Everything you wanted to know about a reaction paper format

Have you watched a good movie lately? If yes, what made it good to you? If you did not enjoy it, what was bad about it? These questions would generally serve as prompts when you are tasked with writing a reaction paper. Because a reaction essay revolves around telling a reader about your personal response to a piece you engaged with. Let’s delve into the topic in more detail below.

What is a reaction paper?

So, what is a reaction paper in a nutshell? A reaction paper/essay is a written response to a piece of media or an event you interacted with. This could be a lot of things: from a book or article to movies and concerts. The purpose of a reaction paper is to provide your personal response to the material. Yet, it should not be a pure opinion piece. Reaction essay should explain why the work made you feel in a specific way, with specific points and examples to support your position. 

Another important thing about reaction papers is that you need to understand the work before writing about your reaction. This is needed for you to clearly state if you agree with the author’s position and to provide your own thoughts about it. You should also explain what the work means to you and make the information about the work accessible to your reader. In some cases, you will need to do previous research before writing the response paper to provide more context. 

Finally, what you should know about a reaction essay is that it is definitely not a mere summary. After all, your reaction paper may be read by people who are already acquainted with the work. Contrary to the typical summary paper, you should base this academic writing on your own thoughts as for the topic. In a reaction paper, you need to engage your analytical skills and show your understanding of the material. Ideally, but not obligatory, you should also engage your professional experience in the topic to support your thoughts.

How to write a reaction paper

Like other essays, reaction essays should also follow a specific outline and structure. Following this structure helps your instructor see that you have done your reaction paper assignment right. Besides, this outline will help you convey your thoughts in a clear manner, without making them too complex to comprehend.

The structure of a reaction essay

1. Introduction

How to start a reaction paper? You want to begin with a hook to keep your reader engaged and inspired to read further. For example, if you are writing about nature, it would be good to provide an unusual fact or interesting statistics. Then you should describe the work and its author and briefly state the main issue(s) that you will be discussing. You should also discuss the importance of the work in question and why it inspires you to react.

2. Thesis statement

This is the most important part of your introduction. Thesis statement has to be clearly based on what you have watched or read. It should succinctly state your reaction to the work as this claim will be developed further in your body paragraphs. This way, your reaction will be well presented throughout your entire essay.

3. Body paragraphs

There is no strict requirement for your reaction essay to contain three body paragraphs, like in typical essays. It could be four or five or only two of them, depending on how many body paragraphs you need to develop your thought. In each of the body paragraphs, you will discuss one topic. 

However, body paragraphs are usually the point where things get more challenging. Here you will need to develop your claim from the thesis statement and provide sufficient evidence. It is also recommended to provide quotes from the work. Just be sure that quoting does not take the majority of your body paragraphs. Feel free to add analysis and provide external statistics, facts,  or other information related to the work.

Also, remember to focus on interesting details and provide your insights from “between the lines”. This comes from a deep analysis or from engaging external sources such as research paper related to the material or the author. Finally, ensure that your thesis statement is referred to in each reaction paragraph to help you support your claim.

4. Conclusion

Your concluding thoughts should be brief and clearly connected to your argument about the work. You may explain directly to your reader what you have learned from the work and your reaction. If you think you could recommend something useful on the matter, feel free to do it in the conclusion.

5. Citations and sources

The final part of your reaction paper is a list of citations. Because you’re reacting to a certain piece of material, you will need to cite at least this work. Of course, you can use other sources of media to support your evidence and provide quotations. These could be other writers who wrote about the subject of your paper. So remember that each thought that is not your own should be properly cited to avoid the risk of plagiarism. 

Include all the relevant information about each source you cite, such as the author, the date, and the publisher. If you are not sure which citation style to use, consult with your instructor. 

Depending on the requirements, you might need to use APA, MLA, or Chicago style. The common style for reaction papers is APA style. We’ll explore the sample reaction paper in APA format below.

