Video
Explanation
Jim Roth’s Website
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ESSAY #1 BUILDER--How to Write a Summary-and-Response Essay The
Summary-and-Response essay assignment teaches us how to incorporate another
writer’s words with our own. The process begins by carefully reading
another writer’s essay. We then begin our essay with an opening
paragraph that identifies the writer, the name of the essay we read, and
briefly summarizes its content. The rest of our essay is made of our
words and ideas with selected words from the other essay occasionally blended
in for added effect and impact. The best way to get a sense for the
structure of a summary-and-response essay is to study a few examples, so
please do the following: Begin by reading the
professional essays below and the student examples that follow. First,
notice how each student essay begins with a paragraph that identifies the author, the
professional essay, and provides a brief summary of the professional essay’s
main point. Second, notice how the rest of the student essay
is the student’s words and ideas with occasional words from the professional
essay blended in for impact and effect. Finally, notice how
the student credits the use of the other writer’s words. Here are the five
requirements of the first paragraph in list form. 1. name the author 2. name the work 3. add a brief summary 4. build a bridge to your thesis (a transition) 5. state your thesis at the end of the paragraph As a first example, please read the professional essay Don’t Let Stereotypes Warp Your Judgments by Robert Heilbroner. Once done, study the student examples that follow, by locating the five introductory paragraph requirements mentioned above.
Student
Summary-and-Response Example #1—Heilbroner Student
Summary-and-Response Example #2—Heilbroner Now return to the
student examples and study how both writers blended Heilbroner’s
words with their own and credited Heilbroner for
the words that were his. PLEASE NOTE: You will
have to learn to properly blend others’ words and ideas with your own to
successfully complete English 101. Here’s how to learn
this skill: Before beginning your Summary-and-Response essay,
please be sure you have watched and understood the Information Literacy video
"Working
with Words from a Source--MLA Video"
(7th edition) and/or have read and understood the information in
the "Working
with Words from a Source" lesson
(includes 8th edition notes). Want another example? First, please read the article "I'm Still Learning from My Mother" by Cliff Schneider.
After reading Schneider’s essay, please return to this page, and then read the
student example below, keeping the following in mind:
Notice in this student sample that the writer has fulfilled the five
requirements above by using two paragraphs rather than one. (This is because
the first paragraph offers a much more extensive summary.) In the first
paragraph, the student writer identifies the author, the essay, and offers a
detailed summary (requirements 1, 2, and 3). The student writer then uses a
second paragraph to provide a transition that leads into the thesis stated in
the final sentence (requirements 4 and 5).
Student Example Summary-and-Response to
"Still Learning From My Mother" by Cliff Schneider
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