English 112

Response Paper One Assignment

For this response paper, you will need to begin thinking about formulating arguments in response to active reading. Please choose one of the following essays for this response: Rachel Carson’s “The Obligation to Endure,” Lester Brown’s “Rescuing a Planet under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble,” or Bjorn Lomborg’s “The Truth About the Environment.” In this two- to three-page 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 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. 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” that I discussed 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 basic fashion on page 37 of EW.

Remember, 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.