Questioning Claims to Generate Details of Support and Development

An effective approach to generating material to support and develop a topic sentence is to make a claim and then ask yourself questions about the implications of your claim. This approach is demonstrated in this post.

Write in the simple present tense unless you are referring to an incident that happened in the past events as they are referred to in the episodes' plot. After identifying a character by his or her complete name (for example, “Buffy Summers”) the first time he or she is mentioned, refer to him or her, thereafter, only by his or her last name (for example, “Summers”). If two characters share the same name, for example “Buffy Summers” and “Joyce Summers,” distinguish between them by a phrase rather than by name (for example, “Summers and her mother argue about Summer's revelation that she is a vampire slayer.”)

Summers' approach to acquiring knowledge both hinders and helps her performance of her duties as a vampire slayer.

[What is her approach to acquiring knowledge? How does her approach hinder her performance? How does her approach help her performance?]

Summers often relies on her mentor, Watcher Rupert Giles, and her friends, Willow Rosenberg, Xander Harris, and Cordelia Chase, to research supernatural and paranormal topics for her and relay the results of their studies to her.

[What effect does this approach have concerning her own acquisition of knowledge through their efforts?]

Therefore, her acquisition of knowledge is mediated through others.

[What effect does such mediation have on the knowledge that is obtained in this fashion?]

Because Summers' knowledge is indirect, it is only as reliable as its mediators. Her friends are fellow high school classmates. Like Summers, they are immature, they prefer to engage in pleasant social or personal activities rather than to study, and they are likely to lack the expertise to make sound determinations about the scope, completeness, and reliability of the information they discover. Moreover, since Summers learns through the efforts of others, rather than through her own efforts, she is dependent on others for the information she receives. These conditions may hinder Summers in her performance of her duties as a vampire slayer because she may be provided with limited or partial, incorrect or misleading, or otherwise unreliable information that could put her or others at risk or jeopardize her mission.

[What are some examples in which Summers receives faulty information from her friends?]

Harris' lack of maturity is demonstrated by the inappropriate jokes that he tells during study sessions concerning topics of life-or-death consequence. Several such instances occur in “What's My Line, Part I.” While such studies demand focus, Harris jokes about the name of the artifact, “the du lac cross,” that Giles and Summers have recovered from the du Lac's mausoleum: “Why go to all the trouble of inventing something and then give a weak name like that? I'd have gone with 'Cross-o-matic!' or 'The Amazing Mr. Cross!'” Likewise, when Summer's friends are researching the Order of Taraka, Harris quips, “Didn't they [the Order of Taraka] beat the Elks last year in the Sunnydale Adult Bowling League Championship?” and adds, “Bowling is a vicious game.” When Summers skips out of a study session to go ice skating with her boyfriend, the vampire Angel (thereby exhibiting both her own immaturity and poor judgment), Harris remarks that she “totally contributes” to their research since she goes “for snacks,” and “Ho Ho's are a vital part” of his “cognitive process.” Although such comments may be amusing, they are also distracting, interfering with the concentration of others, as Gile's reprimand to Harris (“That's enough, Xander!”) after Harris' joke about bowling being a “vicious game” suggests. The material they study is difficult and complex, and it concerns life-or-death matters. Jokes on such an occasion are not only immature, but they are also distracting and, therefore, potentially dangerous. Summers did not bother to pursue the scholarly vampire Dalton after he escaped with the du Lac cross because she was ignorant of the danger it represents. However, Giles is able to recognize the threat immediately when he sees the name carved into the mausoleum, above the vault into which Dalton broke. He knows that “Jospehus du Lac is buried here,” and, far from his having been the “saint” Summers suggests he might have been, du Lac was a member of “a sect of priests who were excommunicated by the Vatican” and it was he who wrote the “book that was stolen from the [Sunnydale High School] library by a vampire a few weeks back”--a book of “rituals and spells that reap unspeakable evil.” Summers was not only negligent in not pursuing Dalton, but she, like Harris, is also flip; she makes jokes during serious moments, suggesting, for example, that the book Giles mentions is probably “not a taste of the Vatican cookbook.” As she herself admits, she is, like her friends, immature: “I'm a teen! I've yet to mature!” When their studies do not reveal the information they seek, Summer's friends seem to lack the ability to further their research. They are at a loss as to how to proceed once their research fails. For example, in “What's My Line, Part II,” Harris appears ready to give up when his examination of a book does not reveal any information about two of the Order of Taraka's assassins: “We got demons. We got monsters. But no bug dude or Police Lady.” However, other potentially pertinent volumes exist, as Giles demonstrates when he gives Harris another book with “a section devoted entirely to the Order of Taraka.”

[What are some examples in which Summers benefits from her approach to learning?]

Despite the limitations of Summer's approach to learning, the presence of her mentor enables her learning by proxy to succeed because of the mature supervision, guidance, and expertise he brings to their joint study sessions. Giles keeps Summer's friends on track, despite their immaturity and restlessness. He chastises Harris for making jokes at inappropriate moments. He provides contexts for their research, explaining how and why the du Lac cross is significant, and he is able to additional volumes for study when one line or research proves insufficient. In addition, as the high school librarian, Giles is able to use his position to order the rare and arcane books on occult lore that Summer's calling as a vampire slayer require, and he is able to bring order to their contents. For example, he indexes “the Watcher Diaries,” a tedious process: “I've been indexing the watcher Diaries covering the past two centuries. You'd be amazed at how numbingly long-winded some of these watchers were” (“What's My Line, Part I”). Under Giles' direction, Summers' friends can work effectively as a team, thus researching more sources of a greater variety and at a faster, often more efficient rate than Summers could by herself, while Giles ensures that their research discoveries are both complete, relevant, and reliable.

