How to Write a Response Essay in Family and Consumer Science: First Things to Know
Posted on July 25, 2021
Students often have to write an essay. A response essay belongs to a typical academic assignment. It aims at revealing a student’s reaction to some paper, movie, article, or book. One should not confuse a review with a response essay. The first one needs a personal viewpoint and estimation of the discussed thing. The second one needs only a response. It can be positive or negative and involve the emotions of a person.
Topics in Family and Consumer Science deal with urgent problems. Professors and tutors can ask students to write a response essay about a book, a movie, or an article about things related to the subject. They will be interested in ideas that a student has found and feelings he or she has felt while watching or reading the assigned work. Nevertheless, it is not just mere feedback.
An essay must have a proper structure, formatting, and text provided by proper investigation. This article informs about everything one should know about a response essay in Family and Consumer Science. Cambridge Dictionary defines the word ‘response’ as the synonym to ‘reaction’ and ‘answer’.Consequently, a student has to answer some questions or react to something in the essay.
How to Write a Response Essay in Family and Consumer Science: Topics
Experienced students will agree with those who stress the importance of the topic choice. A college committee pays attention to the novelty a paper carries. Professors like to read essays that discuss something essential and discover new problems or provide interesting arguments. That is why a student should devote some time to the selection of the topic. Professionals recommend doing that in three steps.
Step 1. Get your brainwave
One should get an excellent idea concerning the subject. It is possible only with the help of brainstorming. A person should think of possible topics and reflect them on a piece of paper. Sometimes they can be silly but they will result in finding a compelling idea for the essay. Family and Consumer Science is a subject that deals with different spheres of life. One should concentrate on something concrete. It should relate to the course or the work that students have to discuss in the writing.
Step 2. Concentrate on your preferences
It is hard to write about things that do not interest a person. One needs motivation and inspiration to start and finish the paper. It is not a 5-minute task. A student will have to spend more time to implement ideas. Moreover, one will need to proofread and correct the paper to make it valuable and free of mistakes. So, it is better to dedicate a paper to a catchy topic.
Step 3. Make it Precise
It is impossible to discuss many things in one essay. First, there are limitations in a number of words, pages, or characters. Second, a person will never make a paper precious without deep investigation. If one involves many ideas, all of them will lack research. As a result, the text will be clumsy, confusing, and not specific.
For example, if a person decides to speak about obesity among teenagers, one will need to make it more concrete like ‘The influence of trans fatty acids on the organism of teenagers’.
The above-mentioned steps will help a student collect brilliant ideas that will result in a striking title. This is a list of topics that might be helpful.
- What is the Status of Parents in Contemporary Nuclear Families?
- Role of Mothers in the Life of Their Children in Islamic Countries;
- Family and Self-Identification: What is the Correlation?
- Pros and Cons of a Vegetarian Diet on the Child’s Mental and Physical Health;
- Eating Habits and Common Health Problems of Gen Z;
- Are Bad Habits of Parents Ancestral?
- Marketing and Consumer Behavior: Adults vs. Children;
- The Surrogate Mother and Genetics: Can Children Inherit ‘Undesired’ Gens?
- What Factors Prevent a Student from Success in the Internet World;
- Can Generation Z become a Successful Social Workforce?
A topic should touch upon a pressing problem that still needs research and answers. Nevertheless, a response paper needs a kind of feedback. Consequently, a topic must be connected with the object that requires a reaction (a movie, a book, a lecture, a course, a presentation, etc.).
How to Write a Response Essay in Family and Consumer Science: Structuring
Each academic paper must reasonably express ideas. Smart structuring lets people introduce the message of the essay wisely. The best variant is to start with an introduction, follow with the body, and finish with a conclusion. Sometimes, a college wants a person to present applied sources in the bibliography section. In case a person has big images, tables, PPTs, videos, and other supporting aids, it will be necessary to create an appendix section.
A person can create an outline to control information. It is a plan that mirrors the most valuable data and orders it accordingly.
An introduction is the beginning of the essay. It reflects the key message of the paper and presents the value to the reader. Moreover, an introductory part provides a thesis statement. It usually consists of up to 40 words and conveys the core idea of the essay. It must be precise and to the point. Its goal is to hook the target audience. You can use different methods to catch a reader’s eye:
- a compelling story;
- a citation;
- a proverb;
- a joke;
- a provocative statement or question.
This is a sample statistic to use in the essay on Family and Consumer Science.
For instance, ‘Psychologists have identified professions of people who are inclined to divorce. Top occupations are professional dancers (43,05%). At the bottom of the list are people who perform religious duties (5,61%).’
