Response Paper Guidelines

The bulk of your work in this class involves writing short responses to our in-class material. You have a choice of 18 response prompts throughout the class, and you select 10 of these to complete. Responses should be 500 words, typed, and include at least 1 direct reference to the readings from class, cited using footnotes. You should always write your response in Word, Google Docs, or something equivalent and then upload it to
Blackboard. Writing directly into Blackboard risks losing it if anything goes wrong with the website.
What makes an effective response?
 Specificity
o Responses do not need to cover all the assigned material; instead you
should choose some particular parts of the reading that you thought were
interesting and use that to answer the question.
 Focus
o Responses should answer the question asked and maintain focus on
answering that question using a few examples from the readings. When
writing a response, keep your answer/interpretation of the question rooted
in the readings. If you have opinions/anecdotes/connections to other
experiences, that’s good stuff to bring to the discussion board.
 Depth
o Responses aren’t very long, but an effective response demonstrates
sufficient depth by providing information about a) details (what happened),
b) context (why did it happen at that time?), and c) impact (what happened
as a result/why is it important?)
How do I do footnotes?
Footnotes go at the end of a sentence where you are either directly quoting information or paraphrasing information from a source.
In Word, you click on “References Insert Footnote.” In Google Docs, it’s
“InsertFootnote.”
I’d like you to use Chicago/Turabian format for your footnotes. Specifics about how to adhere to that format can be found here:
https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/turabian/turabian-notes-and-bibliography-citationquick-guide.html