How to write a Text Response Essay

1. How to write a Text Response Essay Area of Study 1: reading and responding

2. What’s required? • You need to demonstrate your understanding of: • the ideas, characters and themes constructed by the author and presented in the text • the way the author uses structures, features and conventions to construct meaning. • How to prepare, construct and support a response to a text in an essay form

3. What’s required? • You need to be able to use: • appropriate textual evidence to support your response. • Appropriate metalanguage to discuss the textual features in your response • Expressive, fluent and coherent writing including the conventions of spelling, punctuation and syntax of Standard Australian English.

4. Approaching Essay Topics

5. Approaching Essay Topics • Understanding an essay topic is crucial to developing a relevant response. • There are five aspects to consider when looking at a topic: • Common Topic format • Common Instruction Terminology • Key Words and Phrases • Rewriting the topic • The Scope of the Topic

6. Approaching Essay Topics • COMMON TOPIC FORMATS • There are three common topic formats: • A statement on the text followed by a task instruction. For example: • ‘In a totalitarian world, conformity is necessary for survival’. Discuss • A direct quote followed by a task instruction or question. For example: • ‘The past was erased … the lie became the truth.’ Why is the refusal to record the past accurately so important in the world of Nineteen Eighty-Four? • A direct question on an aspect of the text: • Are Julia and Winston really in love? Is love really possible in Nineteen Eighty Four?

7. Approaching Essay Topics • Instruction Terminology – Understand Instructions. • Discuss – what does this require? • Debate, question or explain a topic, giving evidence, reasons and explanations for and/or against the topic. • Do you agree? • Present your own interpretation of the topic, giving evidence, reasons and explanations etc. • How? • Explain, outline or describe the ways in which the text illustrated the topic by drawing on textual evidence, structures and features and metalanguage. • Why?: • Explain reasons to support the idea represented in the topic.

8. Approaching Essay Topics • Key words and phrases –definitions and synonyms • Identify key words, phrases, terminology and concepts in the topic. • Use a dictionary to clarify your understanding of these terms. • Come up with a list of synonyms for the key words and phrases (this will help you avoid constantly repeating the same words) • Quotes – identify the context of a quote if it is in the topic and consider what the significance is.

9. Approaching Essay Topics • Rewriting the Topic - Paraphrasing • Write a simple paraphrase of the topic by directly substituting key words and phrases with your own vocabulary or list of synonyms. • Write a paraphrase of the topic by reversing the statement and using your own words.

10. Approaching Essay Topics • Scope of the Topic – identifying the focus • Ask yourself: “In order to answer this topic what do I have to think and write about?” • Your answer should consider the following: • Character/s – development and/or relationships • Themes or issues • The author’s views and values • The social, historical or political context • The use of structures, features and/or conventions

11. Forming your Contention

12. Forming your Contention • A contention is your point of view, stance, position or argument in response to a topic. Generally there are four positions you can take: • Yes: complete agreement • Yes, however...: partial agreement, presentation of other considerations in relation to the topic. • No: complete disagreement, presentation of alternative view on the topic. • No, however...: part disagreement with the topic; presentation of other considerations in relation to the topic.

13. Forming your Contention • “Fence sitting” is discouraged as it gives the impression of uncertainty, lack of knowledge and lack of focus. • Once you have considered what the question is asking, form your overall opinion of the topic. • Your contention should be clearly expressed in one sentence. • Use different vocabulary to the words in the essay topic.

14. Practise Time! • For the following topics identify: • Topic format • Instruction Terminology • Key Words and Phrases • Rewrite the topic • Consider the Scope of the topic • I witness the ones who are left behind... they have punctured hearts.”- Death. The Book Thief shows that death and war are often more difficult for those who survive. Discuss. • “The consequence of this is that I’m always finding humans at their best and worst. I see their ugly and their beauty, and I wonder how the same thing can be both”. The Book Thief explores how beauty can exist in the midst of brutality. Discuss.

15. Practise Time! • Now establish your position on one of the topics below and write your contention in one sentence. • I witness the ones who are left behind... they have punctured hearts.”- Death. The Book Thief shows that death and war are often more difficult for those who survive. Discuss. • “The consequence of this is that I’m always finding humans at their best and worst. I see their ugly and their beauty, and I wonder how the same thing can be both”. The Book Thief explores how beauty can exist in the midst of brutality. Discuss.

16. Planning Your Essay

17. Planning Your Essay • After you have understood the topic and formed your contention, you have to plan your knowledge into a well structured and detailed text response essay. • The essay plan is your first draft or “roadmap” to writing an effective, focused text response essay under pressure.

