Personal Response Writing
Responding Personally, Critically and Creatively
Throughout senior high school, students are developing their ability to construct meaning, independently, from increasingly complex texts. To reach the required level of competence, students need to sharpen their skills in a constructive and reassuring environment: they must be encouraged to engage in their own exploratory response activity, and they must be provided with ongoing opportunities to see and hear many and varied models of good response.
Personal response is the using of one’s own lived experience and prior knowledge to provide a bridge into the new experience of the text—forging connections between one’s own world and the text’s imagined or created
world. Personal response activities help students “live” the text and make it their own; therefore, students need to be able to respond in a variety of ways, individually and in groups, in writing and orally and visually, including such “creative” activities as drama and art. Once students have experienced the text through reading and personal response, it is what Louise Rosenblatt refers to as the “experienced” work that is analyzed and criticized.
Personal Connection
Here, the students make a connection between their lived experience and the author’s idea as identified in the first part of the response. What does the text say to them personally? Students identify a specific incident in their own life that helps them interpret the experience of the text. How does the one experience help them to interpret, or to better understand, or to more fully appreciate the significance of the other?
The students are not expected to have experienced an event similar to the event described in the story. For example, the story may be set during the second world war; within that context, the ideas the author develops may be
related to the courage shown by a character in a difficult situation. Relatively few Canadian students will have experienced war directly, but all will have been witness to acts of courage; the situation or degree may differ, but the concept of courage is the same.
Students, in this case, would then be asked to describe a situation in which they witnessed or experienced a demonstration of courage. They would be expected to discuss how their experience helps them to understand better the author’s idea in the text.
There may be occasions when the idea the author writes about has not been a part of the student’s personal lived or remembered experience. In such instances, students would be encouraged to go beyond just their own experience to
that of people close to them—their siblings, parents or grandparents, or more distant relatives, or even beyond their family to their neighbours or friends. Perhaps they might relate to vicarious rather than lived experience—to a book they have read or a film they have seen, or to art, music or other human expression.
Taking a different perspective, it may be that the experiences they select to write about demonstrate the antithesis of the author’s idea. They may choose to relate a time when someone did not act courageously, and they may connect to the author’s idea through inverse example. Either way, the purpose of their personal connection is to have them offer another perspective, another way to interpret and to attempt to understand the ideas at the heart of the text and the impact the ideas can have on their lives.
Throughout senior high school, students are developing their ability to construct meaning, independently, from increasingly complex texts. To reach the required level of competence, students need to sharpen their skills in a constructive and reassuring environment: they must be encouraged to engage in their own exploratory response activity, and they must be provided with ongoing opportunities to see and hear many and varied models of good response.
Personal response is the using of one’s own lived experience and prior knowledge to provide a bridge into the new experience of the text—forging connections between one’s own world and the text’s imagined or created
world. Personal response activities help students “live” the text and make it their own; therefore, students need to be able to respond in a variety of ways, individually and in groups, in writing and orally and visually, including such “creative” activities as drama and art. Once students have experienced the text through reading and personal response, it is what Louise Rosenblatt refers to as the “experienced” work that is analyzed and criticized.
Personal Connection
Here, the students make a connection between their lived experience and the author’s idea as identified in the first part of the response. What does the text say to them personally? Students identify a specific incident in their own life that helps them interpret the experience of the text. How does the one experience help them to interpret, or to better understand, or to more fully appreciate the significance of the other?
The students are not expected to have experienced an event similar to the event described in the story. For example, the story may be set during the second world war; within that context, the ideas the author develops may be
related to the courage shown by a character in a difficult situation. Relatively few Canadian students will have experienced war directly, but all will have been witness to acts of courage; the situation or degree may differ, but the concept of courage is the same.
Students, in this case, would then be asked to describe a situation in which they witnessed or experienced a demonstration of courage. They would be expected to discuss how their experience helps them to understand better the author’s idea in the text.
There may be occasions when the idea the author writes about has not been a part of the student’s personal lived or remembered experience. In such instances, students would be encouraged to go beyond just their own experience to
that of people close to them—their siblings, parents or grandparents, or more distant relatives, or even beyond their family to their neighbours or friends. Perhaps they might relate to vicarious rather than lived experience—to a book they have read or a film they have seen, or to art, music or other human expression.
Taking a different perspective, it may be that the experiences they select to write about demonstrate the antithesis of the author’s idea. They may choose to relate a time when someone did not act courageously, and they may connect to the author’s idea through inverse example. Either way, the purpose of their personal connection is to have them offer another perspective, another way to interpret and to attempt to understand the ideas at the heart of the text and the impact the ideas can have on their lives.