what is an reader response essay

PRO Courses Guides New Tech Help Pro Expert Videos About wikiHow Pro Upgrade Sign In
EDIT Edit this Article
EXPLORE Tech Help Pro About Us Random Article Quizzes Request a New Article Community Dashboard This Or That Game Popular Categories Arts and Entertainment Artwork Books Movies Computers and Electronics Computers Phone Skills Technology Hacks Health Men's Health Mental Health Women's Health Relationships Dating Love Relationship Issues Hobbies and Crafts Crafts Drawing Games Education & Communication Communication Skills Personal Development Studying Personal Care and Style Fashion Hair Care Personal Hygiene Youth Personal Care School Stuff Dating All Categories Arts and Entertainment Finance and Business Home and Garden Relationship Quizzes Cars & Other Vehicles Food and Entertaining Personal Care and Style Sports and Fitness Computers and Electronics Health Pets and Animals Travel Education & Communication Hobbies and Crafts Philosophy and Religion Work World Family Life Holidays and Traditions Relationships Youth
Browse Articles
Learn Something New
Quizzes Hot
This Or That Game
Train Your Brain
Explore More
Support wikiHow
About wikiHow
Log in / Sign up
Education and Communications

How to Write a Reader Response

Last Updated: March 19, 2024 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Diane Stubbs . Diane Stubbs is a Secondary English Teacher with over 22 years of experience teaching all high school grade levels and AP courses. She specializes in secondary education, classroom management, and educational technology. Diane earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Delaware and a Master of Education from Wesley College. There are 9 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 446,194 times.

A reader response assignment asks you to explain and defend your personal reaction to an assigned text. Reader response papers can be difficult because they force you, the reader, to take responsibility for giving meaning to the text. Often these assignments feel open-ended and vague, but don't worry, a good reader response paper will follow a standard essay format that you can easily master. This guide will walk you through the creation of a well-crafted reader response paper that's sure to wow your instructor and earn you an awesome grade.

Writing the Reader Response

It is often helpful to use the first body paragraph to include more information about the text, the plotline, major themes, etc., and then use the rest of the paragraphs to provide an analysis of how you felt about the text.

Step 3 Remember to explain how, why, and what.

Remember that a reader response is meant to be personal, so it's OK to incorporate personal anecdotes and opinions into your analysis.
Example: "Forcing Hester Prynne to wear the scarlet "A" reminded me of a time when I was cyber-bullied in eighth grade, and my "friends" spread rumors about me online where the whole school could see."

Step 4 Incorporate specific examples into your analysis.

Example: "At the end of The Old Man and the Sea, Manolin promises to once again fish with Santiago, so the old man no longer has to be alone. This was Santiago's greatest wish, but it was a different kind of success than he initially set out to achieve."

Example: "'My big fish must be somewhere,' said Santiago. This is exactly how I felt after I received my third rejection letter, but like Santiago, I kept trying, and eventually I was accepted."
Make sure and cite your examples per class directions. You will usually be required to note the page numbers of any quotations or specific examples in parentheses at the end of the sentence.

A great way to think of your conclusion is that it's one last chance to explain to your reader how you see all of your points fitting together.

Step 7 Proofread, proofread, proofread!!

Sometimes it's hard to see our own mistakes, so it can really help to exchange papers with a friend, and proofread each other's work.

Drafting the Reader Response

Step 1 Identify an angle you can take when talking about the text.

"Even though I found The Scarlett Letter hard to follow at times, Hester Prynne's story is still relatable, and made me think a lot about the effects of publicly shaming people online."
"Some people believe the Old Man and the Sea is a book about failure, but it is really a story of perseverance that teaches us that success may not always come in the form we expect, and even disasters can lead to positive outcomes."

Introduction: 1 paragraph.
Analysis/Body Paragraphs: 3-4 paragraphs. How you organize these paragraphs will depend on the parameters of the assignment.
Conclusion: 1 paragraph.

Step 3 Choose example passages to use in your analysis.

Reading the Text

Step 1 Go over the assignment directions before you begin.

Do you like or dislike the text?
Can you identify the author's purpose?
Do you agree or disagree with the author?
Does the text relate to you and your life? If so, how? If not, why not?
Does the text agree with, or go against your personal world view?
What, if anything, did you learn from the text?

Taking a bit of extra time during this phase will save you a lot of time in the writing process. [9] X Research source

I think that...
I feel that...
I see that...
I have learned that...

Sample Reader Response

Community Q&A

↑ https://penandthepad.com/rules-writing-reading-response-essay-3968.html
↑ https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-jefferson-english102/chapter/reader-response-criticism-american-literature-i/
↑ https://writingstudio.gsu.edu/files/2021/02/Reading-Response.pdf
↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/the_writing_process/proofreading/steps_for_revising.html
↑ https://faculty.washington.edu/momara/Reader%20Response.pdf
↑ https://www.grammarly.com/blog/essay-outline/
↑ http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/rwc/handouts/the-writing-process-1/invention/Writing-a-Response-or-Reaction-Paper
↑ http://education-portal.com/articles/Step-by-Step_Guide_to_Writing_a_Great_Reading_Response_Paper.html
↑ https://www.hunter.cuny.edu/rwc/handouts/the-writing-process-1/invention/Writing-a-Response-or-Reaction-Paper

About This Article

To write a reader response, develop a clear thesis statement and choose example passages from the text that support your thesis. Next, write an introduction paragraph that specifies the name of the text, the author, the subject matter, and your thesis. Then, include 3-4 paragraphs that discuss and analyze the text. Finish up with a conclusion paragraph that summarizes your arguments and brings the reader back to your thesis or main point! For tips on analyzing the text before writing your assignment, read on! Did this summary help you? Yes No

Send fan mail to authors

Reader Success Stories

Christina Tubb

May 26, 2017

Did this article help you?

Jul 8, 2016

Hiraina Tamihana

Mar 27, 2018

Samantha Tafoya

Aug 27, 2017

DeAndra Jarboe

Feb 5, 2019

Featured Articles

Watch Articles

Terms of Use
Privacy Policy
Do Not Sell or Share My Info
Not Selling Info

Don’t miss out! Sign up for

wikiHow’s newsletter

Essay Papers Writing Online

A comprehensive guide to writing a response essay that will help you ace your academic assignments.

Writing a response essay can be a challenging task, as it requires you to analyze a piece of literature, a movie, an article, or any other work and provide your personal reaction to it. This type of essay allows you to express your thoughts and feelings about the content you’re responding to, and it can help you develop critical thinking and analytical skills.

In order to craft a compelling response essay, you need to carefully read and understand the work you’re responding to, identify key themes and arguments, and formulate a clear and coherent response. This guide will provide you with tips and strategies to help you write an effective response essay that engages your readers and communicates your ideas effectively.

Key Elements of a Response Essay

A response essay typically includes the following key elements:

Introduction: Begin with a brief summary of the text you are responding to and your main thesis statement.
Summary: Provide a concise summary of the text, focusing on the key points and arguments.
Analysis: Analyze and evaluate the text, discussing its strengths, weaknesses, and the effectiveness of its arguments.
Evidence: Support your analysis with evidence from the text, including quotes and examples.
Personal Reaction: Share your personal reaction to the text, including your thoughts, feelings, and opinions.
Conclusion: Sum up your response and reiterate your thesis statement, emphasizing the significance of your analysis.

By incorporating these key elements into your response essay, you can effectively engage with the text and provide a thoughtful and well-supported response.

Understanding the Assignment

Before you start writing your response essay, it is crucial to thoroughly understand the assignment requirements. Read the prompt carefully and identify the main objectives of the assignment. Make sure you understand what the instructor expects from your response, whether it is a critical analysis of a text, a personal reflection, or a synthesis of different sources.

Pay attention to key elements such as:

The topic or subject matter
The purpose of the response
The audience you are addressing
The specific guidelines or formatting requirements

Clarifying any doubts about the assignment will help you focus your response and ensure that you meet all the necessary criteria for a successful essay.

Analyzing the Prompt

Before you start writing your response essay, it is crucial to thoroughly analyze the prompt provided. Understanding the prompt is essential for crafting a coherent and well-structured response that addresses the key points effectively. Here are some key steps to consider when analyzing the prompt:

Carefully read the prompt multiple times to fully grasp the main question or topic that needs to be addressed.
Identify the key words and phrases in the prompt that will guide your response and help you stay focused on the main theme.
Consider any specific instructions or requirements outlined in the prompt, such as the length of the essay, the format to be used, or the sources to be referenced.
Break down the prompt into smaller parts or components to ensure that you cover all aspects of the question in your response.
Clarify any terms or concepts in the prompt that are unclear to you, and make sure you have a solid understanding of what is being asked of you.

By analyzing the prompt carefully and methodically, you can ensure that your response essay is well-structured, focused, and directly addresses the main question or topic at hand.

Developing a Thesis Statement

One of the most critical aspects of writing a response essay is developing a clear and strong thesis statement. A thesis statement is a concise summary of the main point or claim of your essay. It sets the tone for your entire response and helps guide your reader through your arguments.

When developing your thesis statement, consider the following tips:

1.	Identify the main topic or issue you will be responding to.
2.	State your position or stance on the topic clearly and concisely.
3.	Provide a brief preview of the key points or arguments you will present in your essay to support your thesis.

Remember, your thesis statement should be specific, focused, and debatable. It should also be located at the end of your introduction paragraph to ensure it captures the reader’s attention and sets the stage for the rest of your essay.

Structuring Your Response

When structuring your response essay, it’s essential to follow a clear and logical format. Start with an introduction that provides background information on the topic and presents your thesis statement. Then, organize your body paragraphs around key points or arguments that support your thesis. Make sure each paragraph focuses on a single idea and provides evidence to back it up.

After presenting your arguments, include a conclusion that summarizes your main points and reinforces your thesis. Remember to use transitions between paragraphs to ensure a smooth flow of ideas. Additionally, consider the overall coherence and cohesion of your response to make it engaging and easy to follow for the reader.

