Responsive Essay Examples: Writing a responsive essay might seem like a challenging task at first. Because. firstly, you need to understand what you are responding to
In this article, you shall learn how to write a responsive essay. Also, some responsive essay examples will be given to guide you as you write. However, before getting started, let’s know what is a responsive essay.
Also, writing a responsive essay might seem like a lot of work at first. However, having in mind a clear structure of what you’re responding to is essential.
Meaning of Responsive Essay
Before looking at some responsive essay examples, note. A responsive is also called a reaction essay. And it is a piece of writing where you express your opinion on the texts you have read.
Also, a responsive essay is a response to something you have read. Furthermore, it’s a response to something that is a hot topic at the moment. And this could be in various social contexts. Or something that has been debated for a long time. And thus you want to present a new approach to things.
Guiding Steps to Writing a Responsive Essay
Before looking at some responsive essay examples, note. There are some tips that will help you write a good responsive essay. First of all, you need to read the essay or work you’re responding to.
After which you need to settle on whether you want to attack the ideas presented in that article or not. Thus, based on that, you will structure the components of your response essay.
Furthermore, secondly, note. It is important that your readers clearly understand your position after reading your responsive essay. Thus, this means you need to expose all possible arguments which might strengthen or attack the ideas presented in the main article.
Some Tips to Follow While Writing a Responsive Essay
Before looking at some responsive essay examples, note. Below are some important tips for writing a responsive essay:
- Make sure you clearly expose your position regarding the article or paper you are responding to.
- Also, don’t forget to expose the personal experiences or thoughts that might help you relate to the matter in question and your reader to empathize with your way of writing.
- Furthermore, prove that you have knowledge about the author of the main text and can put your response essay in context.
- Additionally, evaluate the main text’s effectiveness and how it managed to reach the audience
Structure of a Responsive Essay
Before looking at some responsive essay examples, note. Below is the structure of a responsive essay:
Introduction
The introduction goes thus:
- Paragraph 1: This is the first part of the introduction which needs to be vivid. Also, it needs to be catchy and reflect the point you are about to make.
- Paragraph 2: Again this should provide a context to your response essay. Thus details about the source-text, the author and what the main points in the article are should come in here.
Body
This goes thus:
- State your position regarding the ideas presented in the introduction. And whether you agree with the author’s take on the matter or not.
- Also, clearly mention if you are going to question the author’s position. Or will expand on the author’s account of the facts.
- Furthermore, give clear arguments pro or against the matter. And allocate one paragraph to each of these arguments.
- Additionally, use statistics, story-telling, research findings, scientific discoveries, and any other tools suggested in this article.
Conclusion
Provide an insightful and catchy conclusion that correlates with the introduction you have chosen for your response essay.
Some Responsive Essay Examples
Below are some responsive essay examples:
Of all of the common assumptions that we discussed in class, I think one of the most common is the idea that a children’s text should in some way teach the reader something.
We of course talked about the term didactic, and how a didactic book strongly pushes a lesson onto the reader, telling them that they should believe this or that.
Many times a reason for that lesson isn’t even given, as though the young person reading the book should just accept that lesson because they are told to, because the other knows better. As I was reading Cat in the Hat by Dr.
Seuss, the book I selected for the assignment, I was hoping that it wouldn’t be as didactic as most other children’s books, and that it would be as playful and exciting as I remember as a child.
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On the last two pages of the book, however, the absent mother returns home, the cat has disappeared, the children are behaving nicely, sitting in chairs, and it is pretty obvious that even though they got into mischief they are still good children after all.
Nothing really has changed at the end of the book. Although all sorts of things got played with, and the children broke the rules I am sure they know about (like, “Don’t fly kites in the house”), major boundaries were never crossed.
We talked about how the opposite of a didactic book might be an ambiguous book, or a book that encourages the reader to think about issues, to make decisions for themselves.
In that kind of book, the author usually wants to the reader to think for her or himself, to understand that some things are difficult, even for adults.
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The author may present a problem and ask you what you think, or might just never come around to saying exactly what you are supposed to believe.
The last page of Cat in the Hat ends with the narrator saying, referring to the mother, “Should we tell her about it? / Now what SHOULD we do? / Well . . . / What would YOU do / If your mother asked you?” (61). In some ways, this is probably a pretty ambiguous ending.
The author asks the reader that if your mother left, if someone wanted you to do what you weren’t supposed to, if you did it anyway, and if you didn’t get caught, then would you tell your mother or father what happened?
Most adults wouldn’t tell what happened themselves, but the question is there anyway, and it seems to be really asking children what they believe. But it doesn’t seem really that ambiguous.
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If the book were really ambiguous it would be breaking the Typical Case Prototype of children’s books, and in almost every other way the book keeps to those prototypes.
As Nodelman describes it, children’s books are typically bright, colorful, funny, entertaining, and maybe sometimes rhyming.
Children’s books portray children as the way adults typically think of them, as crazy kids who aren’t serious like adults, or innocent angels who would never really do any harm when they play. Dr. Suess portrays typical kids, bored by the rain, wanting to do something wild.
Although Seuss’s style is strange, the children even look like the sort of standard white children that appear in most books, the girl in a dress and ribbon in her hair. We saw in class how these children are a lot like the standard one’s in Cassie’s history textbook .
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And although strange things happen in the book – a talking cat, a couple of strange Things, a lot of things getting thrown around – it is the kind of play we come to expect in children’s lives, especially in the sorts of standard things shown on television and in movies.
In fact, the children never quite seem to trust the Cat, and they always just sort of watch him play. The children never really do anything that crazy themselves. The Fish, who sounds a lot like an adult, is always there to warn them, and in the end everything gets cleaned up.
Of course the book is fun and playful, and is obviously one of the most famous and liked picture books ever made, but it is still pretty straightforward.
Cat in the Hat reinforces and demonstrates almost all of the typical assumptions about childhood, and it fulfills all of the typical case prototypes of children’s books.
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Examining it made me think about how the book might have changed in recent years, especially since children are rarely bored when they are at home any more (with all of the stuff they own to play with).
But more than that, it made me think about why we expect all children’s books to be like this, why it is always considered one of the best books for children. Although I like typical children’s books, it makes me also interested in books that don’t do what we expect.
The book was written 1957, and in so many ways children’s books have become so incredibly different since then. But in a lot of other ways, some good, some bad, they haven’t changed at all.
SOURCE?: For more responsive essay examples like this
The above is a guide on writing a good responsive essay. Also, feel free to learn from the responsive essay examples shown above.
StudentsandScholarship Team.
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