Homework answers / question archive / Essay 1: Reader Response Essay Percentage: 10% of final average Length: at least 600 words, max of 750 words Note: you must write at least 600 words to receive credit; that means anything less than 600 will receive a zero, not just a low grade, but no credit at all, because requirements will not have been met Assigned Reading: “What I Learned at War” by Senator Tammy Duckworth, on pgs

Essay 1: Reader Response Essay Percentage: 10% of final average Length: at least 600 words, max of 750 words Note: you must write at least 600 words to receive credit; that means anything less than 600 will receive a zero, not just a low grade, but no credit at all, because requirements will not have been met Assigned Reading: “What I Learned at War” by Senator Tammy Duckworth, on pgs

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Essay 1: Reader Response Essay

Percentage: 10% of final average

Length: at least 600 words, max of 750 words

Note: you must write at least 600 words to receive credit; that means anything less than 600 will receive a zero, not just a low grade, but no credit at all, because requirements will not have been met

Assigned Reading: “What I Learned at War” by Senator Tammy Duckworth, on pgs. 885-888 in Everyone’s an Author.

 

Format: MLA format; double-spaced, Times New Roman 12 pt. font

 

Sample Student Paper to Use as Your Guide: “Yuliya Vayner’s “The Higher Price of Buying Local” on pages 93-96. This is an example of how you will write your own paper. This the paper I refer to in the instructions. Note: this student is responding to another essay in your book that appears on page 177. You should read that essay and then read this student’s response to it. This is exactly what you are doing with “What I Learned at War” by Senator Tammy Duckworth.

 

Instructions:

 

A summary/ response first summarizes what you’ve read and then gives your reaction to the text. So the first thing you will do in this essay is summarize Tammy Duckworth’s “What I Learned at War”. Keep in mind the directions from Everyone’s An Author for summarizing: “Summarizing calls for boiling down information and presenting it in your own words and sentence structure” (Lunsford et al 87). You will do this in your introduction. So the introduction of your paper will be a summary of Tammy Duckworth’s “What I Learned at War”.

 

The first sentence of your introduction should introduce the author and the text that you are summarizing. This is the topic sentence, or first sentence, of your introduction. See how the student does it in her essay on page 93. Her paper begins: “In her essay ‘On Buying Local’ Katherine Spriggs argues that consumers should purchase food grown locally whenever possible.”

 

See how the student introduced the author and the text at the same time. She provides the author’s full name (first and last), and she writes in present tense. That is how you do it.

 

Then, later in the topic sentence, the student gave the main idea of the text: “that consumers should purchase food grown locally whenever possible.” That is what your topic sentence of your introduction should do for Tammy Duckworth’s “What I Learned at War”.

 

Then the rest of your introduction provides your summary. You provide the main points of Tammy Duckworth’s “What I Learned at War” in the order that they appear in her essay. The main points are, of course, the things she learned at war.

 

Keep in mind also that in a summary you should “use signal phrases such as she concludes or the report states to indicate that you’re summarizing someone else’s ideas and claims, not your own” (Lunsford et al 87). Leave out your opinions when summarizing and use neutral verbs in your signal phrases, such as states, asserts, or concludes. It doesn’t matter whether you agree or disagree with an author when you are summarizing. You need to hold aside your biases. You should include the name of the work and the author, but you should state the summary of the work in your own words.  The summary should probably be at least 150 words, but no more than 200 words.

 

Then the last sentence of your introduction will be your thesis statement. This begins your response. This is where your opinion comes in. Your response is your opinion, whether you agree or disagree with Tammy Duckworth. You will state this in one sentence at the end of your introduction.

 

The student does this in her essay as the last sentence of her second paragraph, which is on page 94 in our textbook: “It’s clear that buying locally grown food benefits the environment, but because cost and access limit some people from being able to buy local, it is not a habit everyone is equally able to practice.” Note: you will, of course, put your thesis as the last sentence of your first paragraph, your introduction.

 

Your thesis should not use the word “I”. Notice how the student provides her opinion without writing “I think” or “I believe”. Her opinion is “it is not a habit everyone is equally able to practice.”

 

She also provides a reason for her opinion: “because cost and access limit some people from being able to buy local.” A good thesis statement will do this.

 

So your introduction does 3 things:

1. Introduce the author and text, and present its main idea, in the topic sentence
2. Summarize the text, presenting the main ideas in order
3. End with your thesis statement, which gives your response: your opinion of the text in one sentence

 

After you do you introduction, you move to the body of your essay. In the body, you give your response. Your response then should be most of the essay. You need 3 body paragraphs. In each body paragraph, you will give a reason for your opinion in a topic sentence.