Main Body Paragraphs

When writing the main body paragraphs of your response essay, it’s essential to present your arguments clearly and logically. Each paragraph should focus on a separate point or idea related to the topic. Start each paragraph with a topic sentence that introduces the main idea, and then provide supporting evidence or examples to reinforce your argument.

Make sure to organize your paragraphs in a coherent and sequential manner, so that your essay flows smoothly and is easy for the reader to follow.
Use transition words and phrases, such as “furthermore,” “in addition,” or “on the other hand,” to connect your ideas and create a cohesive structure.
Cite sources and provide proper references to strengthen your arguments and demonstrate the credibility of your analysis.

Remember to analyze and evaluate the information you present in each paragraph, rather than simply summarizing it. Engage critically with the texts, articles, or sources you are referencing, and develop your own perspective or interpretation based on the evidence provided.

How to master the art of writing expository essays and captivate your audience, convenient and reliable source to purchase college essays online, step-by-step guide to crafting a powerful literary analysis essay, unlock success with a comprehensive business research paper example guide, unlock your writing potential with writers college – transform your passion into profession, “unlocking the secrets of academic success – navigating the world of research papers in college”, master the art of sociological expression – elevate your writing skills in sociology.

Home » Education » How to Write a Reading Response

How to Write a Reading Response

What is a reading response.

A reading response is a task that asks you to examine, explain, and defend your personal response to a given work of literature. Many students find writing reading responses difficult because the responsibility of assigning meaning to a text lies with the writer of the response. Although reading response tasks may feel a bit vague or open ended, you can write a successful response by following a standard essay format. Here are some tips to write a reading response, a good reading response.

Read the Text Carefully

It is important to read the text fully and carefully before start to write a reading response. Take time to think what the text makes you feel; make notes so that you won’t forget this response later. Highlight or bookmark important parts of the text or write down their page numbers.

Think Carefully

Don’t start to write a reading response just after you’ve finished reading. Take the time to think carefully about the whole text and what it made you feel. Take down notes.

Ask yourself the following questions:

Do you like or dislike the text?
Do you agree or disagree with the writer?
Does the text clash with your personal views?
How does the text relate to you personally?
To what extent did the text challenge or change your opinions or beliefs?
Did you learn anything from the text? If so, what did you learn?

Make a Draft

Decide your stance.

A good essay always has a clear main argument or a thesis statement. If your teacher has given a specific central question, the thesis statement may be related to this question; if not, your main argument should be on the overall impression of the text.

Make an Outline

If you have been given a word limit or a page count, you may have to be especially careful about the structure of your essay. The reader response generally takes the format of an essay,

Format / Structure of Reader Response

Introduction.

Start your introduction with the name of the author and the full title of the work. Give a brief description of the text and explain what it is about. But, don’t try to summarise the story. Then, explain your main argument.

Divide your content into different points and address each point in different paragraphs. The number of body paragraphs in the essay can actually depend on the content of your reader response. You can use the questions you explored earlier to separate these paragraphs.

When you are writing about your reading, don’t just explain how you felt about the text – analyse why you felt it. Give examples from the text and from your real life. You can also use quotes from the text to make your answers more relevant.

In this section, summarise the argument you have made so far, and connect it to your thesis statement or main argument. The conclusion can be just one short paragraph.

Read your answer several times and make sure that there are no spelling or grammar errors.

About the Author: Hasa

Hasanthi is a seasoned content writer and editor with over 8 years of experience. Armed with a BA degree in English and a knack for digital marketing, she explores her passions for literature, history, culture, and food through her engaging and informative writing.

Writing a Reading Response

why you like or dislike the reading,
explain whether you agree or disagree with the author,
identify the reading’s purpose, and
critique the text.

Write as an Educated Adult

Criticize with examples, mention the title, author, main thesis, connect to the text.

What does the text have to do with you, personally, and with your life (past, present or future)? It is not acceptable to write that the text has NOTHING to do with you, since just about everything humans can write has to do in some way with every other human.
How much does the text agree or clash with your view of the world, and what you consider right and wrong? Use several quotes as examples of how it agrees with and supports what you think about the world, about right and wrong, and about what you think it is to be human. Use quotes and examples to discuss how the text disagrees with what you think about the world and about right and wrong.
What did you learn, and how much were your views and opinions challenged or changed by this text, if at all? Did the text communicate with you? Why or why not? Give examples of how your views might have changed or been strengthened (or perhaps, of why the text failed to convince you, the way it is). Please do not write “I agree with everything the author wrote,” since everybody disagrees about something, even if it is a tiny point. Use quotes to illustrate your points of challenge, or where you were persuaded, or where it left you cold.
How well does the text address things that you, personally, care about and consider important to the world? How does it address things that are important to your family, your community, your ethnic group, to people of your economic or social class or background, or your faith tradition? If not, who does or did the text serve? Did it pass the “Who cares?” test? Use quotes to illustrate.
What can you praise about the text? What problems did you have with it? Reading and writing “critically” does not mean the same thing as “criticizing,” in everyday language (complaining or griping, fault-finding, nit-picking). Your “critique” can and should be positive and praise the text if possible,as well as pointing out problems, disagreements and shortcomings.
How well did you enjoy the text (or not) as entertainment or as a work of art? Use quotes or examples to illustrate the quality of the text as art or entertainment. Of course, be aware that some texts are not meant to be entertainment or art: a news report or textbook, for instance, may be neither entertaining or artistic, but may still be important and successful.
To sum up, what is your overall reaction to the text? Would you read something else like this, or by this author, in the future or not? Why or why not? To whom would you recommend this text?
Writing a Reading Response. Authored by : Elisabeth Ellington and Ronda Dorsey Neugebauer. Provided by : Chadron State College. Project : Kaleidoscope Open Course Initiative. License : CC BY: Attribution

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

24 How do I Write a Response Essay?

Pre-writing steps:

Read the essay prompt carefully.
Activate schema

Actively read the assigned article.

Analyze the article to determine the rhetorical situation.

Consider your own thoughts about the article.
Decide how you want to respond.

Conference #1

Structure your essay.

Outline the essay you want to write.

Draft a working thesis.

Drafting the essay:

Write a summary of the article as your introduction.

Write 3 or more body paragraphs in response to the article.

Review your draft so far.

Write the conclusion to summarize your thoughts.

Revising steps:

Peer review

Conference #2

Revise your essay.
Proofread your essay.

—————————————–

Read the essay prompt carefully

Highlight or note the important points
Ask questions for any part that isn’t clear to you.
Retrieve your assigned article.

Activate schema.

Skim and scan the article to identify the topic and the author(s). Look for subtitles and boldly printed words. Read the author’s bio which is often located at the beginning or at the end of the article. Identify the publication. Read the first sentence of each paragraph. Ask yourself, “Am I familiar with this topic?” This will help you to activate your schema.
identify the key points and ideas
make note of where you agree or disagree
highlight impactful sentences to quote the author later
paraphrase the author’s words
summarize the article
What is the message?
What is the context?
Who is the author?
What is the author’s purpose?
What is the structure of the text?
Who is the audience?

Consider your own thoughts about the author and their message.

What do I think about this topic?
Is this author trustworthy?
Is the article written to inform or persuade me?
If it is written to persuade, on which points do I agree or disagree?
Is the author biased?
Does the article have an objective or subjective tone?
What did I like or dislike about what the author has written in this article?
What made the most sense to me? What was confusing about this article?

Decide how to respond.

There are several ways in which to respond to an article. You may choose a type of response from the following list:

Before/After- Discuss your thoughts about this topic before you read the article, then explain what you learned from the article using evidence from the text.
Persuasion- Discuss which parts of the articles you found convincing and/or which parts of the article you did not find convincing.
Agreement or Disagreement- Discuss an idea that the author presented to which you agree or disagree. If there were two points of view that were presented, explain which one you agree with and explain why.
Affect- Explain the emotional effect that the article had on you. Explain why you responded that way including your own background and your own thoughts/ experiences.
Association- Share something from the article that is similar to your own experience. Or relate the information to a different article that you have read before this article.
Most students wait until they have a draft, but seriously, this is the best time to talk to a writing tutor about your project.
HCC has several options for free tutoring. Best choice: after class, drop in at the Composition and Learning Center (CLC) in Duncan Hall 210. This is staffed by current HCC English professors, and you can talk to one for 10-20 minutes about your assignment and your ideas for your topic, and what to include in your essay.
There are also drop-in tutors at the Learning Assistance Center (LAC) in RCF 340.
an introduction- a summary paragraph of the article
a response- 3 or more body paragraphs responding to the author
a conclusion- a concluding paragraph summing up your thoughts.

Outline the essay your want to write.

Use the structure of the response essay to determine the order of each paragraph. Gather your notes. Review the way you chose to respond. Write a main idea statement for each paragraph of your essay. Then, list (using bullet points) the details that you want to include under each main idea statement. You can also list relevant quotes from the article that support your ideas.
A thesis includes your topic and what you are going to say about this topic.
A thesis always has two parts: a topic AND something important about this topic that your essay is going to discuss.
A thesis is NEVER a question.
Use your notes and the rhetorical situation of the article to write a summary. Begin with an introductory sentence that introduces the publisher, author, topic, purpose, and the main idea of the article.
Next, write a few sentences to describe the key points the author made to support the main idea.
End your summary with your thesis.
During your pre-writing, you decided how you might want to respond to the article. Use your outline to draft your body paragraphs. Use your synthesis skills to corporate relevant quotes from the article into paragraphs to support your ideas.
Is your summary of the article concise, objective, and accurate?
Do your body paragraphs respond to the article?
Do you have a main idea for each of the body paragraphs?
Do the sentences in each paragraph support each main idea?
This question is extremely important. If you find that you did not respond to the article in the way you had originally planned, revise your thesis.
End your essay by summarizing the main points you shared in your body paragraphs.
A classmate; a friend; a relative: ask someone to read over your work. Note their questions as they read.
At the very least, read your essay aloud to yourself, stopping when you get tripped up in words or sentences. Consider how to make these rough spots easier to read.
Schedule a conference with your instructor, or drop in on their student/office hours, or send them a Zoom request to talk about any questions you have about your draft.
You can also drop in at the CLC in DH210 or LAC in RCF 340 to have a conference with a tutor.

