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How to Write a Summary-and-Response Essay Assignment

The Summary-and-Response essay assignment teaches us how to incorporate another writer’s words with our own. The process begins by carefully reading another writer’s essay. We then begin our essay with an opening paragraph that identifies the writer, the name of the essay we read, and briefly summarizes its content. The rest of our essay is made of our words and ideas with selected words from the other essay occasionally blended in for added effect and impact. The best way to get a sense for the structure of a summary-and-response essay is to study a few examples, so please do the following: 

Begin by reading the professional essays below and the student examples that follow. First, notice how each student essay begins with a paragraph that identifies the author, the professional essay, and provides a brief summary of the professional essay’s main point. Second, notice how the rest of the student essay is the student’s words and ideas with occasional words from the professional essay blended in for impact and effect. Finally, notice how the student credits the use of the other writer’s words.

Here are the five requirements of the first paragraph in list form.

1. name the author

2. name the work

3. add a brief summary

4. build a bridge to your thesis (a transition)

5. state your thesis at the end of the paragraph

As a first example, please read the professional essay Don’t Let Stereotypes Warp Your Judgments by Robert Heilbroner. Once done, study the two student examples that follow, by locating the requirements mentioned above. Also study how both writers blended Heilbroner’s words with their own and credited Heilbroner for the words that were his.

Student Summary-and-Response Example #1—Heilbroner

Student Summary-and-Response Example #2—Heilbroner

Here is yet another example. First, view the Information Literacy video Using the ProQuest Database.  (Alternatively, you can go the ProQuest Database, located in the SCC Library's databases, and explore on your own.) Then use your new-found skills to locate and read the professional essay "I'm Still Learning from My Mother" by Cliff Schneider in ProQuest.

After reading Schneider’s essay, please return to this page, and then read the student example, keeping the following in mind:

Notice in this student sample that the writer has fulfilled the five requirements above by using two paragraphs rather than one. (This is because the first paragraph offers a much more extensive summary.) In the first paragraph, the student writer identifies the author, the essay, and offers a detailed summary (requirements 1, 2, and 3). The student writer then uses a second paragraph to provide a transition that leads into the thesis stated in the final sentence (requirements 4 and 5).

Student Example Summary-and-Response to "Still Learning From My Mother" by Cliff Schneider

IMPORTANT NOTE:  Before beginning your Summary-and-Response essay, please be sure you have watched and understood the Information Literacy video "Working with Words from a Source--MLA Video" and/or have read and understood the information in the "Working with Words from a Source" lesson.

A substantial part of your grade on this essay will be determined by how well you have mastered blending others' words with your own, so you will likely need to refer to Working with Words from a Source quite often.