Writing a text-response essay

WRITING A TEXT-RESPONSE ESSAYThe Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

Writing a text-response essay

• Your major assessment task for this unit is a text response-essay, which you will complete in week 7

• You will also complete a “hurdle task” in week 5. Hurdle tasks, though not graded, must be passed for you to pass the unit

• For both of these tasks, you will have the topic for a few days prior to writing the essay under timed conditions in class

Writing a text-response essay

• Text-response essays require:• An introduction• A series of body paragraphs, and• A conclusion

THE ‘RULES’ OF TEXT-RESPONSE WRITING

Ten rules of text-response writing

1. Brevity (brief) – why use 10 words when you can use 5?2. Don’t refer to the essay in the essay.3. Don’t use personal voice (I, we, you).4. Don’t list quotes.5. Don’t agree or disagree – just present the case.6. Don’t retell the story.7. Avoid references to your own life or the world. Stay within the

story.8. A story is like a painting. Everything that appears is there for a

reason.9. When you make a point support it with evidence.10. Use connectives to link your ideas and evidence in your

paragraph. Sequence is important.

Brevity

1. Brevity (brief) – why use 10 words when you can use 5?

2. Don’t refer to the essay in the essay.

In this essay I will argue that everyone has special needs.

3. Don’t use personal voice (I, we, you).

This makes you the reader consider how fortunate Christopher is, despite his lack of “emotional intelligence”.

4. Don’t list quotes, integrate them.

(More on this later).

5. Don’t agree or disagree – just present the case.

I agree that Mark Haddon has attempted to convey the idea that

6. Don’t retell the story.

Christopher travels to London so that he can stay with his mother.

Christopher’s journey to London to visit his mother illustrates the lengths to which the characters will go to achieve a sense of belonging.

7. Avoid references to your own life or the world. Stay within the story.

When you meet people with Asperger’s, you can see that they have trouble understanding social ques.

8. A story is like a painting. Everything that appears is there for a reason.

Discuss

9. When you make a point support it with evidence.

Evidence includes references to the text, as well as quotes.

10. Use connectives to link your ideas and evidence in your paragraph. Sequence is important.

Haddon, Haddon, HaddonHaddon, Furthermore, However

See the wiki for a list of connectives.

TEEEEEEEL: EVERY PARAGRAPH NEEDS MORE THAN ONE EXAMPLEText-response essay writing in Year 10

TEEEEEEEL

• Topic sentence• Explanation• Evidence• Explanation (more)• Evidence (more of this too)• Even more explanation and evidence, (you’re on a roll

now) before you write your• Linking sentence

INTEGRATING QUOTES INTO YOUR TEXT RESPONSE. Yr 10 English

INTEGRATING quotes

• Instead of: Christopher’s behaviour makes things hard for everyone in the household. “I threw my plate and it hit mother’s toe.”

• Try this: Christopher’s behaviour, including throwing a plate that “hit mother’s toe,” makes things hard for everyone in the household.

INTEGRATING quotes

• Instead of: Christopher becomes aggressive in some situations, for example when the cop touched him, Chris hit him, “the little bugger just had a pop at me.”

• Try this:.Christopher becomes aggressive in some situations, for example, when the cop touched him, Chris “had a pop at” him.

Integrating quotes – your turn

• How can you improve the integration of the quote in this sentence?

• Hint* use fewer words from the quote.

Similarly, the policeman doesn’t understand Chris’s reaction when he questions him; he “make[s] this noise when there is too much information coming into [his] head from the outside world.”

Some suggestions

Similarly, the policeman doesn’t understand Chris’s reaction to “too much information coming into [his] head from the outside world” during questioning.

Similarly, when Christopher “make[s] this noise when there is too much information coming into [his] head” during questioning, the policeman doesn’t understand Chris’s reaction.

INTEGRATING quotes

• Note! When you need to change a letter or a word or two within a quote, use square brackets.

• For example: Christopher says “I find people confusing”, but in your essay you might say: Christopher “find[s] people confusing.”

• Another example: Christopher says “Eight years ago, when I first met Siobhan, she showed me this picture and I knew that it meant sad”, but in your essay, you might say: Christopher Could interpret this facial expression to a limited degree because Siobhan had “showed [him] this picture and [he] knew that it meant sad.”

Integrating quotes

The power of ellipsis

• Ellipsis is a series of dots (usually three) that indicate that some superfluous text has been omitted.

• For example, a policeman says the following to Christopher: “I strongly advise you to get into the back of the police car because if you try any of that monkey business again, you little shit, I will seriously lose my rag.”

Although this is a wonderful piece of dialogue, you don’t need all of it in your essay, so try using ellipsis like this:

Minor characters are shown responding to Christopher’s behaviour defensively; a policeman threatens that if Christopher tries “any of that monkey business… [the policeman] will seriously lose [his] rag.”

Integrating quotes

• And remember!!

• Don’t use quotes out of context.

• If you are using a quote about Christopher’s encounter with police, don’t use it to support your explanation of his conflicts with his father.