350words reading response.

English 122, Online

What is a Reading Response?

For the purposes of this course, a Reading Response is a written response to an assigned reading. You should write it after you have finished reading the article and done some thinking about it. It is somewhat like a journal entry, in that it is not a formal essay; however, you should make an effort to make your response have a somewhat academic but also somewhat conversational tone.

Your response should be entitled as follows: Reading Response, “Name of Article”.

In your first paragraph, include, again, the title of the article and the author. Use his or her complete name. After you have given the author’s name, be sure to refer to him or her by their last name in the rest of your response. In this first paragraph, give a brief summary of the article, telling what you think is the author’s main point, or at least the most important point, and briefly tell how the author has gone about explaining his or her point. By ‘point’, I mean his or her opinion, or, if you don’t consider it opinion, his or her main point of fact. In any event, don’t spend the entire response saying what the author has said.

The rest of your response should consist of YOUR thoughts and feelings about the article and the author’s ideas. You can do this by indicating your own experiences as a way of agreeing or disagreeing with the author, or you can base your ideas on other things you have read or that you have learned about. Try to find some way of connecting with the piece, whether experientially or academically.

Please refrain from criticizing an article as boring or making other value judgements, just because you disagree with the ideas or because you don’t understand what is being said. Your misunderstanding and boredom or not the fault of the writer. Remember that even if the writer has expressed an opinion that bothers you, it’s still that writer’s right to do so, and, as you may know, getting a college education means coming into contact with ideas that are new (or even contrary) to you. So, enjoy the challenge of being able to respond to the material that you read.

The minimum length of your response should be 350 words.

Important!

Please email your reading responses to me on the dates they are due. Be sure to include your name in the body of the email, and in the subject line, indicate that it’s a reading response and the name of the author of the article you are responding to. I will respond to your responses by return email. If you send them in late, they will not receive full credit. I will not grade your individual responses, but you will receive a completeness grade on them at the end of the semester.