Revise your essay

Look at your outline: have you forgotten anything?
Do a paragraph outline of just main idea sentences for each paragraph: you’ll have a 5-7 sentence summary of your whole essay.

Proofread your essay

take on an objective tone?
introduce the article properly?
capture the main point of the article?
respond to the article?
capture your thoughts and opinions?
begin with a main idea statement followed by detail?
include quotes from the article?
concisely review your thoughts about the article?
Major grammar errors include run-on sentences, comma splices, and sentence fragments.
You are responsible for running Grammarly or another grammar/spellcheck before your essay is submitted.
Your instructors want to focus on improving your WRITING—not technical errors that machines can catch easily.
Use Modern Language Association (MLA) guidelines for formatting your academic essay and for any in-text citations or a Works Cited page.

Share This Book

Subject List
Take a Tour
For Authors
Subscriber Services
Publications
African American Studies
African Studies
American Literature
Anthropology
Architecture Planning and Preservation
Art History
Atlantic History
Biblical Studies
British and Irish Literature
Childhood Studies
Chinese Studies
Cinema and Media Studies
Communication
Criminology
Environmental Science
Evolutionary Biology
International Law
International Relations
Islamic Studies
Jewish Studies
Latin American Studies
Latino Studies
Linguistics

Literary and Critical Theory

Medieval Studies
Military History
Political Science
Public Health
Renaissance and Reformation
Social Work
Urban Studies
Victorian Literature
Browse All Subjects

How to Subscribe

Free Trials

In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Reader Response Theory

Introduction, general overview.

Foundational/Seminal Texts
Cultural and Social Perspectives
Multicultural Perspectives
Experiential Theories of Response
Feminist Perspectives
Gender Theory
New Literacies and Multimodal Literacies
Phenomenology Theory
Postmodern Perspectives
Psychological Processes, Participant and Spectator Stances
Subjective Reader Response Theory
Transactional Theory
Application of the Transactional Theory
Critical Theories

Other Subject Areas

Forthcoming articles expand or collapse the "forthcoming articles" section.

Black Atlantic
Friedrich Schleiermacher
Postcolonialism and Digital Humanities
Find more forthcoming articles...
Export Citations
Share This Facebook LinkedIn Twitter

Reader Response Theory by Susan Browne , Xiufang Chen , Faten Baroudi , Esra Sevinc LAST REVIEWED: 21 April 2021 LAST MODIFIED: 21 April 2021 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780190221911-0107

This annotated bibliography presents influential work in the area of reader response theory. While providing an overview of major research in the area of reader response, the annotated bibliography also provides current research representing various categories of reader response. The citations are organized by their dominant characteristics although there may be some overlap across categories.

Reader response theory identifies the significant role of the reader in constructing textual meaning. In acknowledging the reader’s essential role, reader response diverges from early text-based views found in New Criticism, or brain-based psychological perspectives related to reading. Literacy scholars such as David Bleich, Norman Holland, Stanley Fish, and Wolfgang Iser are instrumental in crafting what has come to be known as reader response. The theory maintains that textual meaning occurs within the reader in response to text and recognizes that each reader is situated in a particular manner that includes factors such as ability, culture, gender, and overall experiences. However, according to Tomkins’s 1980 edited volume Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-structuralism , reader response is not a representation of a uniform position, but is rather a term associated with theorists whose work addresses the reader, the reading process, and textual response. Although Tompkins omits the work of Louise Rosenblatt, it is Rosenblatt’s work that has come to have a vast influence in the field of reader response. Prior to the work of the New Critics, Louise Rosenblatt wrote the now-seminal text Literature as Exploration , first published in 1938, which was distinct in emphasizing both the reader and the text. In later editions of the text, Rosenblatt draws on the work of John Dewey and shifts from the use of the word “interaction” to describe reading as a “transaction,” thus giving life to the transactional theory of reading. The references in this section, including Applebee 1992 , Beach 1993 , Barton 2002 , and Harkin 2005 , provide an overview of reader response theory.

Applebee, A. “The Background for Reform.” In Literature Instruction: A Focus on Student Response . Edited by J. Langer, 1–18. Champaign, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1992.

This book chapter reviews a series of studies of the elementary and secondary school curriculum, providing a rich portrait of literature instruction and suggesting a series of issues that needed to be addressed in the teaching of literature. It set the background for reform.

Barton, J. “Thinking about Reader-Response Criticism.” The Expository Times 113.5 (2002): 147–151.

DOI: 10.1177/001452460211300502

An article that outlines reader response criticism through the lens of biblical scholarly inquiry.

Beach, R. A Teacher’s Introduction to Reader-Response Theories . Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1993.

This book offers an in-depth review of reader response theory for teachers to build foundational knowledge to aptly use in their classrooms. Topics discussed include textual theories of response, experiential theories of response, psychological theories of response, social theories of response, cultural theories of response, and applying theory into practice, eliciting response. Key reviews of reader response criticism and glossary terms are also explored throughout the text.

Harkin, P. “The Reception of Reader-Response Theory.” College Composition and Communication 56.3 (2005): 410–425.

This essay provides a historical explanation for the place of reader response theory in English studies. The author takes a genealogical look at how reader response theory has been celebrated or rejected in English departments and what this suggests about conflicted relations between composition studies and literary studies and between research and pedagogy during the past two or three decades in the United States.

Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login .

Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here .

About Literary and Critical Theory »
Meet the Editorial Board »
Achebe, Chinua
Adorno, Theodor
Aesthetics, Post-Soul
Affect Studies
Afrofuturism
Agamben, Giorgio
Anzaldúa, Gloria E.
Apel, Karl-Otto
Appadurai, Arjun
Badiou, Alain
Baudrillard, Jean
Belsey, Catherine
Benjamin, Walter
Bettelheim, Bruno
Bhabha, Homi K.
Biopower, Biopolitics and
Blanchot, Maurice
Bloom, Harold
Bourdieu, Pierre
Brecht, Bertolt
Brooks, Cleanth
Caputo, John D.
Chakrabarty, Dipesh
Conversation Analysis
Cosmopolitanism
Creolization/Créolité
Crip Theory
Critical Theory
Cultural Materialism
de Certeau, Michel
de Man, Paul
de Saussure, Ferdinand
Deconstruction
Deleuze, Gilles
Derrida, Jacques
Dollimore, Jonathan
Du Bois, W.E.B.
Eagleton, Terry
Eco, Umberto
Ecocriticism
English Colonial Discourse and India
Environmental Ethics
Fanon, Frantz
Feminism, Transnational
Foucault, Michel
Frankfurt School
Freud, Sigmund
Frye, Northrop
Genet, Jean
Girard, René
Global South
Goldberg, Jonathan
Gramsci, Antonio
Greimas, Algirdas Julien
Grief and Comparative Literature
Guattari, Félix
Habermas, Jürgen
Haraway, Donna J.
Hartman, Geoffrey
Hawkes, Terence
Hemispheric Studies
Hermeneutics
Hillis-Miller, J.
Holocaust Literature
Human Rights and Literature
Humanitarian Fiction
Hutcheon, Linda
Žižek, Slavoj
Imperial Masculinity
Irigaray, Luce
Jameson, Fredric
JanMohamed, Abdul R.
Johnson, Barbara
Kagame, Alexis
Kolodny, Annette
Kristeva, Julia
Lacan, Jacques
Laclau, Ernesto
Lacoue-Labarthe, Philippe
Laplanche, Jean
Leavis, F. R.
Levinas, Emmanuel
Levi-Strauss, Claude
Literature, Dalit
Lonergan, Bernard
Lotman, Jurij
Lukács, Georg
Lyotard, Jean-François
Metz, Christian
Morrison, Toni
Mouffe, Chantal
Nancy, Jean-Luc
Neo-Slave Narratives
New Historicism
New Materialism
Partition Literature
Peirce, Charles Sanders
Philosophy of Theater, The
Postcolonial Theory
Posthumanism
Postmodernism
Post-Structuralism
Psychoanalytic Theory
Queer Medieval
Race and Disability
Rancière, Jacques
Ransom, John Crowe
Reader Response Theory
Rich, Adrienne
Richards, I. A.
Ronell, Avital
Rosenblatt, Louse
Said, Edward
Settler Colonialism
Socialist/Marxist Feminism
Stiegler, Bernard
Structuralism
Theatre of the Absurd
Thing Theory
Tolstoy, Leo
Tomashevsky, Boris
Translation
Transnationalism in Postcolonial and Subaltern Studies
Virilio, Paul
Warren, Robert Penn
White, Hayden
Wittig, Monique
World Literature
Zimmerman, Bonnie
Privacy Policy
Cookie Policy
Legal Notice
Accessibility

[81.177.180.204]
81.177.180.204

In order to continue enjoying our site, we ask that you confirm your identity as a human. Thank you very much for your cooperation.

How to Write a Response Paper

Writing Essays
Writing Research Papers
English Grammar
M.Ed., Education Administration, University of Georgia
B.A., History, Armstrong State University

Most of the time when you are tasked with an essay about a book or article you've read for a class, you will be expected to write in a professional and impersonal voice. But the regular rules change a bit when you write a response paper.

A response (or reaction) paper differs from the formal review primarily in that it is written in the first person . Unlike in more formal writing, the use of phrases like "I thought" and "I believe" is encouraged in a response paper.

You'll still have a thesis and will need to back up your opinion with evidence from the work, but this type of paper spotlights your individual reaction as a reader or viewer.

Read and Respond

Grace Fleming

For a response paper, you still need to write a formal assessment of the work you're observing (this could be anything created, such as a film, a work of art, a piece of music, a speech, a marketing campaign, or a written work), but you will also add your own personal reaction and impressions to the report.

