The Orienting Response Is What Keeps Us Reading Newspapers

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Each semester, you volition probably be asked by at least 1 instructor to read a book or an commodity (or watch a TV show or a film) and to write a newspaper recording your response or reaction to the material. In these reports—often referred to as response or reaction papers—your instructor will most likely look you to do 2 things: summarize the material and detail your reaction to it. The following pages explain both parts of a report.

Role 1: A SUMMARY OF THE WORK

To develop the beginning role of a report, do the following:

• Place the author and championship of the work and include in parentheses the publisher and publication date. For magazines, give the engagement of publication.
• Write an informative summary of the material.
• Condense the content of the piece of work by highlighting its main points and key supporting points.
• Utilise straight quotations from the work to illustrate important ideas.
• Summarize the material so that the reader gets a full general sense of all key aspects of the original work.
• Do not talk over in great item any single aspect of the piece of work, and practice not neglect to mention other equally important points.
• Also, keep the summary objective and factual. Do not include in the first part of the paper your personal reaction to the work; your subjective impression will class the footing of the second part of your paper.

PART 2: YOUR REACTION TO THE WORK

To develop the second office of a report, do the following:

• Focus on any or all of the following questions. Check with your instructor to see if south/he wants you to emphasize specific points.
• How is the assigned work related to ideas and concerns discussed in the class for which you are preparing the paper? For example, what points made in the course textbook, form discussions, or lectures are treated more fully in the piece of work?
• How is the work related to problems in our present-day world?
• How is the material related to your life, experiences, feelings and ideas? For example, what emotions did the work arouse in you lot?
• Did the work increase your understanding of a particular issue? Did it change your perspective in any style?
• Evaluate the merit of the work: the importance of its points, its accuracy, completeness, organization, and so on.
• You should besides indicate hither whether or not you would recommend the work to others, and why.

POINTS OF CONSIDERATION WHEN WRITING THE Study

Here are some important elements to consider as yous prepare a written report:

• Utilize the four bones standards of effective writing (unity, back up, coherence, and clear, error-costless sentences) when writing the report.
• Make sure each major paragraph presents and so develops a single primary indicate. For example, in the sample report that follows, the first paragraph summarizes the book, and the three paragraphs that follow detail 3 split up reactions of the educatee writer to the book. The student then closes the report with a short concluding paragraph.
• Support any general points you make or attitudes you limited with specific reasons and details. Statements such every bit "I concur with many ideas in this commodity" or "I plant the book very interesting" are meaningless without specific evidence that shows why yous feel every bit you do. Expect at the sample report closely to see how the chief point or topic sentence of each paragraph is developed past specific supporting evidence.
• Organize your material. Follow the bones plan of organization explained above: a summary of ane or more than paragraphs, a reaction of two or more paragraphs, and a conclusion. Too, use transitions to brand the relationships amongst ideas in the newspaper clear.
• Edit the paper carefully for errors in grammar, mechanics, punctuation, word utilize, and spelling.
• Cite paraphrased or quoted fabric from the book or article you are writing about, or from whatever other works, by using the appropriate documentation style. If you lot are unsure what documentation fashion is required or recommended, ask you teacher.
• You may use quotations in the summary and reaction parts of the newspaper, simply practise not rely on them too much. Use them only to emphasize key ideas.
• Publishing information tin be incorporated parenthetically or at the lesser of the page in a footnote. Consult with your teacher to determine what publishing information is necessary and where it should be placed.

A SAMPLE RESPONSE OR REACTION PAPER

Hither is a report written by a student in an introductory psychology course. Wait at the paper closely to see how it follows the guidelines for report writing described above.

