Writing in Response

Writing in Responseis a flexible, brief rhetoric that offers a unique focus on the critical practices of experienced readersanalysis and reflectionthe skills at the heart of academic writing. It helps students compose academic essays by showing how active reading and exploratory writing bring fresh ideas to light and how informal response is developed into polished, documented prose. Extensively class tested, Writing in Responseemphasizes the key techniques common to reading, thinking, and writing throughout the humanities and social sciences by teaching students the value of a social, incremental, and recursive writing process.

Matthew Parfitt (Ph.D., Boston College) is an Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Chair of the Division of Rhetoric at Boston University’s College of General Studies.  In 2002 he received the Peyton Richter Award for interdisciplinary teaching. He is coeditor of Conflicts and Crises in the Composition Classroom—And What Instructors Can Do About Them and Cultural Conversations: The Presence of the Past.

Introduction: Writing in Response to Reading
 “What Does the Professor Want?” 
 The Values of the Academy 
 Academic Discourse 
 Why Do College Instructors Assign Writing? 
 Critical Thinking
 “Live the Questions”
 CHECKLIST FOR UNDERSTANDING ACADEMIC DISCOURSE
Part I, Responsive Reading
Chapter 1, Reading with a Purpose
 Making Sense 
 Academic Reading: “Reading with a Purpose” 
 Context 
 GUIDELINES FOR ANALYZING RHETORICAL CONTEXT
 Your Own Contexts
 GUIDELINES FOR ANALYZING THE PURPOSE OF READING
 GUIDELINES FOR ANALYZING YOUR MOTIVES FOR READING
 Identifying the Genre of a Text
 Clearing Space to Concentrate
 Some Sources of Difficulty
 Identifying Arguments 
  Ad Council, Start Talking Before They Start Drinking [advertisement]
  Thomas Ball, The Freedmen’s Memorial [photograph]
 Reading Critically 
 The Principle of Charity 
 CHECKLIST FOR READING WITH A PURPOSE
Chapter 2, Active Reading
 Reading through the Text for the First Time  
  Martin Luther, Colloquia Mensalia (Annotations by Samuel Taylor Coleridge)
  Student Sample Annotated Paragraph, First Reading
  Student Sample Annotated Paragraph, Second Reading
 Reading Journal: Thoughts, Claims, and Questions
 Re-reading
 A Basic Dialectical Notebook 
 Reading Journal: Further Thoughts
  Mariana Gonzalez’s Second Entry in Her Reading Journal
 CHECKLIST FOR ACTIVE READING
Chapter 3, Further Strategies for Active Reading
 Variations on the Dialectical Notebook
 Taking Double or Triple Entry Notes on a Computer
 Adapting the Dialectical Notebook Method to Suit Your Own Needs and Style
 Analyzing the Argument
  Lewis Thomas, To Err is Human 
 Mapping the Text
 What It Says/What It Does
 Constructing a Radial Map of the Text
 Evaluating the Argument
 Reading With and Against the Grain
 Believing and Doubting
 Representing Another’s Idea’s Fairly and Accurately
 Writing a Letter to the Author
 Talking Out Your Ideas
 CHECKLIST OF FURTHER STRATEGIES FOR ACTIVE READING 
Part II, Composing and Revising
Chapter 4, Writing to Discover and Develop Ideas
 The Value of Exploratory Writing 
 CHECKLIST FOR EXPLORATORY WRITING
  René Magritte, The Liberator [painting]
 The Benefits of Writing Daily 
 Making Meanings   
 You Can Always Write More
 Focused Exploratory Writing   
 CHECKLIST FOR FOCUSED EXPLORATORY WRITING
Chapter 5, Developing an Argument
 Argument as Structure
 The Components of Argument: Motive, Claim, and Support
 The Modes of Persuasion: Ethos, Pathos, and Logos
 Types of Reasoning
 Deduction
 Induction
 Types of Evidence
 Drafting a Thesis Statement 
 The Role of the Thesis Statement
 Drafting the Argument
 Drafting Paragraphs
 Revising: A Recursive Process
 Revising Your Thesis
 Revising Paragraphs
 Beginning the Paragraph: Transition, Topic, and Claim
