Ideas and Tips for Students Writing a Great Book Report


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How To Write A Great Response To Literature Essay

What is the purpose of a response to literature essay? A response to literature essay is a critical view and opinion about the plot, theme, or character of a story. It’s a bit different from an argumentative essay in that there are more analysis and evaluation of the text without much research or citation of outside sources. You may make connections other pieces of literature (e.g., something by the same author) but you probably won’t need to reference any other scholarly works.

Bear in mind that you need to summarize the piece of literature you are responding to, but more importantly, you need to provide your analysis and general reaction to the text through a well-thought and structured argument.

Building a Response to Literature Essay Outline

  1. Take extensive reading notes. You need to be prepared to discuss the text extensively and that requires you to be prepared. Underline key terms and phrases and use a separate notebook to draw mindmaps, create graphs and charts, and jot down notes. If you make this a habit you will have an easier time organizing your ideas for your assignment.
  2. Narrow the focus of your paper. In a literature response, you might choose to write on the author’s style, the author’s purpose, use of symbols and much more. However, you should always choose just one thing to emphasize. This will make it less difficult to come up with a concise thesis statement and will make the entire assignment more manageable.
  3. Have a look at a response to literature essay example before creating an outline and starting your draft. By looking at an example you will get a sense of the proper structure. Then create your outline using the same formula and keep referring to the outline as you write the first draft.
  4. After writing the first draft and setting it aside for a couple of days you will be ready to rethink your response essay and revise the content. It’s recommended you start by recreating an outline. It is easier to rearrange content in an outline than it is doing so in the draft. Use the same approach as you did when you created the first outline.
  5. You may want to use an outline template. These can be found online or in writing guides. Because outlines can be customized for any type of writing assignment, you may want to experiment with a few different structures or formats. Your goal should be to present your response in a logical manner. And this can be a simple case of playing around with the order of your main and secondary points.

Academic Essay Writing and Editing Services

One of the best strategies employed by students is to use a professional writing service to custom write and provide response to literature essay examples. A good service can also help by compiling topic ideas, reviewing drafts, editing and proofreading drafts, and even writing assignments from scratch. Teachers everywhere are starting to recommend the use of these services as a method of learning since it means students work one-on-one with academic professors and gain access to more resources.