The title page needs to include:

• The title of the paper. Write it three or four lines down from the top of the page. It should be centered and typed in bold font.
• The name of the author, like the rest in this list, is not bolded. Author’s name goes one double-spaced blank line after the paper’s title. 
• The author’s affiliation goes on the next line. Mention both the name of your department and the name of your institution. 
• Course number and its name. Place a semicolon after the course number. 
• Instructor’s name.
• Assignment’s due date. Use the date format common for your country.
• Page number (1). Use the page-numbering option in your word-processing program to number the pages. They should be placed in the top right corner of the page header.

In a reaction paper in APA style, you use one-inch margins on all sides and double spacing between the lines. What concerns running heads, student papers don’t need to include a running head unless it is required by the instructor or institution. If running head is required, type it all in capital letters, maximum 50 characters, including spaces and punctuation. It has to be aligned to the left margin of the page header.

In APA reaction paper examples, there are two common ways to cite sources in the text.

The first one is in-text citations. 

• The year of publication immediately follows the author’s surname: Smith (2010) wrote that…
• Both the author’s surname and year of publication are written in the sentence: In 2010, Smith found that…
• The author’s surname and the year of publication can be mentioned at the end of the sentence: [sentence] (Smith, 2010). 

The second type is providing direct quotes.

• You can write the author and the publication year at the beginning of the sentence and put the page number after the sentence: Smith (2010) says that “… (p. 89).”
• The author’s surname, publication year, and page number can be listed together in parentheses at the end of the sentence: “… (Smith, 2010, p. 89).”

At the end of your APA reaction paper goes the list of references. It gives the information needed for the reader to find and retrieve the sources you cite in your essay. Each source that you cite in the body of your essay needs to be listed in bibliography. The same goes for the references. If the entry is listed in references, it should be cited in your text. The reference list starts on the new page, after the body of your essay. It is written as “References”, and this word is placed at the top of the page and centered. 

To create proper references, you need to always keep in mind four elements: the author, date, title, and source. Each of the elements should answer certain questions. The author: who is responsible for this material? The date: when was this material published? The title: what is the name of this material? The source: where can this material be retrieved?

Here are the general rules for formatting the list of references. 

• Use inversion for authors’ names: last name goes before the first name.
• Apply the alphabetical order to list the authors (by their last names).
• Use hanging indentation to all the lines after the first line of each entry in the list. It should be indented 0,5 inch from the left margin. 
• If the source has no known author, start the entry with the title of the work. Use the shortened version of title for in-text citations.
• All major words in journal titles must be capitalized.
• Longer works, like books or journals, are italicized.
• Shorter works, like journal articles or essays in collections, are not italicized, underlined, or put in quotation marks. 
• If you refer to books, websites, or articles, capitalize only the first letter of the first word in the title and the first word after colon or dash. Proper nouns too.
• References, like the rest of your essay, are double-spaced.

Producing a reaction paper

Before starting the writing process, it’s crucial to remember that a reaction paper is not a summary. Hence, focusing on good or bad parts of the work is not a good idea. Reaction paper has to show your analysis of how you see and understand the material in question. For this, you can engage your experience from life or studies or your professional expertise to express your feelings. 

One more important aspect is to comprehend the intentions of the author. What did they try to tell the audience with their work? You should figure out the author’s main argument, so you may need to read the piece or watch it several times. Below are some helpful tips to keep in mind when writing a reaction essay.

• Explain the content of the material. First, present it in general terms and then focus on specific details that matter to you. Your readers should be able to understand what it’s about and what your opinion on it is. 
• Explain the importance of your reaction. Be clear about your reaction and validate it. Also, you can explain why it is valuable for the targeted community or people in general.
• Refine your thesis statement. It has to be your strong argument with a clarification about why the work made you feel a certain way. Your thesis statement needs to be argumentative and even provocative to keep your readers engaged. 
• Be specific and focus on details. It’s recommended to support your ideas with quotes from the work. You can also use comparison to other similar works if it helps you support your thesis statement. 
• Remember to carefully proofread your reaction paper several times.
• Make sure that all sources that you mention in your essay are properly cited and included in your list of references. 

Do’s and don’ts in a reaction essay

Types of reaction papers

Reaction essays can be of different types and forms. When you are reading someone’s review on a movie, blog journal, restaurant critique, or an editorial, all these could be reaction papers. For instance, in a movie review, you can discuss its casting, storyline, director’s work. You can also compare one movie with the similar ones in the genre or discuss whether the movie met your expectations. 

