How to Write a Response Essay in Business Studies: Get Acquainted with the Goal

What is a response paper? There may be various definitions found online but the answer is plain to see. It is a type of essay where a writer has to respond to the inquiry, in our case, to any book, article, event, movie, and so on related to the studied subject. And, it is that case when you can freely tell your opinion without formulating the statements in a third person.

Students rarely face obstacles in composing a response paper but one mistake is very common. When they deal with their response, they do forget about evidence and facts. Yes, feel free to provide a supervisor with your vision, but your reaction should trigger a reader with the availability of supporting clues. It has nothing to do with persuasive intentions only and you do not need to claim your opinion is the ultimate one. Each paragraph of an essay is composed of ideas and their in-depth analysis.

How to Write a Response Essay in Business Studies: Absorbing Subject

Running and studying business are two different things. If the first factor can be obtained without any artificial knowledge, the second one will make you know inside out of its various disciplines. Business Studies is a subject about organizational matters, economics, finance, accounting, and management. Or, it is how one or another person plans, organizes the working environment that yields monetary dividends. Even though there are many companies that work on a charity basis, there is a particular science to put in action this type of business as well.

After graduating, a student possesses enough skills in communication, marketing, and entrepreneurship gut instinct. Logically, to generate such knowledge, professors assign to write a response paper to check whether a student can respond or react to business matters to pursue his career.

What else? This subject is actively studied at schools, and it radically helps children to understand how money can be earned. Thus, if they are assigned to write a response essay, they may pick up easier topics, in particular, money management or how to earn them legally. Such assignments help to develop critical thinking and contribute to their firmness about future occupation because they know how one or another business or job “works”.

And, at last, a response essay in this subject is nothing but a preparation for writing more complicated papers that you will for sure face in your career or life. Now, you can learn basic principles and apply them professionally when responding to movies or books you spent time on.

How to Write a Response Essay in Business Studies: Pre-writing Stage

Preparation is a must to make a work successful and is a cornerstone of any A-grade assignments. Unlike other papers, you spend less time researching, thus it can take less time to finish it. So, it is a very common practice to give this task during the ongoing classes. If you have more time in stock, let’s start with the topic.

Choose a Topic
Usually, supervisors prepare in advance a list of topics but some of them allow students to rely on their choice. It is a crucial step to pick up an actual problem and find its related materials. Note, it can be anything thought-provoking. But, make sure it has a logic and can lead to revealing some morals or effect on society. For your convenience, here is a list that might be of interest to you.

• Consumer Organizations;
• Marketing Philosophies in Business Management;
• The Science of Selling the Products;
• Money Matters: Investment, Funds, and Securities;
• How to Raise a Capital;
• Leadership and Motivation in Companies;
• Recruitment Process;
• Marketing and Sales Strategies;
• Organization of a Company;
• Qualities of Businessmen;
• Management is Key to Success;
• The Business of Charity.

Accordingly, you have to choose one topic, and find related material. For example, let’s take an article The Business of Charity. It is written by a reliable magazine source, Forbes. In practice, it can be any trusted material, a work of scientists, world-wide leaders, influencers in this industry or accomplished professors who dedicated their lives to this subject.

Especially, to meet the latest demand, students tend to choose books about Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and others. These people are well-know in their business activity, and many of their works can be considered a good response matter. For instance, check the video of Steve Jobs Stanford speech, there he tried to deliver the main values that helped him to succeed. Try to evaluate the statements, and offer your opinion.

Highlight the Main Points
After you decided on the topic, proceed with acknowledging the material. It is better to read it a few times, the first one for understanding the purpose, the second is for highlighting the main points. Otherwise, you can cite quotes and use them later for researching their validity or effect. Make sure, you do not judge the author but investigate his vision on the matter. Afterward, your opinion will look fair-minded and not biased.

Ask Yourself Questions
Whenever you come across the tips on writing a response paper, there is an obligatory set of questions you have to ask yourself to cover the topic. In practice, you can skip this stage but it will help to understand how to start writing an essay. Check them out:

• How do you find an article?
• What did you feel when reading?
• Is the matter actual?
• Where did you agree or disagree?
• What did the author try to deliver to his targeted audience?
• What can you say about one or another statement?
• What are the author’s assumptions?

This step is crucial to identify whether you have any reaction to the reading subject. If you feel indifferent, or completely agree with any singly point, your essay will not look interesting. Note, it is important to find an article that can provoke different points of view.

Prepare Your Phrases
When you start writing your paper, you should have at hand auxiliary phrases that will deprive you of repetitions. For instance, mind mentioning more than 1 time – I THINK. Once you used it, try to substitute with other words such as I see I believe, I consider, To my mind, In my opinion, I feel, they can save your readability of a paper. Besides, make sure each sentence does not start with such phrases, try to balance them across the whole text. The best it will look if you put one phrase per one paragraph.

