How to Write a Reading Response

Since one of your ongoing assignments will be to respond each week to the reading you do for one of the classes in the LC (You'll do this via your blog.), I thought I'd take a moment and add to what is said in Chapters Two and Three of Writing for College, Writing for Life. In this post, I'll talk about using writing as a means to better understand what you read. I'm also going to make the case for doing the reading in all your classes. Finally, I'll provide a link to an online article which will help you get a handle on the reading response short essay as a genre.

Let's face it, not all the reading you'll do in college will be compelling. Most may not even be interesting. To succeed in college, that is, to get a real education which will help you build a good life as opposed to getting through, you have to do the reading. There's no short cut.

You'll learn that reading doesn't have to be interesting to be useful. In fact, more often than not, you'll wade through 70 percent or more of a text to get only 30% which will prove ultimately useful; and, 30% useful is a high percentage. When I do research, I expect only a 10% (or less) return in terms of ideas I will use in any given project.

I think of non-fiction, professional reading as looking for nuggets of gold in mud. Each useful idea keeps me looking for the next, because each useful idea is really useful, often allowing me to gain insights I would otherwise not have. Getting used to all this, sucking it up, and doing the reading and work anyway is a major part of learning how to learn. Why? Well, you are only a small part of the audience any one published author will address. The author doesn't know your concerns and only has a vague idea of your experience. They are writing for the most difficult of all audiences, that is, a general audience who wants (or is required) to study their topic, and they aren't writing to entertain or persuade. Most of the time they are writing to inform, and their text is fairly densely packed with information and ideas.

Writing about your reading can help you find the aspects of the reading which you will use. Such writing allows you to make connections, improves your retention, and if you approach it as a chance to learn more and better instead of just another task you *have* to do, then such writing is a very worthwhile investment of your time. If nothing else, it forces you to wade through boring material to find the gold, and beginning to form a response to the reading as you read makes the process of reading more active and engaging. These are only a few of the reasons I assign written responses to the reading as a major aspect of my classes.

Other reasons have to do with the fact that without some oversight, that is, some mechanism for checking to make sure students do the reading, some students will avoid the task like the plague. Many students exit high school with the unconscious notion that teachers are the advisory rather than partners in building a better life, and reading is just one more task the teacher piles on to keep you form your "real" life. If students end up succeeding in college, they'll quickly learn that these assumptions are false. To construct a good life, you have to build a foundation of skills and knowledge which will allow you to do rewarding work. There is little about building this foundation which isn't real. Having a good foundation in place insures the life you build won't crumble around you.

Finally, requiring students to write about the reading improves learning. All the data confirms this conclusion. Which brings me to another major reason for assigning ongoing reading responses. Because it's a proven technique for improving learning, you'll see this genre in various guises throughout your college career, and the genre and reading/writing techniques prove useful for later, professional reading.

Here's a link to a short online article on how to write a reading response short essay:

http://leo.stcloudstate.edu/acadwrite/reaction.html

This article focuses on responding to a literary text, but you can use the basic questions to form a response to most non-fiction (read: textbook reading). Most of the time, the short essay which is your response to the reading are between one and two single spaced pages. In this class, I expect one single spaced page each week. Focus your response on summarizing and or paraphrasing the major points from the reading which you found useful, challenging or compelling, and then explaining why you found these points useful, challenging, or compelling. Another focus for these kinds of short essays is making connections between the parts being discussed in the reading and the picture of the whole which is forming as you read. (Remember : one of the major techniques you're taught in college is break something down into parts to get a better handle on the whole. This way of reading is called analysis.) Sometimes, your responses are along the lines of "I hated reading this text!" and then justifying this reaction. You should work to limit the number of responses like the last. After all, as I said above, in any one text there will almost always be something you'll find useful. Look for it. Discuss it. Connect it. Do these three things, and you're writing a good response.

One last note:

As you pick the class reading to which you'll write your response each week, consider writing your response on the reading or class in which you're having the most difficulty. The writing will help improve your success.