As you develop your response, focus on the text. Quote directly from specific passages within it and use MLA citations. Expand on the text by explaining what you believe is significant about those passages, how they relate to the question posed or a topic you are developing. Consider the author’s style, purpose, and literary devices.
“How much should I write?”
Each reader response journal should be AT LEAST two typed, double-spaced pages but NO MORE THAN three typed double-spaced pages, plus a Works Cited page.
• Summarize the text: briefly explain the characters, conflict, and major plot elements of the text to which you are responding.
• Grasp the ideas in the text and take them further. What is the author’s point? How is it relevant today?
• Consider the ideas of this text compared to others we’ve read in the class. How do they work together to form a larger pattern or message?
• Argue why the author’s views are or are not correct.
• Try to notice something others might not notice. Interpret the text in a way that won’t be obvious to others. Think about symbols, imagery, allusions.
• Raise some intelligent, fruitful questions. You may want to answer your own questions. You can speculate by asking “What if . . . ?”
• In response to the reading, do some research. Share relevant information, evidence, facts, quotations.
