This video will discuss the summary/response essay, probably the most common writing assignment
assigned in college-level classes.
As a college student, you'll often be asked to read something- an article, a chapter from
a book, or even an entire book, and then write a response to it.
In most cases, your professors will expect you to also include a summary of what you
read, hence the name the summary/response essay.
These types of essays are assigned in all kinds of classes, including those in the social
sciences, the natural sciences, and the humanities.
In many cases, professors in those disciplines know what they're looking for when they assign
these types of essays, but they won't necessarily take the time to tell you exactly what they're
expecting.
So it's important that you learn how to write these essays now, while you're still at the
beginning of your college career.
We'll begin with a quick overview of what the summary/response essay looks like.
A summary/response essay is an essay based on an assigned reading, such as an article,
chapter, or a book.
It's comprised of two distinct parts: a summary of the assigned text and an original reaction,
or response, to the text.
The overall purpose of the summary/response essay is to engage with the writer, who in
almost every case will be a highly educated person, on her or his level.
It's important to remember that the summary/response essay is one of the most common writing assignments
done in college-level courses, so it's vitally important that you know how to write this
type of essay and write it well.
And it's probably also good to know why exactly professors assign so many of these types of
essays.
There are two primary reasons.
First, these essays are assigned simply to prove that you've read the assigned material.
But summary/response essays serve a second important function, and that's to prove that
you've thought about the assigned reading, and maybe even that you've related it to your
own life in some way.
In order gain an understanding of how to write the summary/response essay, we're going to
look at some excerpts from an example summary/response essay.
Before continuing with this video, it's very important to make sure that you've carefully
read the article Taxing Sugar to Fund a City, by New York Times columnist Mark Bittman . If
you're watching this video as part of a module in Canvas, you should have already completed
this reading assignment as part of a separate module.
If you're viewing this video on my YouTube channel, you can use the link at the bottom
of the screen to pull up the article.
A quick Google search of the article's title should also turn up a copy.
The first thing to know about how to approach the summary/response essay is that there are
two completely separate and distinct parts to the essay: the summary portion and the
response portion.
The summary portion will just be a single paragraph, while the response portion will
be at least three paragraphs.
The vast majority of your word count will be in the response portion of the essay.
These two parts of the essay do completely different things, and it may even be helpful
to think of them as two separate assignments.
We'll begin by looking at the summary portion of the summary/response essay.
Here's a basic definition of a summary: When writing a summary, one rewrites what an author
has written in different words and in a shorter form.
In the summary/response essay, this is usually done in the first paragraph, and if you're
a student in my class, I will always require that the first paragraph of a summary/response
essay be a summary of the assigned reading.
A good summary has certain characteristics.
It follows certain guidelines, and we'll look at five of them here.
First, a good summary does not include any of your own opinions.
It just restates what the author said, and it rewrites what the author said in a shorter
form.
Also, a good summary includes the main idea and supporting ideas of the assigned reading,
and it includes all of the essential information from the reading.
Finally, a summary must include the author's first and last name and make absolutely clear
that these are the ideas of the author of the assigned reading, and not your own.
One really good idea when writing a summary is to start it with this fill-in-the-blank
sentence frame.
If you start every summary/response essay you write with this sentence frame, you'll
be sure that you include several of the essential characteristics of a summary in your summary
paragraph, including the author's name, the title of the article, and a summary of the
main idea.
Here's an example that uses Taxing Sugar to Fund a City: "In “Taxing Sugar to Fund a
City,” Mark Bittman argues that taxes on sugary beverages, which are being implemented
across the U.S. and around the world, should be implemented more broadly in order to raise
tax revenue for worthy projects and safeguard public health."
Now we'll look at an example summary/response essay that summarizes and responds to the
article Taxing Sugar to Fund a City.
Here's the first paragraph of the essay, the summary paragraph.
Pause the video for a moment and read through it.
If you're viewing this video as a module in Canvas, a copy of this example essay can also
be found in Canvas.
Notice that this summary paragraph begins with the fill-in-the-blank sentence frame
we just reviewed.
