Each week you will be asked to read a short story or article and
write a response paper. These
response papers will serve as the basis for a group discussion of the reading
assignment. The
assignment has five parts:
SUMMARY
Tell
what happened in the story in your own words.
Your summary should be five to eight sentences long
A
PART YOU LIKED
In
one sentence or two tell which part you liked and explain why it appealed to
you. You can choose one or more
paragraphs of the story, a sentence, or even a phrase.
Write down the page number where this paragraph, sentence, or phrase
appears so that you can read it to the other members of your group.
A
PART YOU FOUND CONFUSING
This
can be a sentence, a paragraph, or even an entire page.
If you found more than one part confusing, you should mention it as well.
Put the page number where this part appears.
QUESTIONS
You should ask at least two questions that occurred to you during or after you read the story.
INTERPRETATION
Your interpretation of the story is an explanation
of what the story meant to you. It’s
your analysis of the story.
You can talk about why you think the characters behaved the way they did
or what you think the point of the story is.
You can also discuss broader issues raised
by the story. For example,
for the story Reunion, you might talk
about what the you think the author is saying about the relationship between
fathers and sons or about the effect of divorce on children.
There are three possible grades for this
assignment:
a.
U+ = full credit. You have
completed the assignment and participated
in the group discussion.
b.
INC.
= one or more parts of the assignment are missing.
c.
0
= no credit
Please note: The Reader Response Paper is for ESR 098 and the Exploration Paper is for the Exploring the Humanities class. Compare the two.