The Critical Response Essay

Purpose: Your purpose for writing this essay is to critically examine and analyze the text you previously summarized, and to thoughtfully respond to it. Think of this as if you are "grading" the writer on how successful he/she is at getting his/her points across, supporting his/her arguments, and/or reaching the audience. An effective critical response will point out what's effective and ineffective about the text you are analyzing and give reasons and evidence to support your judgments.

Remember that your purpose here is NOT to discuss whether or not you agree or disagree with the writer's position or how you feel about the issue the writer addresses. 

Audience: 

Your audience for this assignment is also your classmates and me. Although we are familiar with the text you are analyzing, you should thoroughly represent its main ideas and key points, and provide accurate textual evidence for your own claims.

The Writing Task:

A response is a critique or evaluation of the author's essay; essentially, you are giving your opinion about the text being summarized, using textual evidence to support your points and opinions. Therefore, your critical response will examine ideas that you agree or disagree with and identify the essay's strengths and weaknesses in reasoning and logic, in quality of supporting examples, and in organization and style.

Your critical response will also connect your own personal experiences, ideas, observations, and/or opinions to the text you have been actively reading ("The Clan of One-Breasted Women," "Drug War Nightmare," or "Home Should Not Be a War Zone").  It will also provide you the opportunity to explain your thoughts about the author's arguments.  To do this well, you need to consider how you "see" the article's main idea responding to and working in the real world, how it influences you or others, and what are the causes, effects, and potential solutions it illustrates. 

Your Critical Response Essay should be about 3-5 pages and should illustrate your rigorous thinking about some of the following questions: 

• Are the text's aims clear?
• Will the intended audience accept the author's claim(s)? Why or why not?
• Does the author effectively respond to an event, an occasion, and/or a moment in time?
• Does the author support his or her contentions in a logical order?
• Does the tone and style of the piece support the author's purpose?

Once you begin to draft your essay in earnest, make sure you include a thesis, reasons that support your thesis, and evidence from the text to support your reasoning.  More specifically, your essay should include the following parts:

• An introduction that addresses the context of the piece of writing you are analyzing - including background on the event(s) the writer is responding to and/or the overall conversation or discussion the piece is part of. As with all essays, you will want to grab the reader's attention and keep him/her interested by showing why the topic matters.
• A brief summary of the piece you are analyzing to give a reader a clear idea of the writer's main points. Use a revised/streamlined version of the summary you have already written for this part. You can use this summary as part of an introductory paragraph or as a separate paragraph that appears very early on in your essay.
• A thesis statement that gives your overall judgment of the writer's argument and previews your main points. Ideally, this should suggest what is effective about how the writer makes his/her argument and what is not so effective. For example, a thesis statement for a response to McChrystal's op-ed piece might look like this: Although McChrystal's argument suffers from an exaggerated tone, his point overall is well-supported with examples and data related to the cost, literal and figurative, of gun violence.
• Multiple body paragraphs that each focus on one of the reasons you believe the text is effective or ineffective at achieving its purpose with its intended audience. Each of your body paragraphs should have the following: a clear topic sentence; evidence, examples, and support from the text you are analyzing (quotes, explanations, etc.); and a discussion of why and how that evidence supports the point you are making.

For example, an essay based on the thesis statement given above would have least one paragraph that gives examples of where McChrystal's tone was too over-the-top (and why that hurts his message/argument), and then at least one other one that explains how he supported his arguments with examples and data (and why that helps his argument).

• A conclusion that briefly returns to your main point and then suggests where the conversation about the issue might be going next. Do not simply restate your introduction as you might have been told taught previously.

This essay should use the conventions of Standard English and should be a work of some depth.  Be prepared for your Critical Response to be read by you and/or others and to be shared and discussed in class.

Final drafts must be typed (12- point font) and double-spaced with one inch margins.  Computers are available in the Writing Center, Library Resource Center, and various labs throughout campus. 

Please follow appropriate guidelines for formatting manuscripts:

• Staple your final draft.
• Use only white paper.
• Type your name, instructor's name, course number and section, and the date in the left upper margin of page one on all final drafts.
• Make sure your essay has an interesting title. My Critical Response is not interesting! Critical Response to ________________ isn't interesting either!