Role 1: Summary

Part 1: Summary Topic judgement for summary paragraph	A Written report on Homo's Search for Meaning Dr. Viktor Frankl'due south book Human'south Search for Meaning (New York: Washington Square Printing, 1966) is both an autobiographical account of his years every bit a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps and a presentation of his ideas nearly the significant of life. The three years of deprivation and suffering he spent at Auschwitz and other Nazi camps led to the development of his theory of Logotherapy, which, very briefly, states that the primary strength in human beings is "a striving to observe a meaning in 1'due south life" (154). Without a significant in life, Frankl feels, we experience emptiness and loneliness that lead to apathy and despair. This need for meaning was demonstrated to Frankl time and again with both himself and other prisoners who were faced with the horrors of military camp being. Frankl was able to sustain himself partly through the love he felt for his wife. In a moment of spiritual insight, he realized that his dear was stronger and more meaningful than death, and would be a real and sustaining force within him even if he knew his married woman was expressionless. Frankl's comrades besides had reasons to live that gave them force. One had a child waiting for him; another was a scientist who was working on a series of books that needed to be finished. Finally, Frankl and his friends constitute pregnant through their determination to accept and behave their fate with backbone. He says that the words of Dostoevsky came frequently to heed: "There is 1 thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my suffering."  When Frankl's prison house experience was over and he returned to his profession of psychiatry, he found that his theory of significant held true non only for the prisoners but for all people. He has since had great success in working with patients past helping them locate in their own lives meanings of beloved, work, and suffering.
Part two: Reaction Topic sentence for get-go reaction paragraph	Ane of my reactions to the book was the relationship I saw betwixt the "Capos" and ideas about anxiety, standards, and aggression discussed in our psychology class. The Capos were prisoners who acted equally trustees, and Frankl says they acted more cruelly toward the prisoners than the guards or the SS men. Several psychological factors help explicate this cruelty. The Capos must have been suppressing intense anxiety nigh "selling themselves out" to the Nazis in render for small favors. Frankl and other prisoners must have been a constant reminder to the Capos of the courage and integrity they themselves lacked. When our behaviors and values are threatened by someone else acting in a different style, one manner we may react is with anger and aggression. The Capos are an extreme case of how, if the situation is right, we may exist capable of great cruelty to those whose deportment threaten our standards.
Topic sentence for second reaction paragraph	I retrieve that Frankl's idea that meaning is the near important force in human beings helps explain some of the disorder and discontent in the globe today. Many people are unhappy because they are caught in jobs where they accept no responsibility and creativity; their work lacks pregnant. Many are besides unhappy because our civilization seems to stress sexual technique in social relationships rather than human caring. People buy popular books that may help them go meliorate partners in bed, but that may not make them more sensitive to each other'due south human needs. Where in that location is no real intendance, there is no meaning. To hide the inner emptiness that results from impersonal work and sexual practice, people busy themselves with the aggregating of fabric things. With goggle box sets, stereos, cars, expensive clothes, and the like, they try to forget that their lives lack true meaning instead of working or going to schoolhouse to get a meaningful job, or trying to be decent human beings.
Topic sentence for third reaction paragraph	I have likewise constitute that Frankl's idea that suffering can take meaning helps me understand the behavior of people I know. I have a friend named Jim who was e'er poor and did not have much of a family—only a stepmother who never cared for him equally much as for her ain children. What Jim did take, though, was conclusion. He worked two jobs to save coin to go to school, and then worked and went to school at the same time. The fact that his life was difficult seemed to make him bear down all the more. On the other hand, I can think of a man in my neighborhood who for all the years I've known him has washed nothing with his life. He spends whole days smoking and looking at cars going by. He is a burned-out case. Somewhere in the past his bug must take become besides much for him, and he gave up. He could take constitute meaning in his life by deciding to fight his troubles like Jim, but he didn't, and at present he is a sad shadow of a human. Without determination and the desire to face his hardships, he lost his chance to make his life meaningful.
Concluding paragraph	In decision, I would strongly recommend Frankl's book to persons who care about why they are alive, and who want to truly think about the purpose and pregnant of their lives

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Source: http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/rwc/handouts/the-writing-process-1/invention/Writing-a-Response-or-Reaction-Paper

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