A Summary Response Essay is, as the name indicates, a two-part essay. So, of course there’s the summary of an article, essay, chapter or report and then the response to it. They are different ways of reacting to an article; one involves just explaining the crucial elements and the other is your reaction to them, supported by the views of others, presumably experts, used as references.

“The organization of a summary response essay is typically a 4-5 paragraph essay that includes a short summary in the introduction that provides an objective overview of a text”. (Writing the Summary Essay, n.d.)

The body of the essay is the response portion and should include your commentary on the reading or on an issue related to the topic or ideas stated within the reading. This format is a formative teaching tool because much of what you will encounter in later academic coursework will require you to engage in writing tasks that require stating information and then analyzing it. The summary response essay serves as a stepping stone for this kind of thinking and writing process, and thus, the organization of ideas in a summary response essay is important as a foundational form (Madsen, 2018).

A summary of the work

To develop the first part of a report, do the following:

  • Identify the author and title of the work and include in parentheses the publisher and publication date (for the references of newspapers and magazines, give the date of publication).
  • Write an informative summary of the material.
  • Condense the content of the work by highlighting its main points and key supporting points.
  • Use direct quotations from the work to illustrate important ideas.
  • Summarize the material so that the reader gets a general sense of all key aspects of the original work.
  • Do not discuss in great detail any single aspect of the work, and do not neglect to mention other equally important points.
  • Also, keep the summary objective and factual. Do not include in the first part of the paper your personal reaction to the work; your subjective impression will form the basis of the second part of your paper.