The steps for completing a reaction or response paper are:

Observe or read the piece for an initial understanding.
Mark interesting pages with a sticky flag or take notes on the piece to capture your first impressions.
Reread the marked pieces and your notes and stop to reflect often.
Record your thoughts.
Develop a thesis.
Write an outline.
Construct your essay.

It may be helpful to imagine yourself watching a movie review as you're preparing your outline. You will use the same framework for your response paper: a summary of the work with several of your own thoughts and assessments mixed in.

The First Paragraph

After you have established an outline for your paper, you need to craft the first draft of the essay using all the basic elements found in any strong paper, including a strong introductory sentence .

In the case of a reaction essay, the first sentence should contain both the title of the work to which you are responding and the name of the author.

The last sentence of your introductory paragraph should contain a thesis statement . That statement will make your overall opinion very clear.

Stating Your Opinion

There's no need to feel shy about expressing your own opinion in a position paper, even though it may seem strange to write "I feel" or "I believe" in an essay.

In the sample here, the writer analyzes and compares the plays but also manages to express personal reactions. There's a balance struck between discussing and critiquing the work (and its successful or unsuccessful execution) and expressing a reaction to it.

Sample Statements

When writing a response essay, you can include statements like the following:

I felt that
In my opinion
The reader can conclude that
The author seems to
I did not like
This aspect didn't work for me because
The images seemed to
The author was [was not] successful in making me feel
I was especially moved by
I didn't understand the connection between
It was clear that the artist was trying to
The soundtrack seemed too
My favorite part was...because

Tip : A common mistake in personal essays it to resort to insulting comments with no clear explanation or analysis. It's OK to critique the work you are responding to, but you still need to back up your feelings, thoughts, opinions, and reactions with concrete evidence and examples from the work. What prompted the reaction in you, how, and why? What didn't reach you and why?

Examples of Great Introductory Paragraphs
50 Argumentative Essay Topics
How To Write an Essay
How to Write a Solid Thesis Statement
Writing an Opinion Essay
What Is a Critique in Composition?
6 Steps to Writing the Perfect Personal Essay
5 Steps to Writing a Position Paper
How to Write a Persuasive Essay
How to Write a Great Process Essay
How to Write a Good Thesis Statement
10 Steps to Writing a Successful Book Report
Tips on How to Write an Argumentative Essay
How to Write a News Article That's Effective
How to Write a Narrative Essay or Speech
What an Essay Is and How to Write One

Literary Theory and Criticism

Home › Reader Response Criticism: An Essay

Reader Response Criticism: An Essay

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on October 23, 2016 • ( 5 )

Reader Response, primarily a German and American offshoot of literary theory, emerged (prominent since 1960s) in the West mainly as a reaction to the textual emphasis of New Criticism of the 1940s. New Criticism, the culmination of liberal humanist ideals, had stressed that only that which is within a text is part of the meaning of the text; that the text is “autotelic” entity (complete within itself). Hence, it neglected authorial biography, social conditions during the composition of a work of art and the reader’s psychology. Reader Response Criticism wholly repudiated all these notions; instead, it focuses on the systematic examination of the aspects of the text that arouse, shape, and guide a reader’s response (for instance, Aristotelian Catharsis/ Brechtian alienation effect “. It designates multiple critical approaches to reading a text. According to Reader Response criticism, the reader is a producer rather than a consumer of meanings (parallel to Barthes’s Birth of the Reader ). In this sense, a reader is a hypothetical construct of norms and expectations that can be derived or projected or extrapolated from the work. Because expectations may be violated or fulfilled, satisfied or frustrated, and because reading is a temporal process involving memory, perception, and anticipation, the charting of reader-response is extremely difficult and perpetually subject to construction and reconstruction, vision and revision.

Reader Response criticism does not denote any specific theory. It can range from the phenomenological theories of Wolfgang Iser and Roman Ingarden (both were faculty members at the University of Constance, Germany) to the relativistic analysis of Stanley Fish , who argues that the interpretive strategy of the reader creates the text, there being no text except that which a reader or an interpretive community of readers creates. Being both a reception aesthetic and a reception history, Reader Response criticism examines how readers realize the potentials of a text and how readings change over the course of history; it believes that although the the reader fills in the gaps, the author’s intentional acts impose restrictions and conditions

One can sort Reader Response theorists into three groups: those who focus upon the individual reader’s experience (“individualists”); those who conduct psychological experiments on a defined set of readers (“experimenters”); and those, who assume a fairly uniform response by all readers (“uniformists”). In a more general sense, one can break down Reader Response theorists into those who concern with the reader’s experience and psychology, those who concentrate on the linguistic/rhetorical dynamic of audience, and those who deal with readers as cultural and historical ciphers.

Hans Robert Jauss (1921-97), the German theorist, inspired by the phenomenological method of Husserl and Heideggeris Hermeneutics, gave a historical dimension to reader-oriented criticism by developing a version of Reader Response Criticism known as Reception Theory in his book, New Literary History. In this book, Jauss eschewed objectivist views of both literary texts and literary history and endeavoured to attain an agreement between Russian Formalism (which ignores historical and social contexts) and social theories as Marxism (which neglects the text). To him, a text is not simply and passively imbibed by the audience, but on the contrary, the reader makes out the meanings of the text based on his/her cultural background and experience. He exhorted that literature is a “dialogic” entity, a sort of dialogue between the text and the reader; a dialectic process of production and reception; he added that there is always “negotiation” and “opposition” on the part of the reader. “Horizons of expectations”, a term developed by Jauss to explain how a reader’s “expectations” or frame of reference, is based on the reader’s past experience of literature and what preconceived notions about literature the reader possesses (i.e., a reader’s aesthetic experience is bound by time and historical determinants). Reader Response Criticism tries to establish these “horizons” by analyzing the literary works of the age in question. Jauss also contended that for a work to be considered a classic it needed to exceed a reader’s horizons of expectations. The renowned cultural theorist, Stuart Hall , is one of the main proponents of reception theory; he developed it for media and communication studies from the literary- and history-oriented approaches.

Another leading exponent of German reception theory, Wolfgang Iser (1926-2007), drew heavily on the phenomenological aesthetics of Roman Ingarden and the writings of Hans-Georg Gadamer . To him, the literary work is not an object in itself, but an effect to be expounded; the text is the result of the author’s intentional acts and it controls reader’s responses. In his work, The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response (1976, trans. 1978), Iser posits that all literary texts have “Leerstellen” (blanks/gaps/ lacunae), which have to be filled in or “concretized” by the creative reader to interpret the text. “Implied Reader” is a term used by Wolfgang Iser to describe a hypothetical reader of a text. Such a reader is a “model” or a “role”. The implied reader “embodies all those predispositions necessary for a literary work to exercise its effect – predispositions laid down,. not by an empirical outside reality, but by the text itself. Consequently, the implied reader as a concept has his roots firmly planted in the structures of the rext; he is a construct and in no way yo be identified with any real reader”.The Implied Reader is established by the text itself, who is expected to respondin specific ways to the “response-inviting structures” of the text. While the “Actual Reader” is the one whose responses are coloured by his/ her accumulated personal experiences; one, who receives mental images during the process of reading through the knowledge and experience of one’s own. However the implied and actual readers co-exist, and are truly one and the same person, responding to a text in two different ways and levels of consciousness.

lser also describes the process of first reading, the subsequent development of the text into a ‘whole’, and how the dialogue between the reader and text takes place. In his study of Shakespeare’s histories, in particular Richard II , Iser interprets Richard’s continually changing legal policy as the expression of his desire for self-assertion. Here, he follows Hans Blumenberg , and attempts to apply his theory of modernity to Shakespeare. He also maintained that there are two poles in a literary work – “the artistic pole” (the text created by the author), and the “aesthetic pole” (the realization accomplished by the reader).

the 1960s, David Bleich began collecting statements from students of their feelings and associations. He based his analysis on classroom teaching of literature, and hold that reading is not determined by the text; instead, reading is a subjective process designed by the distinctive personality of the individual reader. He also claimed that his classes “generated” knowledge, the knowledge of how particular persons recreate texts.

Norman Holland makes use of psychoanalytic analysis of the process of reading. He viewed the subject matter of a work as the projection of the fantasies that constitute the identity of its author. To him, reading is the encounter between the author’s and the reader’s fantasies; the reader transforms the fantasy content, that constitutes the process of tnterpretation. He also declared that there is no universally determinate meaning of a particular text

Michael Riffaterre , Jonathan Culler and Terence Hawkes proposed the idea of “literary competence”, which maintains that mere linguistic competence is inadequate to understand literary meaning, and that “literary competence’ is necessary to go beyond the surface meaning of a text.

There are really two kinds of Reader-Response Criticism that could be found in the writings of the American literary theorist, Stanley Fish ; one is a phenomenological approach and the other is an epistemological theory characteristic of Fish’s later works. The Phenomenological method has much to commend itself to us as it focuses on what happens in the reader’s mind as he or she reads.

Reader-response critics hold that, to understand the literary experience or the meaning of a text, one must look to the processes readers use to create that meaning and experience. Traditional, text-oriented critics often think of reader-response criticism as an anarchic subjectivism, allowing readers to interpret a text any way they want. They accuse reader-response critics of observing that the text doesn’t exist. Another objection to reader-response criticism is that it fails to account for the text being able to expand the reader’s understanding. While readers can, and do put their own ideas and experiences into a work, they are at the same time gaining new understanding through the text. This is something that is generally overlooked in Reader Response Criticism.

14 Student Essay Example: Reader Response

“the bees without a king”.

By Ethan McCall

When reading Kurt Vonnegut’s short story “The Drone King,” most readers would come away from the story with the idea that Sheldon Quick is just a crazy businessman who invested in the wrong idea. I mean, what sane person would think that inventing carrier bees in a world with the wireless telegraph is a good idea? That’s just the thing though. No sane person would think that it’s a sound business idea. However, this story by Kurt Vonnegut likely speaks differently to a particular audience. This story’s implied readers are a specific demographic of men who call themselves Incels. While it at first appears to be a story that reflects with and represents the ideologies of Incels, it eventually reveals itself to be a critique of their worldview and ideologies.

