1 Rubric

    Most experienced writers don't write their first drafts with a set blueprint in mind they generally discover what they mean or change their minds while writing. Worry about page lengths only after you've thought through the issue in writing to your satisfaction. You should choose a subject on which you have a number of observations that you can string together or distill into a coherent argument or interpretation. Above all, choose something that interests you and on which you feel you have a perspective that's distinctive.

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    Try to bring to our attention something that you've noticed about the story to which you feel that the group as a whole hasn't paid sufficient attention. The more you think about this, the more effective your introduction and conclusion will be you will be able to answer the so what? or why should we care? question with which most readers approach every piece of writing. One consequence of the need for conciseness is that you may find that you need to rethink the five paragraph essay structure you were probably taught in high school.

    Although you should definitely hang onto the key elements of the five paragraph essay an introduction, body, and conclusion a main argument some kind of topic sentences and transitions a sense of structure and a consideration of evidence you should definitely avoid the funnel and reverse funnel styles of introduction and conclusion and absolutely avoid needless repetition. The only thing your introduction must do is hook your readers and make them want to read the rest of the essay this is usually done by giving them some sense of where the rest of the essay is going or what the point of the essay is. The only thing your body must attempt is to persuade your readers of the plausibility of your answer to your central question. The only thing your conclusion can't do is restate the thesis or move from the specific back to the general.