Argumentative essay
Here is the information you need to survive week eight of your English 1180 class:
1. Read chapter 13 in Real Essays.
2. Read the power point on argumentative essays.
3. Read the power point for the argumentative rubric.
3. Answer the discussion question (you will find the question in a folder in the module). Make sure your answer is at least 10 sentences long and free of spelling and most grammatical errors. This is due by Friday at 11:59 p.m.
4. Take the quiz on comma usage. You may take this anytime this week up until Friday at 11:59 p.m. Once you begin, you will have 90 minutes to take this quiz. You may not start over.
5. Turn in your argumentative essay by Saturday at 11:59 p.m. You will NOT research this topic. Avoid plagiarizing! Your essay must be focused on one of these three options:
Option 1: For your argumentative essay, read the following and respond to it using a clear thesis, background information, definition of the topic, proofs, and refutation (as explained in the power-point and the textbook). You will not research this topic. Instead, you will respond to this article. You will use directly quoted passages from the article for support. You will document these passages by introducing the author’s full name and the title of the article on first reference and then using the author’s last name after the quoted or summarized passages in parentheses like this (Richie). These passages should represent a very small percentage of your essay. Your words should take up more than 80% of the essay’s two-page minimum. As always, set this up as you have all previous assignments in MLA style.
Technology is supposed to make us more connected. We can stay in touch with our friends all the time on
, Twitter and Tumblr, and, of course, by texting. But are our smartphones actually getting in the way of real socializing? Could technology be making us more alone?
In the article “
Disruptions: More Connected, Yet More Alone
,” Nick Bilton writes about a YouTube video that comments on our smartphone-obsessed culture.
Last weekend, I was watching television with a few friends, browsing the week’s most popular YouTube videos, when a piece in the comedy section called “I Forgot My Phone” caught my eye. As I was about to click play, however, a friend warned: “Oh, don’t watch that. I saw it yesterday, and it’s really sad.”
The two-minute video, which has been viewed more than 15 million times, begins with a couple in bed. The woman, played by the comedian and actress Charlene deGuzman, stares silently while her boyfriend pays no mind and checks his smartphone.
The subsequent scenes follow Ms. deGuzman through a day that is downright dystopian: people ignore her as they stare at their phones during lunch, at a concert, while bowling and at a birthday party. (Even the birthday boy is recording the party on his phone.) The clip ends with Ms. deGuzman back in bed with her boyfriend at the end of the day; he is still using his phone.
Ms. deGuzman’s video makes for some discomfiting viewing. It’s a direct hit on our smartphone-obsessed culture, needling us about our addiction to that little screen and suggesting that maybe life is just better led when it is lived rather than viewed. While the clip has funny scenes — a man proposing on a beach while trying to record the special moment on his phone — it is mostly … sad.
Students: Tell me …
· Does technology make us more alone? Do you find yourself surrounded by people who are staring at their screens instead of having face-to-face conversations? Are you ever guilty of doing that, too?
· Is our obsession with documenting everything through photographs and videos preventing us from living in the moment?
· Do you ever try to put your phone down to be more present with the people in the room?
· Do you have rules for yourself or for your friends or family about when and how you use technology in social situations? If not, do you think you should?
· Do you think smartphones will continue to intrude more into our private and social spaces, or do you think society is beginning to push back?
Option 2: For your argumentative essay, read the following and respond to it using a clear thesis, background information, definition of the topic, proofs, and refutation. You will not research this topic. Instead, you will respond to this article. You will use directly quoted passages from the article for support. You will document these passages by introducing the author’s full name and the title of the article on first reference and in subsequent references using the author’s last name after the quoted or summarized passages like this (Richie). These passages should represent a very small percentage of your essay. Your words should take up more than 80% of the essay’s two-page minimum. As always, set this up as you have all previous assignments in MLA style.
By Rebecca Ruiz:
Roughly 200 million people in the United States — two-thirds of the country’s population — are on Facebook. Do you have a Facebook account? How attached to it are you? Do you have conflicted feelings about the site? Would you ever consider deleting your profile? Why or why not?