Now, before I go any further, I must first shed some light on what an Incel is and the community that they belong to. Incel is a term that means “involuntarily celibate.” This online community of Incels is comprised of men who are bitter about their lack of sexual experience, and they blame women for it. The men belonging to this group also blame women and feminism for the “downfall” of society. They believe that women have dominated the world and now unfairly discriminate against men, thus robbing them of the social dominance in society that they believe men should have (Glace 288-289).

The character of Sheldon Quick in Vonnegut’s story is eerily similar to these men who call themselves Incels. Sheldon Quick is a man who has enjoyed a significant level of success and wealth throughout his life. One would think that given his circumstances, he has almost everything that he could ever want. However, from his first appearance, his biases become clear. When the stockbroker enters the Millennium Club to meet Mr. Quick, he is stopped at the front desk and informed that there are no women allowed into the club (Vonnegut). As a reader, this immediately sets off alarm bells in my head and paints an unflattering picture of Sheldon Quick. The Millennium Club and its patrons very clearly have some very negative views on women if they won’t even allow them to enter the building. However, someone from the Incel community would very likely agree with and praise this rule for how it puts women back into their place.

Rather than women dominating men and taking over their spaces as Incels believe women have been doing for quite some time now, they aren’t even allowed in the same spaces as men anymore. This lack of proximity lets men be themselves and innovate as they are supposed to without being disturbed by the lesser sex. To Incels, women have no inherent value aside from being able to have sex with men. This mindset can be seen in Glace’s article on Incels. When women have expressed that men who only want sex are disgusting, Incels have responded callously: “[W]hat the fuck else is there to want from such a vapid shell of a person? Your only redeeming quality is that you can lay still and take a dick. Why are you surprised?” (Glace, Taking the Black Pill 294-295). However, these roles are swapped within the world of the bees. The male bees are exterminated once they fulfill their only function of mating with the queen (Vonnegut). The reason that Mr. Quick, and by extension the Incel, are so interested in the plight of the male bee is because they are being discriminated against in the same way that Incels discriminate against women.

This is another sentiment that Incels latch onto and agree with. They believe that men are the wrongfully oppressed gender, and women have stolen their rightful place in society (Glace 288-289). This idea that men are being oppressed by women is further expanded upon when Mr. Quick takes the stockbroker up to the roof where his bees are being kept. When they arrive on the roof, they come across the scene of large bees stumbling out of their hives being hunted and killed by smaller bees. As Mr. Quick saved the large bees, the stockbroker asked him what was happening. Mr. Quick replies that it’s a bee war between the large males and the smaller female bees. When the stockbroker asks which bees the hives belonged to originally, Mr. Quick says that “Your question is good enough to be chiseled in granite for all time to ponder” (Vonnegut). From this scene, it becomes very clear how Mr. Quick feels about the plight of the male bees, and by extension, the human males of our world.

Mr. Quick believes that males have constructed society as we know it. They’ve worked tirelessly to construct the foundation of the world. However, now women have come in and pushed the men out of their positions of power, thereby taking the world for themselves. An Incel reader reading this would most likely be agreeing with Mr. Quick and his views on the world. This way of thinking about the role of women is very much in line with how Incels think about women. They have unrightfully taken the roles of leadership that men used to have, and are now discriminating against them, exactly how the male bees from the hives that they built are being pushed out from their homes and being torn to pieces by the female bees.

Much like Incels, Mr. Quick has determined that men are under attack from women, and drastic measures need to be taken in order to save the male species from this unrightful persecution. Due to this unfair exclusion of male bees from their hives, Mr. Quick is determined to save them, because much like the human male, Mr. Quick believes that male bees will be safe from female tyranny if they are kept away from women. He does this by creating a new hive for them that consists only of other male bees that have been forced out of their hives. In their new hives, they aren’t forced to do anything or be productive. According to Mr. Quick, the reason that the male bees can enjoy their lives in such leisure is that they are free from the demanding and thankless females (Vonnegut). This is very similar to the Millennium Club to which Mr. Quick belongs due to the fact that in both the new hive and the Millennium Club, no women are allowed. Mr. Quick’s observations about bees have poisoned his views on women.

From this point on, a reader from the Incel community would likely expect that Mr. Quick would continue to fight against the female rule that the world has come to be subjected to. However, subverting these expectations of the reader, the story starts to slowly show that Mr. Quick’s philosophy is incorrect. When Mr. Quick tells the stockbroker that they will only have to provide each of their bees with a penny’s worth of honey for an entire year, the stockbroker asks a very astute question: why don’t the male bees make their honey? This is when Mr. Quick reveals that it’s only the female workers that make honey. The stockbroker then points out the obvious. “Huh. I guess that’s why the female workers knock off the males, eh? The males are nothing but a drain on the community” (Vonnegut). This is a key moment in the story that shows just how biased Mr. Quick is. Even though he knows that these male workers contribute nothing and instead are only a burden on the colony, he still believes that the female bees clearing them out of the hive is unjust.

This echoes back to his situation. He was left a large sum of money by his father and has spent his life doing anything but work. Mr. Quick sees himself in the male bees. They’re both useless and provide nothing to their respective societies, yet Mr. Quick thinks that they both deserve a respected spot in the societies that they’ve contributed nothing to. A reader from the Incel community would likely be affected negatively by this development in the story. While the story was at first reiterating and reaffirming Incel ideology, all of a sudden, it’s pointing out flaws in their beliefs.

The ideals of Mr. Quick, and by extension the Incel, continue to be challenged, and ultimately proven wrong, at the press conference that he holds to demonstrate how bees can live in a male-only hive. According to a study by Nicolae-Sorin Drăgan on political narratives, telling a story means to lie or speak falsely. This story is a distortion of an otherwise uncomfortable reality and lying (70). This sort of story is exactly what Mr. Quick tells to the press during his conference. He goes on about how the only crime that male bees have committed is that they can’t make honey, yet they are discriminated against and killed for it. He declares that this system needs to be stopped for the safety of bees, but it’s obvious at this point that Mr. Quick is also talking about human women as well as bees.

However, despite his grandiose speech to the press, when Mr. Quick releases the bees so that they can go to their all-male colony, they don’t. Instead, they go back to the colonies that are run by the female bees and are subsequently killed. It’s at this point in the story that it subverts the expectations of the Incel reader about where the story was going. They were most likely expecting the story to praise Mr. Quick as a hero who was liberating men from the tyranny of females, but rather, the story shows Mr. Quick as a bitter old man who can’t accept his shortcomings and instead blames all of his problems on women and society as a whole. Thus, condemning Incels and their hatred of women, showing them that their lack of importance in society is their fault rather than a malicious plot by women to overthrow men.

While this story first appeared to agree with and support Incel beliefs, painting Mr. Quick to be a wise old man who has realized that women are the problem with society, as the story progresses, it shows that Mr. Quick is a lot of things, but wise isn’t one of them. Instead, he’s a man who was frightened by the social power of women increasing. Seeing this as a threat to men everywhere, Mr. Quick, in his attempt to prove that women were unnecessary, proved only that the ideals he and many Incels believe in are undeniably flawed and fundamentally wrong. This story uses the sympathy that Incel readers initially had for Mr. Quick as a way to challenge their beliefs. By the end of the story, when the character they supported so much is proven to be nothing but a sad man whose judgment was clouded by hate, Incel readers are encouraged to look inward and examine the beliefs that led Mr. Quick to this point and think about where their beliefs will take them. The story uses the downfall of Mr. Quick to inspire a change from the hateful ideology of Incels to something kinder and more tolerant.

Works Cited

Drăgan, Nicolae Sorin. “The Emotional Arcs of Political Narratives.” Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Braşov, Series IV: Philology & Cultural Studies 13.Suppl (2020): 69-86. d oi.org/10.31926/but.pcs.2020.62.13.3.6.

Glace, Alyssa M., Tessa L. Dover, and Judith G. Zatkin. “Taking the black pill: An empirical analysis of the “Incel”.” Psychology of Men & Masculinities (2021). doi.org/10.1037/men0000328.

Vonnegut, Kurt. “A Newly Discovered Kurt Vonnegut Story.” The Atlantic , Atlantic Media Company, 10 Jan. 2020, www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/10/kurt-vonnegut-the-drone-king/537870/ .

Share This Book

Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts

Welcome to the Purdue Online Writing Lab

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue University. When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice.

Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.

The Online Writing Lab (the Purdue OWL) at Purdue University houses writing resources and instructional material, and we provide these as a free service at Purdue. Students, members of the community, and users worldwide will find information to assist with many writing projects. Teachers and trainers may use this material for in-class and out-of-class instruction.

The On-Campus and Online versions of Purdue OWL assist clients in their development as writers—no matter what their skill level—with on-campus consultations, online participation, and community engagement. The Purdue OWL serves the Purdue West Lafayette and Indianapolis campuses and coordinates with local literacy initiatives. The Purdue OWL offers global support through online reference materials and services.

Social Media

Facebook twitter.

school Campus Bookshelves
menu_book Bookshelves
perm_media Learning Objects
login Login
how_to_reg Request Instructor Account
hub Instructor Commons

Margin Size

Download Page (PDF)
Download Full Book (PDF)
Periodic Table
Physics Constants
Scientific Calculator
Reference & Cite
Tools expand_more
Readability

selected template will load here

This action is not available.