Response Essay in Business Studies: Organization of a Structure

Meeting of the toughest deadlines can be reached with a proper organization of a composition. And, the outline can save any student. In fact, an outline is a clean-cut scheme of their ideas that should be transferred to a paper. It is a context page that structures and arranges in order the parts of an essay. As usual, there is an introduction with thesis, main body, and conclusion. Let’s practice.

Introduction and Thesis

This section should contain two to five sentences and draw the attention of a reader. The first sentence indicates the title of a work and its author. Then, you have to tell in a nutshell what you have read. And, the last sentence is dedicated to a thesis. Our selected article was The Business of Charity, so it will look like this.

‘Recently, I came across an article The Business of Charity, written by Rob Thielen, an investing expert of Forbes journal. He addressed targets that put businessmen in action and spoke how to make a charitable organization successful and popular. People who want to connect their lives with serving benevolent intentions should just learn 4 main drivers. ‘

As you may see, there are all the criteria met. An indicated title of an article, and author, then a brief introduction to the subject, and at last a thesis promising to reveal 4 main drivers of success.

Main Body

Here come several sub-paragraphs that will tell a reader of your and author’s main ideas on the subject. If you have 3 sub-paragraphs, make sure each of them contains only ONE idea. Follow the scheme:

• Author’s idea – Your Opinion. You mention what he addressed, and evaluate his statements.
• Author’s idea – Yours Against His Idea. You mention what he addressed and compare it to your vision.

For instance, it will look like this.

‘Mr. Thielen believes that one of the main drivers in the business is a trust to others because a company cannot be run by only one person. I think it is a golden mean in every company, and such an approach leads to a healthy environment within staff instead of competition who is the best leader.’ – It is according to the first scheme.

‘Mr. Thielen believes that one of the main drivers in the business is a trust to others because a company cannot be run by only one person. I think such a vision faces down “leaders” in people and they get used to asking for help others.’ – The second scheme.

Conclusion

The last paragraph serves for summarization of the facts mentioned above. The main rule is to avoid revealing new information. Tell, how his work affected your vision and belief, or whether businessmen support such ideas. Finally, mention what drivers should really be applied in real life or they do not have a right to exist. To make your ending of the paper look precise, use the next phrases:

How to Write a Response Essay in Business Studies: Post-Writing Tips

Proofreading is the essential step before submitting a work to a professor. It should be immaculate clean of mistakes and meet all the academical requirements. Keep in mind, its length may differ among educational establishments. However, high schools and colleges usually require one page only. Then, it should be double-spaced and written in Times New Roman. Other tips are:

• Strop author’s quotes. If you need to mention the author’s statements, do not forget to strop. Note such examples are better to put in the main body of your work. Allocating them in the introduction or conclusion does not make any value.
• Look for samples. The online world allows people to retrieve any information. Samples of the essay are not the exception. It is not necessary to look for the same topic but an ordinary example to see the structure. Pay attention to the style of language used there, whether there is an equal number of supporting clues for each idea.
• Do not summarize the plot. A response essay has nothing to do with narrating the content. A student should only express his response or reactions to the details mentioned in the article or book.
• Do not speak of your personal story only. For instance, The Business of Charity deals with describing 4 main drivers in the business. Evaluate those drivers, tell whether you agree or disagree with them.
• Do not say that you do not like the author or his main characters. A reader must see evidence and facts about why a character is wrong.
• Stop generalizing. Attach details, cite other authors, or add quotes.
• Check your paper on common errors. It can be a misuse of grammatical tenses, spelling mistakes or even lack of sense in the sentences.
• Ask someone to listen to you. Imagine as if you are in the interview and you need to present your ideas on what you have read or seen. Ask for real feedback and find out whether your supporting clues are valid.
• Go back to the thesis. When you finish writing, reread a thesis a few times and make sure you revealed what you have promised in the main body.

Remember, a response essay is not a descriptive or expository type of paper where you deal with explaining your preferences or description of some events. It is a work that should provoke interest in a matter within your audience or professor. Creativity and unbiased opinion are the factors that will award you with an A-grade.

References:

• Atkinson, S. (2018). The business book: big ideas simply explained. NY, NY: DK Publishing.
• KAUFMAN, J. O. S. H. (2012). Personal MBA: A world-class business education in a single volume. s.l.: Viking.
• Twp.duke.edu. (2019). Response paper. [online] Available at: https://twp.duke.edu/sites/twp.duke.edu/files/file-attachments/response-paper.original.pdf [Accessed 23 Dec. 2019].