A body continues speaking about the idea of the thesis statement. Its goal is to prove it and convince the reader of its importance. That is why a student should look for facts. It can be statistics, impressive information, details of research of a scientist, etc. To make it more precious, a person should supply the body with personal discoveries. One can interview people and analyze answers to draw up conclusions.
It is not recommended to write one huge paragraph. Professionals always divide the body into three meaningful paragraphs. Nevertheless, all of them are to support the thesis statement. In other words, all paragraphs demand logical connections. It is a good idea to use transitional words and phrases to let readers follow the message easily.
A conclusion summarizes everything useful that a paper has. It also must be outstanding just like an introduction. Professors often read the first and the last part of the paper to evaluate its significance. Bookworms often remember the beginning and the end of the story. That is why writers do their best to make them vivid.
Example, ‘Marriage counseling pushes couples to divorce. Therapists just let couples realize that their relations are unhealthy and that the best solution will be to end them.’
Peculiarities of a Response Essay in Family and Consumer Studies
There are several things a student should do to create a winning response essay in Family and Consumer Science. As a rule, such an essay contains a summary of the discussed work and a person’s reaction to it.
First constituent. Summary
A person has to retell the object of the discussion in a couple of words. If there are an author and a year of publication, one will have to mention them. A person should summarize the information and highlight the most influential data. Experts recommend using quotations from the object of investigation (a movie, an article, etc.). Such a method assists in the illustration of the key moments.
A student should remember to avoid too detailed summaries. It must not be subjective and ambiguous. The first part of the essay usually does not include the reaction of a student.
Second constituent. Reaction
To write the second part of a response essay, one will need to answer the following questions concerning the object of the reaction:
- What essential information does it provide?
- What impressed me?
- What do I remember about it?
- Was my reaction to it positive or negative?
- Was there something that confused me?
- Did I manage to understand everything?
- How does this work echo the ideas I have studied in classes?
- Do I see some relation between the presented ideas and my life?
- Has this work changed my opinions and visions of the problem?
Senior students suggest making marks when watching a movie or reading a book in Family and Consumer Science. That will help students jot down useful citations, ideas, lexis, and other important things. Students can take notes and write down thoughts to structure an essay.
There are several phrases to present one’s reaction. ‘In my opinion’, ‘I think’, ‘I believe’, ‘To my mind’, ‘My favorite episode/ moment/ part was…’, ‘It was a problem for me to understand’, and other phrases are effective for that purpose.
How to Write a Response Essay in Family and Consumer Science without Mistakes
Some tools usually become students’ best friends. They can point to basic mistakes, sentences that are hard to read, stolen extracts, and cliche sentences that only spoil the impression on the paper. There are 5 apps for one to add to the bookmarks folder.
This software scans the text and evaluates its quality. It shows correctness, delivery, engagement, and clarity of the text. Moreover, it highlights mistakes and suggests improvements. Still, a person is to be careful because a program does not analyze the message and can also make a mistake in suggestions. That is why a person has to proofread the text before sending it to a professor or a tutor.
Readability is an important factor in academic writing. Sometimes too long and complex sentences prevent readers from getting the message. The app uses 5 colors to spot elements that complicate readability.
Pink and peach – hard and very hard to read sentences
Purple – sentences with simpler alternatives
Green – passive constructions
Blue – adverbs that can be removed or changed with better variants
The app also shows the reading time and a number of words, characters, sentences, paragraphs, and even letters.
Plagiarism tarnishes the reputation of a student. Today all professors, tutors, and teachers ask students to send papers via email or just by giving access to the paper correction in Google Docs. It allows them to differentiate between unique and plagiarized papers. They just copy the text of the essay and paste it in Dupli Checker or any other plagiarism checker. Such tools reveal stolen ideas and even give links to the plagiarized sources.
Educators hate texts that are full of overused phrases and words. Cliche Finder gives a list of clichés. Due to that, a student has a chance to replace them with modern words and improve the text of the essay.
It is important to use good writing tools when creating a response essay. One of such software is Google Docs. It lets students not only write essays but also share them in a couple of seconds. This software has many benefits to offer.
First, a person is not afraid of possible blackouts or problems with the Internet connection. It saves changes even in offline mode and a person can access it with the help of any digital device. Second, it involves group collaboration because a document is available for everyone who has its URL. The owner should only mark others as editors and everybody will have an opportunity to write or correct something.
Third, its interface is very simple. Besides, it saves all previous versions of the document. So, if a person changes something or deletes a passage accidentally, one will find previous texts and restore the required data. The last benefit to consider is the opportunity to comment on papers online. Professors can correct mistakes and explain everything in comments.