10.1: Reader-Response Criticism

Last updated
Save as PDF
Page ID 87315

\( \newcommand{\vecs}[1]{\overset { \scriptstyle \rightharpoonup} {\mathbf{#1}} } \)

\( \newcommand{\vecd}[1]{\overset{-\!-\!\rightharpoonup}{\vphantom{a}\smash {#1}}} \)

\( \newcommand{\id}{\mathrm{id}}\) \( \newcommand{\Span}{\mathrm{span}}\)

( \newcommand{\kernel}{\mathrm{null}\,}\) \( \newcommand{\range}{\mathrm{range}\,}\)

\( \newcommand{\RealPart}{\mathrm{Re}}\) \( \newcommand{\ImaginaryPart}{\mathrm{Im}}\)

\( \newcommand{\Argument}{\mathrm{Arg}}\) \( \newcommand{\norm}[1]{\| #1 \|}\)

\( \newcommand{\inner}[2]{\langle #1, #2 \rangle}\)

\( \newcommand{\Span}{\mathrm{span}}\)

\( \newcommand{\id}{\mathrm{id}}\)

\( \newcommand{\kernel}{\mathrm{null}\,}\)

\( \newcommand{\range}{\mathrm{range}\,}\)

\( \newcommand{\RealPart}{\mathrm{Re}}\)

\( \newcommand{\ImaginaryPart}{\mathrm{Im}}\)

\( \newcommand{\Argument}{\mathrm{Arg}}\)

\( \newcommand{\norm}[1]{\| #1 \|}\)

\( \newcommand{\Span}{\mathrm{span}}\) \( \newcommand{\AA}{\unicode[.8,0]{x212B}}\)

\( \newcommand{\vectorA}[1]{\vec{#1}} % arrow\)

\( \newcommand{\vectorAt}[1]{\vec{\text{#1}}} % arrow\)

\( \newcommand{\vectorB}[1]{\overset { \scriptstyle \rightharpoonup} {\mathbf{#1}} } \)

\( \newcommand{\vectorC}[1]{\textbf{#1}} \)

\( \newcommand{\vectorD}[1]{\overrightarrow{#1}} \)

\( \newcommand{\vectorDt}[1]{\overrightarrow{\text{#1}}} \)

\( \newcommand{\vectE}[1]{\overset{-\!-\!\rightharpoonup}{\vphantom{a}\smash{\mathbf {#1}}}} \)

We have examined many schools of literary criticism. Here you will find an in-depth look at one of them: Reader-Response.

The Purpose of Reader-Response

why you like or dislike the text;
explain whether you agree or disagree with the author;
identify the text’s purpose; and
critique the text.

Write as a Scholar

Criticize with examples.

Is the text racist?
Does the text unreasonably puts down things, such as religion, or groups of people, such as women or adolescents, conservatives or democrats, etc?
Does the text include factual errors or outright lies? It is too dark and despairing? Is it falsely positive?
Is the text poorly written?
Does it contain too much verbal “fat”?
Is it too emotional or too childish?
Does it have too many facts and figures?
Are there typos or other errors in the text?
Do the ideas wander around without making a point?

In each of these cases, do not simply criticize, but give examples. As a beginning scholar, be cautious of criticizing any text as “confusing” or “crazy,” since readers might simply conclude that you are too ignorant or slow to understand and appreciate it.

The Structure of a Reader-Response Essay

title of the work to which you are responding;
the author; and
the main thesis of the text.
What does the text have to do with you, personally, and with your life (past, present or future)? It is not acceptable to write that the text has NOTHING to do with you, since just about everything humans can write has to do in some way with every other human.
How much does the text agree or clash with your view of the world, and what you consider right and wrong? Use several quotes as examples of how it agrees with and supports what you think about the world, about right and wrong, and about what you think it is to be human. Use quotes and examples to discuss how the text disagrees with what you think about the world and about right and wrong.
What did you learn, and how much were your views and opinions challenged or changed by this text, if at all? Did the text communicate with you? Why or why not? Give examples of how your views might have changed or been strengthened (or perhaps, of why the text failed to convince you, the way it is). Please do not write “I agree with everything the author wrote,” since everybody disagrees about something, even if it is a tiny point. Use quotes to illustrate your points of challenge, or where you were persuaded, or where it left you cold.
How well does the text address things that you, personally, care about and consider important to the world? How does it address things that are important to your family, your community, your ethnic group, to people of your economic or social class or background, or your faith tradition? If not, who does or did the text serve? Did it pass the “Who cares?” test? Use quotes from the text to illustrate.
What can you praise about the text? What problems did you have with it? Reading and writing “critically” does not mean the same thing as “criticizing,” in everyday language (complaining or griping, fault-finding, nit-picking). Your “critique” can and should be positive and praise the text if possible, as well as pointing out problems, disagreements and shortcomings.
How well did you enjoy the text (or not) as entertainment or as a work of art? Use quotes or examples to illustrate the quality of the text as art or entertainment. Of course, be aware that some texts are not meant to be entertainment or art: a news report or textbook, for instance, may be neither entertaining or artistic, but may still be important and successful.
your overall reaction to the text;
whether you would read something else like this in the future;
whether you would read something else by this author; and
if would you recommend read this text to someone else and why.

Key Takeaways

In reader-response, the reader is essential to the meaning of a text for they bring the text to life.
The purpose of a reading response is examining, explaining, and defending your personal reaction to a text.
When writing a reader-response, write as an educated adult addressing other adults or fellow scholars.
As a beginning scholar, be cautious of criticizing any text as “boring,” “crazy,” or “dull.” If you do criticize, base your criticism on the principles and form of the text itself.
The challenge of a reader-response is to show how you connected with the text.

Reader-Response Essay Example

To Misread or to Rebel: A Woman’s Reading of “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”

At its simplest, reading is “an activity that is guided by the text; this must be processed by the reader who is then, in turn, affected by what he has processed” (Iser 63). The text is the compass and map, the reader is the explorer. However, the explorer cannot disregard those unexpected boulders in the path which he or she encounters along the journey that are not written on the map. Likewise, the woman reader does not come to the text without outside influences. She comes with her experiences as a woman—a professional woman, a divorcée, a single mother. Her reading, then, is influenced by her experiences. So when she reads a piece of literature like “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” by James Thurber, which paints a highly negative picture of Mitty’s wife, the woman reader is forced to either misread the story and accept Mrs. Mitty as a domineering, mothering wife, or rebel against that picture and become angry at the society which sees her that way.

Due to pre-existing sociosexual standards, women see characters, family structures, even societal structures from the bottom as an oppressed group rather than from a powerful position on the top, as men do. As Louise Rosenblatt states: a reader’s “tendency toward identification [with characters or events] will certainly be guided by our preoccupations at the time we read. Our problems and needs may lead us to focus on those characters and situations through which we may achieve the satisfactions, the balanced vision, or perhaps merely the unequivocal motives unattained in our own lives” (38). A woman reader who feels chained by her role as a housewife is more likely to identify with an individual who is oppressed or feels trapped than the reader’s executive husband is. Likewise, a woman who is unable to have children might respond to a story of a child’s death more emotionally than a woman who does not want children. However, if the perspective of a woman does not match that of the male author whose work she is reading, a woman reader who has been shaped by a male-dominated society is forced to misread the text, reacting to the “words on the page in one way rather than another because she operates according to the same set of rules that the author used to generate them” (Tompkins xvii). By accepting the author’s perspective and reading the text as he intended, the woman reader is forced to disregard her own, female perspective. This, in turn, leads to a concept called “asymmetrical contingency,” described by Iser as that which occurs “when Partner A gives up trying to implement his own behavioral plan and without resistance follows that of Partner B. He adapts himself to and is absorbed by the behavioral strategy of B” (164). Using this argument, it becomes clear that a woman reader (Partner A) when faced with a text written by a man (Partner B) will most likely succumb to the perspective of the writer and she is thus forced to misread the text. Or, she could rebel against the text and raise an angry, feminist voice in protest.

James Thurber, in the eyes of most literary critics, is one of the foremost American humorists of the 20th century, and his short story “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” is believed to have “ushered in a major [literary] period … where the individual can maintain his self … an appropriate way of assaulting rigid forms” (Elias 432). The rigid form in Thurber’s story is Mrs. Mitty, the main character’s wife. She is portrayed by Walter Mitty as a horrible, mothering nag. As a way of escaping her constant griping, he imagines fantastic daydreams which carry him away from Mrs. Mitty’s voice. Yet she repeatedly interrupts his reveries and Mitty responds to her as though she is “grossly unfamiliar, like a strange woman who had yelled at him in the crowd” (286). Not only is his wife annoying to him, but she is also distant and removed from what he cares about, like a stranger. When she does speak to him, it seems reflective of the way a mother would speak to a child. For example, Mrs. Mitty asks, “‘Why don’t you wear your gloves? Have you lost your gloves?’ Walter Mitty reached in a pocket and brought out the gloves. He put them on, but after she had turned and gone into the building and he had driven on to a red light, he took them off again” (286). Mrs. Mitty’s care for her husband’s health is seen as nagging to Walter Mitty, and the audience is amused that he responds like a child and does the opposite of what Mrs. Mitty asked of him. Finally, the clearest way in which Mrs. Mitty is portrayed as a burdensome wife is at the end of the piece when Walter, waiting for his wife to exit the store, imagines that he is facing “the firing squad; erect and motionless, proud and disdainful, Walter Mitty the Undefeated, inscrutable to the last” (289). Not only is Mrs. Mitty portrayed as a mothering, bothersome hen, but she is ultimately described as that which will be the death of Walter Mitty.

Mrs. Mitty is a direct literary descendant of the first woman to be stereotyped as a nagging wife, Dame Van Winkle, the creation of the American writer, Washington Irving. Likewise, Walter Mitty is a reflection of his dreaming predecessor, Rip Van Winkle, who falls into a deep sleep for a hundred years and awakes to the relief of finding out that his nagging wife has died. Judith Fetterley explains in her book, The Resisting Reader, how such a portrayal of women forces a woman who reads “Rip Van Winkle” and other such stories “to find herself excluded from the experience of the story” so that she “cannot read the story without being assaulted by the negative images of women it presents” (10). The result, it seems, is for a woman reader of a story like “Rip Van Winkle” or “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” to either be excluded from the text, or accept the negative images of women the story puts forth. As Fetterley points out, “The consequence for the female reader is a divided self. She is asked to identify with Rip and against herself, to scorn the amiable sex and act just like it, to laugh at Dame Van Winkle and accept that she represents ‘woman,’ to be at once both repressor and repressed, and ultimately to realize that she is neither” (11). Thus, a woman is forced to misread the text and accept “woman as villain.” as Fetterley names it, or rebel against both the story and its message.

