Writing short response papers is one of the major assignments in my courses, as it is for many other courses in political theory, ethics, legal theory, and philosophy. So, if you plan to take more than one course in these areas, then teaching yourself to write good response papers pays. To do this, you have to find out what, exactly, the teacher you're writing for is looking for in response papers. Do not think that because they're all short response papers for theory-type courses, therefore all teachers of those courses want the same type of paper. That is a bad inference. There are many different things you can do in a short response paper: many different skills you can hone. Here I set out what I am looking for in response papers submitted for my courses. In doing this, we'll survey several other things that I'm not looking for, but are well worth doing. These might be exactly the things that other teachers are looking for. So you may also get some insight into how to write good response papers for teachers who are looking for something different than me.
Click here for general guidelines on what response papers are looking for.
Here for guidelines on organizing the paper.
Here for tips on what other kinds of response papers ask for, but not this one.