Many students today find themselves overwhelmed with their workload. More is demanded of them mentally and physically, and their workload is immense. One type of assignment that recurs regularly through high school and college is the reaction paper, also called a response paper.
As a matter of fact, questions such as how do I start my reaction paper? how do I write a reaction paper? or who will do my reaction paper? will always surface.
Almost every semester, you are bound to have such an assignment. It's only fair to ask: what is a reaction paper all about, or how do I write a good one? Well, stick around and find out.
Help for Assessment specializes in helping overwhelmed students complete their academic work on time and get top grades. We comprise top scholars in every discipline skilled in writing all kinds of essays, term papers, and projects. If that is the kind of help you need, go ahead and order the reaction paper writing service here.
If you're ready for the task, join us as we explore what a reaction paper is, what makes a good reaction paper, and how to write one.
What is a Reaction Paper
A reaction or response paper is an academic assignment where you are meant to read an article or extract of a text assigned by your instructor and write down your feedback, critique, or review in a structured format. You are meant to consider your reaction carefully and give a focused, methodical review. In fact, in the simplest of words, a reaction paper is simply a review in the academic world.
The key to a good reaction paper lies in what your opinion is on the subject given and how well you support it. The paper is meant to teach students how to express their opinions clearly, acceptably, and credibly.
A good reaction paper is organic and personal. Apart from a loose format and guidelines as expressed by academic bodies, it needs to flow naturally from what you genuinely feel about the material you read, watched, listened to, or observed. The ultimate goal of a reaction paper is to convince your audience that you are right, and your opinions are justified.
Reaction Paper Outline
To understand what makes a reaction paper, check out this outline. It details what is expected of a good response paper and how it should be organized. Keep in mind that a reaction paper is a really short piece of writing, lasting between 500 words (2 pages) and 1,300 words (5 pages).
Parts of a Reaction Paper
The three major parts of a response paper are the introduction, body, and conclusion. Thus, it is simple enough to structure a reaction paper. What matters is the content you put in, and this should be in answer to these questions which effectively make up the skeleton of the paper.
- I think that - give an intellectual response. Do you agree with the author/creator of the content or not? Support your answer.
- I see that - what do you understand from the content? What do you think the creator wanted you to understand?
- I feel that - what is your emotional response? Are you angry, inspired, saddened, or excited because of the content?
- It seems that - what suppositions can you draw? By extrapolating, is there anything you can infer?
- In my opinion - exactly what it means. Give an opinion on the work.
- Because - justify your opinion.
- A good quote is - what can you cite from the content that best reflects or embodies your feelings?
- In addition - add another quote or paraphrase a section.
- For example - give a real-life example that ties in and supports the entire essay.
- Moreover - give another supporting point.
- However … - draw contrasts.
- Consequently/it follows that ...
- Finally - what are your final thoughts on the topic?
- In conclusion …- conclude your essay.
You don’t have to answer all these questions or follow any particular order in doing so, but you can see that by distributing their answers in the various paragraphs, it will be pretty easy to craft a great reaction paper. It is also good practice and highly encouraged to have a list of citations for the work reviewed and any general sources used in the essay.
Let's finish by exploring the process of writing a good reaction paper.
How to Write a Reaction Paper
Any good piece of writing has a few important qualities: unity, support, coherence, and clear language. These are the same qualities you should have in your reaction paper, and you have to keep this in mind throughout the preparation and writing process.
- Prewriting: read and take notes
Whether you're reading a text, watching a movie, watching a video, or listening to an audio, it is important to have your notebook in hand from the beginning. Note down any noteworthy statements, set down your main support points, and take any quotes you might want to use.
Prewriting also involves researching the creator of the content and the content itself to get its context. It helps you to understand why the content creator says what they say and why they hold the opinions they do.
for example, you need to know who the content creator is, what they do for a living, what their beliefs they subscribe to, their level of education, among others. It helps you to understand where they are coming from, their motives, and their motivations so that you can have informed opinions.
- Organization
Prewriting gives you plenty of ideas for the reaction paper. At this stage, you arrange these ideas as you start to outline the essay. See which ideas answer what questions, and purposefully to through the 14-question list presented above.
- Essay outline
Craft the main ideas that will form your topic sentences, and summarize the supporting evidence. This part is about coming up with the skeleton of the paper that will guide your writing. It will help you to optimize your words and streamline your ideas.
- Analyze
Flesh out the topic sentences with the rest of the material: evidence, explanations, a real-life example, and links the rest of the essay. The body paragraphs should follow a structure that allows you to present these four parts of a paragraph. The most famous of these is the TEEL structure: Topic sentence, Explanation, Evidence, Links.
- Polish
Once you have the body, take the time to think about what would make a good introduction and conclusion for the essay. Make sure they follow the general guidelines, then go through your work carefully no less than two times to weed out errors and mistakes.
In short, prewriting and organization are the marks of a good reaction paper. Make sure to fully support all your ideas, and don't make any opinion statements (I feel, I think that, etc) without sufficient support from the text. That's all you need to do to have a stellar response essay!
N/B Most of our clients usually ask: Can I use "I" in a response/reaction paper? The answer is yes. Therefore, just to reiterate, first person pronoun is allowed in a reaction paper. Unlike article critique which usually assume a formal format, an instructor asking you to write a reacting paper seeks to read your subjective interpretation of the assigned text.
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