So how does a woman reader respond to this portrayal of Mrs. Mitty? If she were to follow Iser’s claim, she would defer to the male point of view presented by the author. She would sympathize with Mitty, as Thurber wants us to do, and see domineering women in her own life that resemble Mrs. Mitty. She may see her mother and remember all the times that she nagged her about zipping up her coat against the bitter winter wind. Or the female reader might identify Mrs. Mitty with her controlling mother-in-law and chuckle at Mitty’s attempts to escape her control, just as her husband tries to escape the criticism and control of his own mother. Iser’s ideal female reader would undoubtedly look at her own position as mother and wife and would vow to never become such a domineering person. This reader would probably also agree with a critic who says that “Mitty has a wife who embodies the authority of a society in which the husband cannot function” (Lindner 440). She could see the faults in a relationship that is too controlled by a woman and recognize that a man needs to feel important and dominant in his relationship with his wife. It could be said that the female reader would agree completely with Thurber’s portrayal of the domineering wife. The female reader could simply misread the text.

Or, the female reader could rebel against the text. She could see Mrs. Mitty as a woman who is trying to do her best to keep her husband well and cared for. She could see Walter as a man with a fleeting grip on reality who daydreams that he is a fighter pilot, a brilliant surgeon, a gun expert, or a military hero, when he actually is a poor driver with a slow reaction time to a green traffic light. The female reader could read critics of Thurber who say that by allowing his wife to dominate him, Mitty becomes a “non-hero in a civilization in which women are winning the battle of the sexes” (Hasley 533) and become angry that a woman’s fight for equality is seen merely as a battle between the sexes. She could read Walter’s daydreams as his attempt to dominate his wife, since all of his fantasies center on him in traditional roles of power. This, for most women, would cause anger at Mitty (and indirectly Thurber) for creating and promoting a society which believes that women need to stay subservient to men. From a male point of view, it becomes a battle of the sexes. In a woman’s eyes, her reading is simply a struggle for equality within the text and in the world outside that the text reflects.

It is certain that women misread “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.” I did. I found myself initially wishing that Mrs. Mitty would just let Walter daydream in peace. But after reading the story again and paying attention to the portrayal of Mrs. Mitty, I realized that it is imperative that women rebel against the texts that would oppress them. By misreading a text, the woman reader understands it in a way that is conventional and acceptable to the literary world. But in so doing, she is also distancing herself from the text, not fully embracing it or its meaning in her life. By rebelling against the text, the female reader not only has to understand the point of view of the author and the male audience, but she also has to formulate her own opinions and create a sort of dialogue between the text and herself. Rebelling against the text and the stereotypes encourages an active dialogue between the woman and the text which, in turn, guarantees an active and (most likely) angry reader response. I became a resisting reader.

Works Cited

Elias, Robert H. “James Thurber: The Primitive, the Innocent, and the Individual.” Contemporary Literary Criticism . Vol. 5. Ed. Dedria Bryfonski. Detroit: Gale Research, 1980. 431–32. Print.

Fetterley, Judith. The Resisting Reader . Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1978. Print.

Hasley, Louis. “James Thurber: Artist in Humor.” Contemporary Literary Criticism . Vol. 11. Ed. Dedria Bryfonski. Detroit: Gale Research, 1980. 532–34. Print.

Iser, Wolfgang. The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response . Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1981. Print.

Lindner, Carl M. “Thurber’s Walter Mitty—The Underground American Hero.” Contemporary Literary Criticism . Vol. 5. Ed. Dedria Bryfonski. Detroit: Gale Research, 1980. 440–41. Print.

Rosenblatt, Louise M. Literature as Exploration . New York: MLA, 1976. Print.

Thurber, James. “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.” Literature: An Introduction to Critical Reading . Ed. William Vesterman. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace, 1993. 286–89. Print.

Tompkins, Jane P. “An Introduction to Reader-Response Criticism.” Reader Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism . Ed. Jane P. Tompkins. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1980. ix-xxvi. Print.

Putting It Together: Defining Characteristics of Romantic Literature. Authored by : Anne Eidenmuller & Lumen Learning. License : CC BY: Attribution

Opinion The Constitution was supposed to be a uniter, not a divider

Yuval Levin’s new book argues that our founding document isn’t failing us — we are failing it.

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., in surreptitiously recorded comments , said that “there can be a way of working — a way of living together peacefully, but it’s difficult, you know, because there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised.” While some of his critics have read that remark as combative, it should not be controversial. Maintaining cohesion in a society riven by deep differences is a serious challenge that has been recognized as such by a wide range of political thinkers.

Among those thinkers were the American Founders. Fostering a complex kind of unity was one of their principal aims in designing the Constitution. That goal helps explain why they sought to create a system in which multiple, overlapping factions would have to contend and bargain with one another. No group was guaranteed to get its way all the time or to be shut out of power altogether. Major changes in government would generally require broad and durable consensus.

In his new book, “ American Covenant ,” Yuval Levin argues that we have forgotten the Founders’ way of thinking about these issues, and that this forgetfulness is one of the sources of contemporary discontent.

A friend and American Enterprise Institute colleague of mine, Levin makes his case without over-idealizing the Founders or scanting their own disagreements. They weren’t united even about just how divided we were. Arguing against those Founders who insisted we were a culturally unified nation unmarked by European class distinctions — that we were already one people, as the Declaration of Independence somewhat wishfully suggested — James Madison noted that we were not and could not be made into “ one homogeneous mass.” He accurately suggested that future events, along with fading memories of the American Revolution, would make us more heterogeneous still.

Their work had flaws, some of which now seem obvious. Levin regards two crucial post-1787 developments — the modern party system midwifed by Martin Van Buren and the Reconstruction amendments — as improvements that furthered the Constitution’s original goals.

The Founders also sometimes wrongly implied that they had created a system that would run by itself. Keeping it in good working order would require more than checks and balances; it would take civic virtue on the part of officials and citizens alike. But we have had more than a century of civic miseducation thanks to the influence of progressivism in the mold of Woodrow Wilson. The progressives of the early 20th century chafed at the limits the Constitution placed on government, and especially the need for building large coalitions before it could take decisive action.

Over the decades, they altered our country’s governmental and political practice. Levin gently but relentlessly argues that theirs has been a disastrous success. Presidents now attempt to act as visionary policymakers more than as administrators, Congress has lost the habit of deliberating, and the judiciary is too often tempted to do the proper work of the other federal branches. State governments today grasp for dollars from the federal government more than for independence from it.

We now have a Wilsonian political culture operating a Madisonian Constitution, with dysfunctional and disappointing results. Which way to resolve that conflict depends on how we think about the trade-off between making coalition-building easier and making it less necessary.

The attraction of the second answer, the one progressives historically favored, and which not a few of today’s rightists have come to embrace, is the prospect of bold and sweeping government action. The Madisonian answer, seconded by Levin, frustrates such ambitions on purpose. The reforms he suggests to nudge our political practices back toward Madisonianism — such as a larger U.S. House, in which committees have more power and the leaders of the parties have less — are therefore not a summons to the barricade. It is a practical agenda, not a romantic one.

As such, it would appear to be a poor fit for an era in which many Americans say they want radical, disruptive change. But the people who speak that way don’t always mean the same thing, or anything in particular, and in recent decades, presidents’ transformative initiatives have mostly brought them grief.

It might, then, be the right time for a return to bargaining and accommodation. When the Constitution comes up in political debates, it is typically in the context of the most divisive issues in our society, such as abortion and guns, on which we read its provisions very differently. But the Constitution is meant to bring us together. Beneath the affection for Americans of all political stripes that Levin expresses is a stern message: If we seem to be coming apart today, it might not be because the Constitution is failing us so much as because we are failing it.

Share full article

Supported by

Guest Essay

Surgeon General: Why I’m Calling for a Warning Label on Social Media Platforms

An illustration of a girl lying in bed in a darkened room. The glow from her phone illuminates her pillow with a warning sign, a triangle with an exclamation point inside it.

By Vivek H. Murthy

Dr. Murthy is the surgeon general.

One of the most important lessons I learned in medical school was that in an emergency, you don’t have the luxury to wait for perfect information. You assess the available facts, you use your best judgment, and you act quickly.

The mental health crisis among young people is an emergency — and social media has emerged as an important contributor. Adolescents who spend more than three hours a day on social media face double the risk of anxiety and depression symptoms, and the average daily use in this age group, as of the summer of 2023, was 4.8 hours . Additionally, nearly half of adolescents say social media makes them feel worse about their bodies.

It is time to require a surgeon general’s warning label on social media platforms, stating that social media is associated with significant mental health harms for adolescents. A surgeon general’s warning label, which requires congressional action, would regularly remind parents and adolescents that social media has not been proved safe. Evidence from tobacco studies show that warning labels can increase awareness and change behavior. When asked if a warning from the surgeon general would prompt them to limit or monitor their children’s social media use, 76 percent of people in one recent survey of Latino parents said yes.

To be clear, a warning label would not, on its own, make social media safe for young people. The advisory I issued a year ago about social media and young people’s mental health included specific recommendations for policymakers, platforms and the public to make social media safer for kids. Such measures, which already have strong bipartisan support, remain the priority.

Legislation from Congress should shield young people from online harassment, abuse and exploitation and from exposure to extreme violence and sexual content that too often appears in algorithm-driven feeds. The measures should prevent platforms from collecting sensitive data from children and should restrict the use of features like push notifications, autoplay and infinite scroll, which prey on developing brains and contribute to excessive use.

Additionally, companies must be required to share all of their data on health effects with independent scientists and the public — currently they do not — and allow independent safety audits. While the platforms claim they are making their products safer, Americans need more than words. We need proof.

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber? Log in .

