RACER  strategy helps in writing the perfect paragraph for your response. This strategy is used when a text is followed with an open ended question.

This  strategy helps you to write your response correctly using  5 steps-

1. R – Reword the question
2. A – Answer the question completely
3. C – Cite evidences
4. E – Explain the text evidence
5. R – Rewind, reword your answer and sum it up.

Advantages of using RACER

This strategy gives you a layout to form your answer in a specific order. It gives clarity to your writing and helps people to understand your written answer clearly. In order to have a great response you need to do more than simply answer the question. RACER helps us in doing so.

Lets follow the strategy one by one

1. R – Restating or rewording the question. 

In this step all you need to do is reword the question and turn it into a statement. This will form the introductory part of your answer. You need to paraphrase the question using synonyms or different phrases or clauses

2. A– Answering the question in an appropriate manner.

• In order to do so you need to understand the question what is being asked. The answer must deal with the specific question, refraining from digression.

Sometimes a question has two or more parts. You must answer each part separately.

3. C– Citing evidences which strengthen your answer.

The evidences will portray how well you have understood the question and whether you can make inferences. You must use quotes(“ ”) if you are using someone else’s exact words.

        Be sure to choose the evidence that best supports your answer.

While citing evidences, it is necessary to cite the source of the example. You may use words like-

The author in … says that…

The text states …

In paragraph 4  we find…

4. E – Explaining the evidence.  You need to explain the evidence and elaborate what the answer means. You must provide reasons to emphasize that your answer is correct. In other words you must elaborately explain your answer.

You may use words like

This evidence proves my answer as…

This evidence shows…

This evidence means…

This evidence is important because…

This evidence supports my answer…

5. R– Revise and recap by restating your topic sentence through a summary statement.

That is, you rewrite what you have said in the introductory statement but in a different way to make your point clear.

Example

The Sun Goes Down on Summer

 I come to the water one last time as the sun goes down on summer.

 It’s going; I can feel it slip away, and it leaves a cold, empty spot.

 A hole in my warm memories of endless golden days

 and dreams as ripe as watermelons.

 I’d give the world to make the summer stay.

 The water is calm around me.

 It’s a warm, silent sea of thought dyed in the rich blues of night and

       memory.

 Why can’t things just stay the way they are?

 Instead, the days rush headlong into change

 and I feel like nothing’s ever going to be the same.

 Soon school will start again.  And all the things I thought I’d left behind

       will come back, and it won’t be gentle water I’ll be swimming in—

 It’ll be noise and people and schedules and passes and teachers telling

        everyone what to do.

 One more year of homework, tests and grades.  Of daily popularity

        contests and pressure-cooker competition and heaps of frustration.

 The first day is the worst.  Not knowing who your friends are, or

 what’s changed since last year.  Trying to pick it up where you left off.

 I’ll look real hard for a last-year’s friend to get me from one

 scrambled class to another, through halls crawling with people.

 I wonder if I’ll fit in.

 Football practice started last week.  It started without me.

 I had to make a choice and football lost.

 Two years on the team and it struck me—who am I doing this for?

 It’s just another thing people expect you to do, so you do it.

 School is full of those kinds of things—things that sap your freedom,

 and keep you from being yourself.

 That’s what I want most, to be myself.  But that’s hard.

 Here’s what I dread most: when summer goes, I go with it.

 I go back to school and I change as soon as I walk through those doors.

 I have to be someone everyone will like—that’s a law of survival.

 What would happen if I just stayed the real me?

 would they turn me off?  Label me “weird”?

 Would I ever get another date?

 It seems like so much to risk.

 But growing is a risk.  Change is a risk.

 And who knows.  I might discover something of myself  in the coming

          year.

 I might get closer to the person I am—what a discover that would be!

 When the doors open on Monday morning, I’ll have a fresh start,

 a fresh opportunity to find myself.

 I want to be ready.

 Steve Lawhead

What feelings does the narrator express in the first stanza of the poem?

The narrator portrays his dismal feelings regarding the end of summer in the first stanza of the poem ‘The Sun Goes Down on Summer’ . He is conscious of the fact that the happy days of summer are slipping away and feels  desolate, melancholic and oppressed at the very thought of it. His feelings come out in the saying, “It’s going; I can feel it slip away, and it leaves a cold, empty spot. A hole in my warm memories of endless golden days” He feels sad that his golden days are about to conclude, leaving a cold empty spot in his life. He is upset that his cherished golden days of summer are about to end and he needs to get back to school.  The first stanza brings out Steve Lawhead’s depressed and forlorn feelings as the sweet days of summer are about to end.

Now try it yourself and write a paragraph using the RACER strategy bringing out one of the deeper messages in the poem.