Response Paper One
Due: Monday, September 13th
Length: Two pages

For this two-page response paper, you will need to begin thinking about formulating arguments in response to active reading. In this essay, you will take a close look at how an author crafts his/her argument in a published essay. While you will partially attend to the "issue" the author discusses, your primary job in this two-page paper is to analyze the author's writing strategies -- the "how" of the written argument. Choose one of the four essays you will have read by the due date in Rereading America (by Horace Mann, Michael Moore, John Taylor Gatto, or Jonathan Kozol) as the focus of your paper. In this paper you will need to introduce the article you will be discussing, you will need to offer a brief summary of the main points of that essay, and you will need to propose your own “argumentative response” to the efficacy (or inefficacy) of the "writing" of the article.

Keep in mind that you are writing for a specific audience and that you will need to develop an arguable claim in your paper, a claim that you support with text-derived evidence. Also, keep in mind that this is a brief response paper and that its form is “closed,” meaning that you need to clearly present your claim in your first paragraph.

A successful response paper will:
• Contain few to no instances of the “Eight Grammar No-no’s.” We will discuss these in class.
• Follow the format guidelines listed in your syllabus and mentioned by me in class.
• Present a clear position, a response to a particular article. (You can use “I.”)
• Mention the author’s name, the article’s title, the publication date, and context in the first paragraph.
• Follow a multi-paragraph structure.
• Avoid erratic flow and will follow a logical argument-development sequence.
• Culminate with a restatement of main ideas and a presentation of a succinct, developed assertion.
• Feature a thesis, at the onset and developed through the paper, that conforms to the guidelines described in your Everyday Writer.

Be aware, you are responding to an author’s writing, so keep your response focused on that (rather than on the larger issue). Your next, longer, paper will afford you the chance to take the issue on. Here, stick to dealing with the author and the author’s examination of the issue.