William Akana’s Thesis and Response to Objections

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A WRITER AT WORK

In this section, we look at how William Akana anticipated his readers’ objections. Using the Ways In activities on pp. 386–87, Akana determined that readers would be interested in his review to “learn about whether the movie is worth going to see,” although he realized that his instructor would read the review to assess how effectively he used the basic features of evaluative essays and whether he included an insightful analysis of the cinematic techniques used in at least one important scene.

After writing for a few minutes on the first part of the Test Your Choice activity on pp. 385–86, Akana got together with three other students in the class to test out his idea for a subject and his criteria for evaluation. One of his group’s members told him that she had gone to see the movie on a date and had found the film lacking as a romantic comedy. Akana realized that this was an objection that he could respond to.

A few days later, Akana received some helpful advice from a student who read his draft. Using the Critical Reading Guide in this chapter (pp. 393–94), the student noted that she could not find a clear statement of his judgment in the draft. She told him that the evidence he provided made it pretty clear that he liked the movie but that she couldn’t find where he stated his judgment directly. So he went back to the Ways In activity on drafting a tentative overall judgment (pp. 387–88), and used one of the sentence strategies to help him draft a thesis:

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Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is a brilliant embodiment of the slacker film, especially notable for its superb special effects and clever dialogue.

When he finished his first draft, he revisited his thesis to polish it and to add another reason he had been discussing in his supporting paragraphs. He also realized that he needed to acknowledge the target audience but wanted to make sure readers who were not video game or anime enthusiasts knew they would also enjoy the movie. Here’s the final version of his thesis:

Although the film is especially targeted for old-school gamers, anime fans, and comic book fanatics, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World can be appreciated and enjoyed by all audiences because of its inventive special effects, clever dialogue, and artistic cinematography and editing.

Another student reader noted that Akana’s draft provided lots of strong evidence, especially the analysis of film stills, but she found his response to an objection weak and unconvincing. This assessment hit home because Akana had inserted his classmate’s criticism—that the movie failed as a romantic comedy—without really thinking about it. To strengthen his response to the criticism, Akana conducted research and found an expert reviewer who agreed with his classmate. He found a review by Rene Rodriguez in the Miami Herald that offered a reason why the romance was not convincing, and then he brainstormed his own response—that the romance is really secondary to Pilgrim’s personal development. Akana then did more research and found a review that he could use to support this claim. His paragraph (par. 9), which originally focused solely on Rodriguez’s criticism of the romance theme, developed into one in which Akana argued what he really believed—that the romance is pretty much beside the point.