 

Here are 3 topic sentences/reason that the student gives in her essay:

 

“However, Spriggs doesn’t acknowledge that some people would be giving up more than just evergreen strawberries in an attempt to buy local.”

 

“Time becomes an issue of access as well: for some a long drive to a grocery store is merely inconvenient.”

 

“This adds yet another aspect to the challenge of buying local that Spriggs doesn’t address: low-income individuals are significantly less likely to be able to afford the extra expense of locally sourced food, which Spriggs explains as only slightly pricier.”

 

Notice, again, how the student provides her opinion without using “I think” or “I agree” or “I disagree”. You just provide your opinion of Duckworth’s essay in formal language. Also, after you introduce the author Tammy Duckworth in your introduction, it’s an MLA rule that you then refer to the author with her last name only, Duckworth, throughout the rest of your essay. See how the student does that with Spriggs.

 

After you provide a reason as your topic sentence, the rest of a body paragraph provides a response to Duckworth’s essay; that is, you explain your reason.

 

Your explanation may include one or more of the following:

1. A response to what a text says, in which case you might consider these questions:
   1. What does the writer claim?
   2. What reasons or evidence does he or she provide to support the claim?
   3. What parts of the text do you agree with?  Is there anything you disagree with—and if so, why?
   4. Does the writer represent any views other than his or her own?  If not, what other perspectives should be considered?
   5. Are there any aspects of the topic that the writer overlooks or ignores?

 

2. A response on the way a text is written, in which case you might consider these questions:
   1. What is the writer’s message?  Is there an explicit statement of that message?
   2. How well has the writer communicated the message?
   3. How does the writer support what he or she says: by citing facts or statistics? By quoting experts? By noting person experiences? Are you persuaded?
   4. Are there any words, phrases, or sentences that you find notable, and that contribute to the text’s overall effect?
   5. How does the text’s design affect your response to it?

 

3. A reflection on your own reaction to the text, in which case you might consider these questions:
   1. How did the text affect you personally?
   2. Is there anything in the text that really got your attention? If so, what?
   3. Do any parts of the text provoke an emotional reaction—make you laugh or cry, make you uneasy?  What prompted that response?
   4. Does the text bring to mind any memories or past experiences? Can you see anything related to you and your life in the text?
   5. Does the text support (or challenge) any of your beliefs? How?
   6. Has the reading of this text given you any new ideas or insights?

 

Note: You cannot do all of the above. You should select your responses based on your thesis/opinion. What led you to your opinion?

 

About writing in the first-person “I”. Remember, that should not be in your essay. However, if you choose to answer any of the questions in #3, you may use “I” if you are giving a personal reaction or story. For instance, maybe you were in the military, and you have a story to share as an illustration of something Duckworth learned. Then, of course, you would use “I”. Be careful not to just write “I think”, though. Only use “I” for if you do any of #3 in your essay.

 

Lastly, you will write your conclusion. Begin by restating your thesis in a new way. Notice how the student begins her conclusion like this: “While Spriggs succeeds in showing that buying local can contribute to a healthier environment, in addressing the obvious drawback of inconvenience she considers only one aspect of a complex issue involving race, income level, and access.”

 

Then in the rest of your conclusion explain the importance of your response. Notice that a good conclusion is more than one or two sentences. It is a fully developed paragraph.

The only source for this paper is “What I Learned at War” by Senator Tammy Duckworth, on pgs. 885-888 in Everyone’s an Author. You should not be using or quoting from any other material.

 

When you quote or paraphrase Duckworth, you need to provide an in-text citation at the end of your sentence, which provides the author’s name and page number: (Duckworth 886). See page 566 in your textbook and/or the MLA info in the resources module.

 

You should have a works cited page for “What I Learned at War” by Senator Tammy Duckworth. Here is your citation:

 

Duckworth, Tammy. “What I Learned at War.” Everyone’s an Author with Readings. 3^rd ed.,

edited by Andrea Lunsford, et al, W.W. Norton, 2020, pp. 885-888.

 

To assist you in writing Essay 1 review the following pages in Everyone’s An Author:

• pages 80-83 on “Annotating”
• pages 86-88, “Summarizing”
• pages 88-92, “Responding”
• Chapters 26 on “Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing”
• Chapter 27 on “Giving Credit and Avoiding Plagiarism”
• Chapter 28 on “MLA Style”

 

Also, for MLA format of a paper, including how to do your heading, etc., consult the MLA module in the resources section of the class.