The “problem at hand”

A close reading response essay, therefore, achieves (in a 1-page single spaced composition) an understanding of the “problem at hand,” and then presents the complexities of that problem in order to show the difficulty of arriving at any sort of easy resolve. A template for the close reading response essay includes: 1. Introducing the reader to the importance of the topic for study. 2. Extracting the “problem at hand” that seems embedded in the scholarly text. 3. Fleshing or parsing out the question in its complexities. 4. Proposing new and better questions as a result of #1-3.