Before you get down to writing a response essay, you should know the specifics of this type of writing. It gives you an opportunity to analyze what you have read or watched and react to it. You should employ your critical thinking and be ready to express your opinion about the whole piece or its parts. You’re required to demonstrate that you completely understand the source, react to the author’s views, and evaluate his or her ideas. Killing Us Softly is a great topic for a response essay because this documentary deals with a debatable question concerning women’s portrayal in media. The following suggestions will help you create a great paper without any difficulties.
First of all, you should watch the documentary with a pen in your hand, jotting down the key ideas. Get a clear idea of the central issue and how it’s presented by the author. Notice the main argument and the evidence that support it.
Think about what feelings this documentary evokes in you. Then, decide whether you agree or disagree with the author’s views and think of how you can object to them. Also, you should choose your strategy of reacting to what you’ve heard. You may support or disapprove the author’s ideas; relate them to your personal experience or information you’ve read or heard about before; evaluate the main message and its persuasive effect. After you gather your ideas, create an outline for your essay.
Your first sentence should include the author’s name (Jean Kilbourne), the title of her video (Killing Us Softly), and its main point. The following 2-3 sentences should give a brief summary of the documentary. The last sentence of your introduction should be a thesis statement that expresses your opinion about the author’s views or evaluates the topicality of the discussed problem.
Each paragraph should start with a topic sentence expressing one of the key ideas related to your thesis. Your main strategy should be comparing and contrasting. It means that you should introduce a particular author’s idea and contrast it with your own. Give enough details to support both views so that your reader clearly understands why you agree or disagree. Paraphrase the author’s words and cite properly when taking certain ideas directly from the source.
Overview the main points that you’ve analyzed and argued in the body. You can end your essay by appealing to your audience to agree with you.