18. Planning Your Essay • What an essay plan should include: • Statement of contention • Outline main points or reasons for contention • Ideas should be organised in sequential, logical order, indicating paragraphs. • Brief description of key evidence for each main point. • You should aim to have 3 to 5 main points, one per body paragraph.

19. Planning Your Essay • Example Written Plan: • Write your contention • Brief outline of first reason/point • Evidence 1 to support first reason • Evidence 2 to support first reason • Brief outline of second reason/point • Evidence 1 to support second reason • Evidence 2 to support second reason • Etc...

20. Planning Your Essay • Example Visual Plan:

21. Practise Time! • Let’s plan the essays we’ve begun. • “I witness the ones who are left behind... they have punctured hearts.”- Death. The Book Thief shows that death and war are often more difficult for those who survive. Discuss. • “The consequence of this is that I’m always finding humans at their best and worst. I see their ugly and their beauty, and I wonder how the same thing can be both”. The Book Thief explores how beauty can exist in the midst of brutality. Discuss.

22. Writing Introductions

23. Writing Introductions • The introduction must be relevant, focused and convincing. • The basic introduction should immediately establish the contention and the main points that will be presented (in order) • There are a number of features that you can include in your introduction, though not all will be appropriate for every essay.

24. Writing Introductions • Features of an introduction: • A sentence introducing the author and text in relation to the topic. • In the novel, The Book Thief, Markus Zusak explores... [outline key theme/idea] • A clear sentence stating your contention in relation to the topic. • At the centre of the text is the idea that [contention]. • An outline of the main points • This is revealed through [first point]. Additionally [second point]. Finally [third point] also supports [contention]

25. Writing Introductions • Information contextualising the text in relation to the topic. • Zusak’s novel acts to alert his readers to the dangers of war...etc • Contextualising a quote that is part of the topic. • Through the narrator, Death, Zusak expresses his own view that [quote from topic] • In the introduction you could make use of: key words, phrases, synonyms, metalanguage sophisticated explanation of key terms and concepts (NOT dictionary definitions)

26. Writing Introductions • How easily can you write an introduction for the question you’ve begun?

27. Writing the Body

28. Writing the Body • The body is the meat in your sandwich. It is where you show the extent of your knowledge of the text in relation to the topic. • The body should develop the central contention from beginning to end. • Overall, you should aim for 500 words for this section – 3 body paragraphs (possibly 4). • USE TEEEEL: especially the T • Topic Sentence: state an idea that relates to the essay topic, do not describe a character or scene from the text. • Evidence: quotes, paraphrases, brief descriptions • Explanation: elaborate on how the evidence relates to the topic and the main point of the paragraph. • Link: Concluding sentence to the paragraph, making sure that everything you’ve written relations to the TS and the overall contention. • Also relate each new paragraph to the previous idea (see list of sentence starters.

29. Writing the Conclusion

30. Writing the Conclusion • The conclusion is essentially a restatement of your contention and summary of the main points. • Make sure you use different wording to your essay • Make sure you link to the topic and contention • No new ideas. • Don’t ask rhetorical questions • Finish with a quote or a make a statement about the relevance of the text to the wider world.

31. Style Pointers

32. Style Pointers • Using Quotes • Quotes must be relevant to the point, and clearly punctuated with quotation marks • Incorporate short quotes within sentences. • E.g. Zusak describes Death as comforting because “even death has a heart”. • If a quote doesn’t flow fluently in a sentence, it should be introduced by a colon. • Michael Holztapfel cannot bear to live in the knowledge that he has survived and his brother has not: “He killed himself for wanting to live”. • Use an ellipse (3 dots) if you are omitting a word or phrase from a lengthy quote. • Death assures his readers that he is “not violent... not malicious”.

33. Style Pointers • Style • Title of the Text: Use capitals for each word and underline. Do this consistently throughout: The Book Thief • Use the author/director’s full name in your first reference to them, then their surname. NEVER their first name. • Use a formal style and tone. Avoid colloquial language (basically this means...; pretty much; sort of like), slang (heaps good, epic failure) and clichés (up a creek without a paddle)

34. Style Pointers • Write in the present tense when referring to the text. • Do not self-reference (‘I’ or ‘me’). Use ‘one’. • Do not refer to the reader as ‘you’ (e.g. This makes you feel like...) use ‘the reader’. • Write fluent sentences by using linking words, commas, semicolons or colons accurately. • Avoid overusing key terms, descriptive or linking words.

35. Planning Practice • The more essays you plan, the more ideas you have explored and the more quickly you’ll be able to respond to exam and essay topics. • Try these: • The characters in the end of The Book Thief have changed from who they were at the beginning of the novel. Discuss. • How does having Death as narrator changes the readers’ response to the novel?