 Varying Paragraph Length
 Concluding Paragraphs
 A Case Study of Paragraph Structure
  James Surowiecki, A Drug on the Market
CHECKLIST FOR DEVELOPING AN ARGUMENT
Chapter 6, Organizing the Essay
 Thinking Like a Reader
 Organizing an Argument Essay
 Drafting an Organizational Plan
 GUIDELINES FOR CREATING CLUSTER DIAGRAMS ON A COMPUTER
 Revising Organization: Constructing a Sentence Outline
  GUIDELINES FOR CONSTRUCTING AN OUTLINE
 Organizing an Argument Essay: A Basic Model
Marc Dumas, Human Rights for Apes: A Well-Intentioned Mistake [student paper]
 Organizing an Argument Essay: A Second Example
  Wendy Sung, A Campaign for the Dignity of the Great Apes [student    paper]
 Clarification Strategies
 CHECKLIST FOR ORGANIZING AN ARGUMENT ESSAY
 Organizing an Exploratory Essay
 Comparing the Exploratory Essay and the Argument Essay
 Sample Essay in Argument Form
  Kelly Rivera, A Fatal Compromise: President Franklin Pierce and the Kansas-Nebraska Bill of 1854 [student essay]
 Sample Essay in Exploratory Form
Greg Fernandez, Exploring the “Whys” of History: Franklin Pierce and the Kansas-Nebraska Bill of 1854 [student essay]
 CHECKLIST FOR ORGANIZING AN EXPLORATORY ESSAY
Part III, Attending to Style
Chapter 7, Crafting Sentences
 Sentence Grammar 
 Phrases
 GUIDELINES FOR USING GRAMMAR CHECKERS
 Grammatical Sentence Types
 Rhetorical Sentence Types
 Writing Longer Sentences 
 Sentence Combining: Subordinating and Coordinating
 Telling a Story with Active Sentences
 Expletive Constructions
 CHECKLIST FOR CRAFTING SENTENCES
Chapter 8, Writing with Style
 Some Famous Styles ( John Lyly, Walter Pater, Virginia Woolf, Martin Luther King, Jr., Annie Dillard)
 Plain Style
 Principles of Plain Style
 Use Clear and Direct Vocabulary
 The Roots of English: Simple Words
 Use Verbs to Bring Life and Action to Sentences
 Use Figures of Speech and Metaphors with Care
 Avoid Monotonous Sentence Patterns
 “Copious” Style: Develop Key Ideas
 Achieve a Balance of Rich and Plain
 Academic Style
 CHECKLIST FOR WRITING WITH STYLE
Part IV, Research and Documentation
Chapter 9, Conducting Research
 The Purpose of Research
 Managing the Research Process
 Developing a Research Strategy
 Two Sample Schedules for Writing a Paper
 Getting Started: Scouting for a Topic
 Understanding the Big Picture  
 Selecting Sources and Narrowing Your Focus
 Finding Scholarly Articles
 Working with Books
 Sample Working Bibliography
 Using Specialized Reference Works
 Types of Sources and their Characteristics, a Table
 Other Sources
 Evaluating Sources
 Reading Critically to Develop a Position
 Drafting and Revising
 CHECKLIST FOR CONDUCTING RESEARCH
Chapter 10, Documentation
 Documentation and Scholarship
  The Function of Documentation in a Scholarly Conversation
 James Watson and Francis Crick, From Molecular Structure of Nucleic
Acids
 Gisela Bock, From Racism and Sexism in Nazi Germany: Motherhood,
Compulsory Sterilization, and the State
 GUIDELINES FOR WHAT TO CITE 
 Soledad Gonzalez, Do High School Students Share the Right to Free Speech?
 Avoiding Plagiarism
 Writing an Acceptable Paraphrase
 WHY AND HOW TO PARAPHRASE
 Writing a Summary or Abstract
Documentation in MLA, Chicago, and APA Styles
 MLA Style
 Charlene Wynn, Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale and the Peasants’ Revolt [student essay]
 Chicago Style
  Serge Mogan, Congestion Pricing for New York: A Practical Solution [student essay]
 APA Style
 Ellen Kang, The Effectiveness of Music Therapy in the Treatment of
Disease [student essay]
 Latin Documentation Terms 
 Tools to Help with Citation
 CHECKLIST FOR DOCUMENTATION
Part V, Readings
 Adam Gopnik, Looking for Mr. Ravioli
Kathryn Schulz, Two Models of Wrongness
Jane Tompkins, At the Buffalo Bill Museum, June 1988
 Frans de Waal, Are We In Anthropodenial?
Cornel West, Malcolm X and Black Rage