As a result of this question-answer strategy, you have generated a lot of pertinent material that you can bring together in one paragraph to support one of the claims that you make in your thesis' plan of development:

        Because Summers' knowledge is indirect, it is only as reliable as its mediators. Her friends are fellow high school classmates. Like Summers, they are immature, they prefer to engage in pleasant social or personal activities rather than to study, and they are likely to lack the expertise to make sound determinations about the scope, completeness, and reliability of the information they discover. Moreover, since Summers learns through the efforts of others, rather than through her own efforts, she is dependent on others for the information she receives. These conditions may hinder Summers in her performance of her duties as a vampire slayer because she may be provided with limited or partial, incorrect or misleading, or otherwise unreliable information that could put her or others at risk or jeopardize her mission. Harris' lack of maturity is demonstrated by the inappropriate jokes that he tells during study sessions concerning topics of life-or-death consequence. Several such instances occur in “What's My Line, Part I.” While such studies demand focus, Harris jokes about the name of the artifact, “the du lac cross,” that Giles and Summers have recovered from the du Lac's mausoleum: “Why go to all the trouble of inventing something and then give a weak name like that? I'd have gone with 'Cross-o-matic!' or 'The Amazing Mr. Cross!'” Likewise, when Summer's friends are researching the Order of Taraka, Harris quips, “Didn't they [the Order of Taraka] beat the Elks last year in the Sunnydale Adult Bowling League Championship?” and adds, “Bowling is a vicious game.” When Summers skips out of a study session to go ice skating with her boyfriend, the vampire Angel (thereby exhibiting both her own immaturity and poor judgment), Harris remarks that she “totally contributes” to their research since she goes “for snacks,” and “Ho Ho's are a vital part” of his “cognitive process.” Although such comments may be amusing, they are also distracting, interfering with the concentration of others, as Giles' reprimand to Harris (“That's enough, Xander!”) after Harris' joke about bowling being a “vicious game” suggests. The material they study is difficult and complex, and it concerns life-or-death matters. Jokes on such an occasion are not only immature, but they are also distracting and, therefore, potentially dangerous. Summers did not bother to pursue the scholarly vampire Dalton after he escaped with the du Lac cross because she was ignorant of the danger it represents. However, Giles is able to recognize the threat immediately when he sees the name carved into the mausoleum, above the vault into which Dalton broke. He knows that “Jospehus du Lac is buried here,” and, far from his having been the “saint” Summers suggests he might have been, du Lac was a member of “a sect of priests who were excommunicated by the Vatican” and it was he who wrote the “book that was stolen from the [Sunnydale High School] library by a vampire a few weeks back”--a book of “rituals and spells that reap unspeakable evil.” Summers was not only negligent in not pursuing Dalton, but she, like Harris, is also flip; she makes jokes during serious moments, suggesting, for example, that the book Giles mentions is probably “not a taste of the Vatican cookbook.” As she herself admits, she is, like her friends, immature: “I'm a teen! I've yet to mature!” When their studies do not reveal the information they seek, Summer's friends seem to lack the ability to further their research. They are at a loss as to how to proceed once their research fails. For example, in “What's My Line, Part II,” Harris appears ready to give up when his examination of a book does not reveal any information about two of the Order of Taraka's assassins: “We got demons. We got monsters. But no bug dude or Police Lady.” However, other potentially pertinent volumes exist, as Giles demonstrates when he gives Harris another book with “a section devoted entirely to the Order of Taraka.” Despite the limitations of Summer's approach to learning, the presence of her mentor enables her learning by proxy to succeed because of the mature supervision, guidance, and expertise he brings to their joint study sessions. Giles keeps Summer's friends on track, despite their immaturity and restlessness. He chastises Harris for making jokes at inappropriate moments. He provides contexts for their research, explaining how and why the du Lac cross is significant, and he is able to additional volumes for study when one line or research proves insufficient. In addition, as the high school librarian, Giles is able to use his position to order the rare and arcane books on occult lore that Summer's calling as a vampire slayer require, and he is able to bring order to their contents. For example, he indexes “the Watcher Diaries,” a tedious process: “I've been indexing the Watcher Diaries covering the past two centuries. You'd be amazed at how numbingly long-winded some of these watchers were” (“What's My Line, Part I”). Under Giles' direction, Summers' friends can work effectively as a team, thus researching more sources of a greater variety and at a faster, often more efficient rate than Summers could by herself, while Giles ensures that their research discoveries are both complete, relevant, and reliable.

You could continue this same strategy with reference to the other characteristics and conditions related to Summer's approach to acquiring knowledge (see the table on Essays Made Easy for a list of these characteristics and conditions), although the paragraph above may be long enough if the topic sentence that introduces it is qualified so that it reads, for example:

Although there are several strengths and weaknesses regarding Summer's method of acquiring knowledge, the more important ones, perhaps, concern the limitations of her friends as researchers and the benefits of her mentor's expert supervision and guidance of their research.

NOTE: The shooting scripts for the episodes we watched in class are available at http://www.buffyworld.com/buffy/season2.php#ep021