There’s no single formula for writing a college essay, but the Critical Response Essay tends to be a little more formulaic.
Separate from the Critical Response Essay, a general template for critical thinking might look a little like this:
- Claim: ~5 sentences introducing a set of ideas, addressing “why,” “how,” and “so what” questions
- Body Paras: Analyzing different aspects raised in the claim (~1-2 paras each), explaining each step in your logic, and—like the Pulp Fiction model—continually interrogating your thinking instead of narrowly seeking to prove a single point
- Conclusion: “So what”/ “who cares”? Address the larger social ramifications of your ideas (~1-2 paras)
Think of your claim as the conclusion you’ve already drawn—the rest of the essay is where you explain to the reader how you arrived at that conclusion. You are exploring this conclusion and the thinking that led you there.
It also might help to first ask a series of questions to get to your claim. For example:
“X phenomenon occurs/is present in Y space or through Z interactions. How does X manifest in Y or through Z; how do Y and/or Z normalize it; why; and what are the larger social ramifications of this particular manifestation?”
Let’s say I want to write about social dynamics in tattoo parlors, given my interest in body modification. I might rephrase the above to say:
“The tattoo artists at Fictional Studio act standoffish with potential clients, which seems unwelcoming and isn’t conducive to getting customers. How does this indifference manifest in their behaviors with clients? Why do the artists at Fictional Studio normalize it? What are the larger social ramifications of this attitude?”
In order to create my claim, I must answer the questions I just posed. After answering the questions, I would delete the questions and replace the paragraph with my answers—that is, my claim. In the example above, I might try to answer it like this (answers italicized):
“At Fictional Studio, the tattoo artists act cool, indifferent, and aloof when potential clients enter, ignoring them after a brief “Hi” and leaving them alone to flip through portfolios [“how”]. While this attitude seems contradictory to getting customers, it seems to screen out clients who aren’t serious about getting tattooed [“why”]. People who belong to the world of body modification culture don’t seem to be deterred by this aloofness. This suggests that Fictional Studio, and maybe other tattoo parlors, use the stereotype of the unapproachable coolness of body art to get reliable customers who are serious about wanting work done, who understand the tattooing process and are willing to put in the time, which also ensures a good working relationship between the artist and client. This apparently unfriendly disposition also keeps the historical stereotype of tattoo culture alive: an illegal, deviant, rebellious, outsider phenomenon that has quickly become mainstream. Thus, the artists’ attitude both gets good customers and pushes back against the mainstreamification of a subculture [“so what”].”
The more you practice asking and answering the “how”/”why”/”so what” questions (in at least 5 sentences!), the more prepared you’ll be to generate claims for your college essays.
More specific to the Critical Response Essay, a template for such academic papers might look like this, as Nicotra (2019) describes:
- Title (two-part is common, with something “catchy” before the colon and the purpose of the essay after the colon, but it doesn’t have to be two-part)
- Introduction that either provides a fact about the topic of the essay or an anecdote directly related to the response you plan to make (followed by the thesis), or begins with the thesis of your response paper right away.
- Summary of the article
- Your response to the article, which will include your reasoning, evidence for your reasoning, and warrants linking your evidence to the sub-claims and major claims you’re making
- Conclusion that answers “so what/who cares?” and suggests how we should approach the article
Importantly, Nicotra suggests that rhetorically savvy response papers do the following:
- Respond to what the piece is actually saying, not to something you’re (unfairly) reading into it or to only your personal feelings about it
- Respond to what’s important about the piece, not a minor detail or small piece of evidence in it. If an unimportant detail is the focus, the response should convince readers why it is important
- Add something new to our understanding of the piece by 1) Showing it’s flawed because of something it doesn’t consider, 2) Show that the assumptions are not fully correct (without rejecting them as completely wrong except in special cases), 3) Enlarge the scope of the original argument, 4) Show that the piece is important or needs more attention because it contradicts most people’s beliefs or is otherwise a necessary antidote to a social, cultural, or economic issue.