Want all of The Times? Subscribe .

IMAGES

How to Write a Reader Response: 13 Steps (with Pictures)
Reader Response: What It Is and How It Works
The Effectiveness of Reader Response Approach
Reader Response Essay Example
Reader Response theory
How To Write A Text Response Essay

VIDEO

Reader Response Essay Part I, II and III
Essay on today a reader and tomorrow a leader
Reader Response Theory explained in Urdu/Hindi
LITERARY ESSAYS
Reader Response Criticism
LITERARY THEORY --"Reader Response theory OR Reception Aesthetics"-- for NTA NET JRF ENGLISH

COMMENTS

How to Write a Reader Response (with Examples)
A reader's response can be a short essay, graphic organizer or paragraph; it's a summary along with your reaction. A literary analysis essay is a structured five-paragraph work. Your introduction paragraph will include the hook, background information and your thesis statement. Your body paragraphs will include your topic sentence, introducing ...
Guide to Writing an Effective Response Essay
1. Identify the main topic or issue you will be responding to. 2. State your position or stance on the topic clearly and concisely. 3. Provide a brief preview of the key points or arguments you will present in your essay to support your thesis. Remember, your thesis statement should be specific, focused, and debatable.
How to Write a Reading Response Essay With Sample Papers
5 Responses. Your reaction will be one or more of the following: Agreement/disagreement with the ideas in the text. Reaction to how the ideas in the text relate to your own experience. Reaction to how ideas in the text relate to other things you've read. Your analysis of the author and audience. Your evaluation of how this text tries to ...
PDF How to write a reader response paper Prof. Margaret O'Mara
The essay demonstrates that you have read the book, internalized and contextualized its arguments, and can articulate and substantiate your reactions to it. What a reader response paper is not: A descriptive summary of the book or of the historical events it describes. Assume your reader has read the book and has a familiarity with the era ...
What Is Reader Response?
Reader response criticism is a literary theory that focuses on the individual reader's experience and interpretation of a text. It asserts that the meaning of a text is not fixed and objective but rather subjective and dependent on the reader's interpretation and response to it. According to this theory, readers bring their own experiences ...
How to Write a Reading Response
The reader response generally takes the format of an essay, Format / Structure of Reader Response. Introduction; Start your introduction with the name of the author and the full title of the work. Give a brief description of the text and explain what it is about. But, don't try to summarise the story.
PDF The Reading Response
A reading response is a specific kind of essay that asks you as a reader to engage critically with an assigned text. It is not asking you to state whether you like or dislike the text in question—instead, a reading response should: Although the length of a reading response may vary based on the assignment or on the text to which you are ...
Writing a Reading Response
A reading response asks the reader [you] to examine, explain and defend your personal reaction to a reading. You will be asked to explore: why you like or dislike the reading, explain whether you agree or disagree with the author, identify the reading's purpose, and. critique the text. There is no right or wrong answer to a reading response.
24 How do I Write a Response Essay?
Actively read the assigned article. Analyze the article to determine the rhetorical situation. Consider your own thoughts about the article. Decide how you want to respond. Conference #1. Structure your essay. Outline the essay you want to write. Draft a working thesis. Drafting the essay:
Reader Response Theory
Key reviews of reader response criticism and glossary terms are also explored throughout the text. Harkin, P. "The Reception of Reader-Response Theory." College Composition and Communication 56.3 (2005): 410-425. This essay provides a historical explanation for the place of reader response theory in English studies.
6.4: Reader Response: A Process Approach
Reader response is a powerful literary method that is refreshing since it allows you to concentrate on yourself as a reader specifically or on readers generally. Carefully read the work you will analyze. Formulate a general question after your initial reading that identifies a problem—a tension—that is fruitful for discussion and that.
4.10: Reader-Response Criticism
The Structure of a Reader-Response Essay Choosing a text to study is the first step in writing a reader-response essay. Once you have chosen the text, your challenge is to connect with it and have a "conversation" with the text. In the beginning paragraph of your reader-response essay, be sure to mention the following:
Reading Response Definition, Uses & Example
A reading response is a reader's written reaction to and opinion of a story or text. When assigned by a teacher, it may be in the form of a paper, an essay, a written analysis, a written critique ...
How to Write a Response Paper
The steps for completing a reaction or response paper are: Observe or read the piece for an initial understanding. Mark interesting pages with a sticky flag or take notes on the piece to capture your first impressions. Reread the marked pieces and your notes and stop to reflect often. Record your thoughts. Develop a thesis.
Reader Response: What It Is and How It Works
Schools increasingly use reader response as a strategy for students to interact more actively with the text. A reader's response can be an essay, a critique, an analysis, or a paper about a certain piece of writing. This might be a novel, a poem, a short story, or a nonfiction work. One form of reading response is during-reading response ...
Sentence Starters for Reader Response Essays and Journals
A reader response can be a personal reaction to the text, or it can be a more impersonal analysis of the ideas and writing in the text. In a reader response essay, you can talk about one or more of the following: Your feelings about the topic. Your thoughts about what the author said. What this reminds you about in your own life.
How to Write a Response Essay With Magazine Article Example
Conclusion. tell a personal story. finish your personal story. explain the history of the topic. ask the reader what they think. tell why you found this interesting. suggest why this article might interest the reader. explain what you expected the article to be about. tell how you were surprised by the article.
Reader-Response Criticism
Reader Response Criticism: An Essay. Alternatively, one can look at the psychological context of the reader. In Dynamics of Literary Response Norman Holland deals primarily with hypothetical readers; in Five Readers Reading he turns his attention to actual students. In both cases, he tries to make sense of interpretive activity by passing it ...
Reader Response Criticism: An Essay
Reader Response Criticism: An Essay By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on October 23, 2016 • ( 5). Reader Response, primarily a German and American offshoot of literary theory, emerged (prominent since 1960s) in the West mainly as a reaction to the textual emphasis of New Criticism of the 1940s. New Criticism, the culmination of liberal humanist ideals, had stressed that only that which is within a text ...
How to Write a Reader Response
In writing a response you may assume the reader has already read the text. Thus, do NOT summarize the contents of the text at length . Instead, take a systematic, analytical approach to the text. ---First of all, be sure to mention the title of the work to which you are responding, the author, and the main thesis of the text, using correct ...
Student Essay Example: Reader Response
14. Student Essay Example: Reader Response. The following student essay example of Receptive Reader Response is taken from Beginnings and Endings: A Critical Edition . This is the publication created by students in English 211. This essay discusses Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s short story, "The Drone King.".
Welcome to the Purdue Online Writing Lab
The Online Writing Lab (the Purdue OWL) at Purdue University houses writing resources and instructional material, and we provide these as a free service at Purdue.
Nell Irvin Painter's 'I Just Keep Talking' is beautiful and bracing
From the opening sentences of her new collection, "I Just Keep Talking: A Life in Essays," historian Nell Irvin Painter addresses readers in a voice brimming with knowledge, clarity and, most ...
ChatGPT
Improve my essay writing ask me to outline my thoughts (opens in a new window) Tell me a fun fact about the Roman Empire (opens in a new window) Write a text inviting my neighbors to a barbecue (opens in a new window) Give me ideas for what to do with my kids' art (opens in a new window)
Opinion
The point here is not to demonize cows or malign their udders. The point, on the contrary, is to remind us how humans treat cows, how we gather them in dense herds to achieve industrial-scale ...
Opinion
Dr. DeLong teaches economic history at the University of California, Berkeley, and is the author of "Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century." This article has ...
Opinion
In response to her question about whether the court had an obligation to guide the country "toward a more moral path," the chief justice shot back: "Would you want me to be in charge of ...
10.1: Reader-Response Criticism
Reader-Response Essay Example To Misread or to Rebel: A Woman's Reading of "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" At its simplest, reading is "an activity that is guided by the text; this must be processed by the reader who is then, in turn, affected by what he has processed" (Iser 63).
Opinion
Yuval Levin's new book argues that our founding document isn't failing us; we are failing it.
Opinion
Dr. Murthy is the surgeon general. One of the most important lessons I learned in medical school was that in an emergency, you don't have the luxury to wait for perfect information. You assess ...

How to Write a Reader Response

Writing the Reader Response

Drafting the Reader Response

Reading the Text

Sample Reader Response

Community Q&A

You Might Also Like

About This Article

Reader Success Stories

Did this article help you?

Featured Articles

Trending Articles

Watch Articles

Essay Papers Writing Online

Key Elements of a Response Essay

Understanding the Assignment

Analyzing the Prompt

Developing a Thesis Statement

Structuring Your Response

Main Body Paragraphs

Related Post

How to Write a Reading Response

Read the Text Carefully

Think Carefully

Ask yourself the following questions:

Make a Draft

Make an Outline

Format / Structure of Reader Response

About the Author: Hasa

​You May Also Like These

Writing a Reading Response

Write as an Educated Adult

24 How do I Write a Response Essay?

Share This Book

Literary and Critical Theory

How to Subscribe

In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Reader Response Theory

Related Articles Expand or collapse the "related articles" section about

Other Subject Areas

Reader Response Theory by Susan Browne , Xiufang Chen , Faten Baroudi , Esra Sevinc LAST REVIEWED: 21 April 2021 LAST MODIFIED: 21 April 2021 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780190221911-0107

How to Write a Response Paper

Read and Respond

The First Paragraph

Stating Your Opinion

Sample Statements

Literary Theory and Criticism

Reader Response Criticism: An Essay

Share this:

Related Articles

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

14 Student Essay Example: Reader Response

Works Cited

Share This Book

Welcome to the Purdue Online Writing Lab

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

Social Media

Margin Size

10.1: Reader-Response Criticism

The Purpose of Reader-Response

Write as a Scholar

The Structure of a Reader-Response Essay

Key Takeaways

Reader-Response Essay Example

Opinion The Constitution was supposed to be a uniter, not a divider

Surgeon General: Why I’m Calling for a Warning Label on Social Media Platforms

IMAGES

VIDEO

COMMENTS

You May Also Like These