Other common types of reaction papers are those about books, plays, songs, or video games. Such reviews often describe the author’s personal feelings about the work or assess technical aspects. For instance, in a reaction paper on a play, you can discuss the set design, the actors’ skills, or the acoustics in the theater. 

One more popular type of reaction papers is an editorial. This is an opinion piece that talks about any topic of human interest, such as a recent event or a trending issue. In such a reaction paper, you would generally summarize the topic and provide relevant information to support your stand. Together with this information, you may also include your personal experience and feelings about the topic. Below, we’ll have a look at the main aspects of writing the most common types of reaction papers.

Reaction paper on an article

If you need to write a reaction essay on an article, consider the following steps.

• To understand the article well, read it several times. Remember to take notes as you read. With each reading, you will discover new details and subtle meanings. 
• In your own simple words, explain the major claims of the article. Then reply to these claims and assess how powerful and relevant they are.
• Evaluate the author’s position on the topic and state if you agree or disagree with it. Focus on details as to why you support or don’t support the author’s stand.
• Use critical thinking to assess the evidence which the author provided and external sources for analysis, if needed.

Reaction paper on a movie

If your task is to write a reaction essay about a movie, you should pay attention to the context of the task. You could use a supporting material of the course dedicated to a certain topic or concept. With this type of reaction essay, you need to consider the following aspects.

• Watch the movie. Preferably, watch it 2-3 times to fully understand it and capture the smallest details.
• Take notes while watching. For instance, the movie’s central theme, crucial messages, the psychology of character traits.
• Focus on specific aspects of the movie. For example, these could be stylistic means, director’s work, or shooting techniques. Or it could be the relationships between the characters or the context of the movie’s events.
• Work on your draft. Careful editing and proofreading will help you avoid errors and inconsistencies. So reserve some time for refining your essay.

Reaction paper on a documentary

Students often get a task to write a reaction paper on a documentary for many reasons. Documentaries present reliable and objective information about certain events, people, or phenomena. Besides, they are great informational and educational materials for students. If you need to write a response paper on a documentary, here’s what you should do.

• Just like with movies, watch the documentary several times. This way you will be able to understand it properly. Such films are usually rich in different data, so you will want to make many notes.
• The documentary should be presented as the background for your reaction. Provide the context by mentioning the author, the topic, the content, and its central argument.
• Clarify the documentary’s purpose and specify the length. Remember to focus on the director’s main claims and provide the relevant facts that support it.
• Present your reaction to the content of the documentary. Explain how you feel about it and mention the points that you think are controversial. Specify the points with which you agree or not. The same goes for the director’s stand on the topic.
• For documentaries, it’s important to compare what you knew and thought about the topic before you saw the film. This way you can share a learning experience with your reader and show how you’ve progressed with this specific subject.

Use these tips to write a good reaction paper

While in the process of writing a reaction essay, keep in mind the following recommendations. With these tips, you will stay focused on your main task, and writing will be easier.

• Carefully study the instructions and understand what you need to do

Not every college reaction essay will follow the same pattern. Some instructors may let you decide on the outline of your paper while others may require you to meet specific format, for example, reaction paper format. Or you may need to focus on a specific question or task in your reaction paper. Hence, if you don’t have a reaction paper template, it’s better to double check the instructions with your professor.

• Take notes while exploring the work

Reading an article once or doing the same with a movie is not enough for a good reaction paper. You will need to make notes to write down important insights. If some aspects make you feel strong emotions, make a pause and note it down. These important thoughts could become great topic sentences for your body paragraphs.

• Write a reaction paper outline

After the notes are ready, write an outline for your reaction essay. It will help you follow a clear paper structure. 

• Use critical thinking skills

Ask yourself the following questions. How did the work make you feel? Do you agree or disagree with the author’s main message? Why? Can you relate to the author’s point? It’s also a good idea to explain in your conclusion how the material changed your perception of the topic.

• Remember about analysis

Simply talking about the facts in a reaction essay is a very popular mistake that students make. Instead, be analytical and explain your opinion. Your college instructor already knows the article or movie, so no need to repeat the storyline. Use creativity and express your reaction.

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