Slavery and Freedom Sojourner Truth, Ain’t I a Woman?

Suggestions for Response Papers I. Developing a response Write down your impressions. Write down whatever questions came to mind during and after your reading. What confuses you? What do you want to know more about? How can you find out? Do any of the characters remind you of yourself or people you know? Do any of the events remind you of ones in your own life? Do these associations with the story, poem, or play help or interfere with your response? If so, how? What do you find most interesting or compelling about the work? Why? How can you “show” what made this issue so compelling for you? What details or passages in the work illustrate support for your response? II. Focusing and Drafting the Paper Then, after you’ve written some first responses, think about which of your responses might provide a starting point for an essay on the work. Which of the ideas generated by the text seem to have the most potential, or which idea is the most interesting to you? Think about whether you care enough about one of the “issues” to pursue it further and whether it is “doable.” In other words, will you be able to write 2 pages on the topic, finding support in the text and / or in your experience for your thesis? After you’ve decided on a focus for your response, draft the paper, using whatever strategies have worked for you in the past (brainstorming, focused freewriting, clustering, etc.) The idea is to expand your initial response into a more focused “reading” of the text, using supporting details and examples from the work itself as well as from any “life experiences” that seem pertinent. III. Revision Checklist: Organization and Unity • Do all the paragraphs relate to the central thesis? • Is the organization of the paragraphs within the essay clear? • Do each of the sentences within the paragraphs relate to the central idea of the paragraph? Support Are there enough details to support or clarify your assertions? Have you “shown” what you’ve told? Are there enough quotes from the work of literature to support your assertions? Are the paragraphs fully developed? Is the essay fully developed? Have you accounted for all aspects of your thesis statement? Clarity Is the central thesis of the essay clearly stated? Does the title of your essay account for your thesis? Is the language clear? Are there redundancies, digressions, or meaningless phrases that could be cut? Is the essay written in MLA format? Have you documented your references to the text with page numbers in parentheses? (No outside sources are required or desired in these response papers.) Voice Does it sound like you? When you read it, can you hear your voice and emotion? Grammar and Mechanics Proofread carefully, checking grammar, sentence structure, spelling, and punctuation.