In an article entitled “
The Facebook Resisters
,” Jenna Wortham reports that some people, even those with established Facebook presences, are dialing back their use of the social networking site or deleting their profiles completely, worried about invasions of privacy or feelings of social isolation. She writes:
Tyson Balcomb quit Facebook after a chance encounter on an elevator. He found himself standing next to a woman he had never met — yet through Facebook he knew what her older brother looked like, that she was from a tiny island off the coast of Washington and that she had recently visited the Space Needle in Seattle.
“I knew all these things about her, but I’d never even talked to her,” said Mr. Balcomb, a pre-med student in Oregon who had some real-life friends in common with the woman. “At that point I thought, maybe this is a little unhealthy.”
…One of Facebook’s main selling points is that it builds closer ties among friends and colleagues. But some who steer clear of the site say it can have the opposite effect of making them feel more, not less, alienated.
“I wasn’t calling my friends anymore,” said Ashleigh Elser, 24, who is in graduate school in Charlottesville, Va. “I was just seeing their pictures and updates and felt like that was really connecting to them.”
…Erika Gable, 29, who lives in Brooklyn and does public relations for restaurants, never understood the appeal of Facebook in the first place. She says the daily chatter that flows through the site — updates about bad hair days and pictures from dinner — is virtual clutter she doesn’t need in her life.
“If I want to see my fifth cousin’s second baby, I’ll call them,” she said with a laugh.
Students: Give me your take on these anti-Facebook attitudes. Do you agree with any of the opinions expressed? Do you feel your friendships are strengthened or weakened by the site? Have you ever had an experience similar to Mr. Balcomb’s and encountered someone in real life whose personal pictures and information you’d reviewed online? How critical is Facebook to your life? Would you ever consider deleting your account?
Option 3: For your argumentative essay, read the following and respond to it using a clear thesis, background information, definition of the topic, proofs, and refutation. You will not research this topic. Instead, you will respond to this article. You will not research this topic. Instead, you will respond to this article. You will use directly quoted passages from the article for support. You will document these passages by introducing the author’s full name and the title of the article on first reference and in subsequent references using the author’s last name after the quoted or summarized passages like this (Richie). These passages should represent a very small percentage of your essay. Your words should take up more than 80% of the essay’s two-page minimum. As always, set this up as you have all previous assignments in MLA style.
Is Online Learning as Good as Face-to-Face Learning?
BY KATHERINE SCHULTEN
Some experts estimate that more than a million students in the United States, from kindergarten through 12th grade, are taking courses online. Have you ever taken a class for credit online? What was the experience like? In general, do you think K-12 students can learn as much in an online course as they can in a traditional class? Why or why not? What makes for a good online course, in your opinion?
In
“More Pupils Are Learning Online, Fueling Debate on Quality,”
Trip Gabriel writes:
Jack London was the subject in Daterrius Hamilton’s online English 3 course. In a high school classroom packed
with computers, he read a brief biography of London with single-paragraph excerpts from the author’s works. But the curriculum did not require him, as it had generations of English students, to wade through a tattered copy of “Call of the Wild” or “To Build a Fire.”
Mr. Hamilton, who had failed English 3 in a conventional classroom and was hoping to earn credit online to graduate, was asked a question about the meaning of social Darwinism. He pasted the question into Google and read a summary of a Wikipedia entry. He copied the language, spell-checked it and e-mailed it to his teacher.
Mr. Hamilton, 18, is among the expanding ranks of students in kindergarten through college — more than two million in the United States, by one estimate — taking online courses.
Advocates of such courses say they allow schools to offer not only makeup courses, the fastest-growing area, but also a richer menu of electives and Advanced Placement classes when there are not enough students to fill a classroom.
But critics say online education is really driven by a desire to spend less on teachers and buildings, especially as state and local budget crises force deep cuts to education. They note that there is no sound research showing that online courses at the K-12 level are comparable to face-to-face learning.
Students: Tell me about the experiences you’ve had with online learning. In general, do you think students can learn as much in an online course as they can in a traditional class? Why or why not? Do you tend to agree with online-learning advocates who say that this method allows schools to offer a richer menu of electives? Or do you tend to agree with critics who say that the popularity of these courses reflects a desire to save money on teachers in tough budgetary times? What makes for a good online course, in your opinion?