1. Personal Response Format
Teaching you how to write a very good personal response paragraph!

2. Step #1 State the author’s opinion:
In the essay “Would You Donate Your Face for a Transplant?”, by Joy Victory, the author states that “the face is arguably more personal than our kidneys and lungs”.

3. Step #2
State your position. Do you strongly agree/disagree? Do you agree with part of what he/she is saying?
I strongly agree with Victory’s statement as the face is the most personal part of our bodies.

4. Step #3
Explain your opinion with reference to personal experiences and observations (it is a personal response after all)
You should give 2 or 3 examples to support your opinion and you must develop them with enough detail to EXPLAIN your position.

5. Step #4
Summarize your idea or make a judgment about the issue to conclude.

6. Tips Stick to the quotation you are being asked to respond on.
Avoid ranting and going off topic.
Make an outline before you start writing. This will help you stay focused and maintain a rigid structure.
Make it personal!

7. What on earth does “quality of writing” mean?
Organization: start with an outline
Focus: complete one idea before going on to the next one
Spelling: it’s bad if I notice.
Grammar: sentence errors, punctuation and capitalization

8. HELP! I forget what sentence errors are.
You are in luck! Here is a mini grammar lesson. Yahoo!

9. Comma Splice (C.S.)
The grammar crime: comma splices join two complete sentences with a comma.
Joey went to the grocery store, he needed to buy eggs for supper.
This sentence is incorrect because “Joey went to the grocery store” and “he needed to buy eggs for supper” are both complete sentences. A comma alone cannot join two sentences.

10. Comma Splice (CS) How do we rehabilitate comma splice outlaws?
There are three main methods of fixing commas splices:
Change the comma to a period
Change the comma to a semicolon*
Add a conjunction

11. Run On Sentence (RO) Same thing as a comma splice, minus the comma.
Joey went to the grocery store, he needed to buy eggs for supper.
These are harder to find in your work because the tell tale comma is absent.
You fix them the same way you would a comma splice.

12. Sentence Fragment (SF)
A complete sentence has two parts: a subject (what the sentence is about) and a predicate (the action)
They are easy to identify because they just don’t sound right.

13. In-class evaluation Tomorrow!
You will be writing a personal response for me tomorrow, so make sure you apply all these steps.