Also notice that it includes the supporting ideas of the article so that someone who had
never read the article would have a very good idea of what the article is about.
That's what a good summary should do.
One last thing that might be helpful when writing a summary is to follow the steps in
this process.
First, read the entire assigned reading.
Second, reread the assigned reading and analyze it's structure; look at the order in which
the ideas are presented.
Take notes as you reread, and you might even want to create an outline.
Then, use the fill-in-the-blank sentence frame we looked at to write your opening sentence.
And finally, write one sentence about each paragraph or section of the reading.
If you do all of this, you should end up with a pretty good summary.
Now we'll talk about the response portion of the summary/response essay.
Remember, the summary portion of the essay is just the first paragraph.
The vast majority of the summary/response essay, at least three paragraphs, will be
spent on the response portion of the essay.
Here's a basic definition of the response portion of the summary/response essay: In
the response portion of your essay, you will talk back to the opinions expressed by the
writer.
You'll give your own opinions about the topic.
You may agree and/or disagree with what the writer said, and you will likely do both.
One thing that makes writing the response paragraphs difficult is that there isn't just
one way to do it.
But there are two common approaches to writing the response.
The first one we'll look at is what I like to call the Agreement/Disagreement Approach.
As is always the case in summary/response essays, the first paragraph is a summary of
the assigned reading.
Then, in paragraph 2, you say why you agreed with the writer, or why you disagreed with
the writer.
You do the same in paragraphs 3 and 4.
All three of these paragraphs could be about why you agreed with the writer, or all of
them could be about why you disagreed.
One paragraph could be about what you agreed with and two paragraphs could be about what
you disagreed with.
It's really up to you.
Another approach to organizing the response paragraphs is the Supporting Idea approach.
Again, the first paragraph is always a summary.
In paragraph 2, you pick out something that the writer said and comment on it.
This could be several pages of what the writer said, a single paragraph, or even a single
sentence or statement.
Your comment could be that you agreed, disagreed, or even just that you related to it in some
way.
You could even choose to tell a personal story that you were reminded of as you read.
In paragraphs 3 and 4, you do the same thing.
Now we'll return to the example summary/response essay, the one about Taxing Sugar to Fund
a City, and we'll look at two of the response paragraphs from that essay.
Here's the first one.
Pause the video for a moment, and read over it.
Notice that this example essay shifts to first person in this paragraph, using the pronoun
"I" in the first line, and talks about reactions to the article.
Notice also that the Agreement and Disagreement Approach is being used here.
Here's another paragraph from the example summary/response essay.
Pause the video again and read over this one.
Notice that in this paragraph is focusing on disagreement.
Not only is it okay to disagree with the author of the assigned reading when you're writing
a summary/response essay, but it's encouraged.
This is what's often referred to as reading critically.
It shows that you've really thought about the assigned reading.
We'll conclude this video by looking at some tips for success when writing the summary/response
essay.
Here's the first one.
When referring to the ideas of the author you are summarizing and responding to, include
phrases that call out to the reader that these are someone else’s ideas.
Here are two examples from the example summary/response essay that illustrate how to do this.
Next, it's good to judiciously use quotes in order to support the ideas you include
in your essay.
The general rule is to keep the number of quotes to less than 10% of your essay's total
word count.
Here's an example of how to use a quote to support your ideas.
Feel free to use first person in the response portion of your summary/response essays.
In fact, you'll have to use first-person to talk about your own personal experiences,
which is encouraged in a response.
Also keep in mind that it's okay to criticize the author if you wish.
Just be sure to keep your tone calm, cool, scholarly, civil, and respectful, like in
this example.
Structure some of your responses around quotes from the text and your own comments about
the ideas that are reflected in those quotes.
Doing this will make sure that you keep your response focused on the assigned reading.
Also, include anecdotes, or stories from your personal experience that are related to the
ideas in the assigned reading.
Telling personal stories is generally encouraged in the response portion of a summary/response
essay.
Finally, when you do offer criticism, make specific, substantive comments on what the
writer says, and as always, keep your tone civil and respectful.
That concludes this video on the summary/response essay.