Essay Two, drawn from the book From Inquiry to Academic Writing, Is Due October 17: Choose One:
Writing Assignment Option 1
In the context of the Media Studies essays in Chapter 13, support, refute, or complicate Turkle’s argument that technology is degrading our humanity in many ways, not the least of which is our “tethered self.” Be sure your 1,250-word essay has a counterargument section and three sources in your Works Cited page.
My 1A students wrote on this topic, and they may quote from their papers, but they cannot re-submit their 1A papers because turnitin will correctly find them committing plagiarism. Because this topic is so urgent, we must confront it again if we wrote this in 1A and 1C, and I won't deny this topic to my 1C students who did not take my 1A class.
You have to remember the history of world religions is this:
One. Paganism
Two. Monotheism
Three. Consumerism (after the Industrial Revolution and advent of mass media)
Four. Social Media It's All About Me-Ism (only 10 years old. This is new stuff we're still processing. We're living the beginning of a new period of history.
Writing Assignment Option 2
In the context of Sherry Turkle's essay "Growing Up Tethered" (428) and CNN's video "Being Thirteen: The Secret World of Teens," develop a cause and effect thesis that addresses the special vulnerabilities 13-year-olds face as they navigate through the morass of social media.
Writing Assignment Option 3
Support, refute, or complicate the argument that Kozol’s essay about poor schools is just the tip of the iceberg about a great scandal in which America neglects, abuses, and exploits the poor while patting itself on the back for being the land of the free. Be sure to have a counterargument section in your 1,250-word essay and a Works Cited page with 3 sources minimum.
Writing Assignment Option 4
In the context of Beverly Daniel Tatum’s essay (374), develop a thesis that analyzes the causes and effects of “oppositional identity” as the driving force behind the “psychology of being black.”
Writing Assignment Option 5
Apply Beverly Daniel Tatum’s theory of “oppositional identity” to the racial divide evidenced during the O.J. Simpson Trial.
Writing Assignment Option 6 (adapted from book):
In a 1,250-word essay, develop an analytical thesis that compares the denigration of education that you see in Edmundson’s essay (389) and Kozol’s (347). Draw examples from your own education as you develop your thesis.
Writing Assignment Option 7
Developing Hooks’ idea in “Seeing and Making Culture: Representing the Poor” (482) that the poor are painted with negative stereotypes in various stratums of society (media, college, TV, movies, popular culture, etc.), draw insights from Hooks’ essay to analyze the way you see common social class stereotypes perpetuated in your daily life be it college, friends, family, movies, or TV. You may want to use a personal interview. Your essay should be 1,250 words and have 3 sources for your Works Cited page.
Writing Assignment Option 8
Defend, refute, or complicate Hooks' assertion that the poor, contrary to the perception of "progressive intellectuals from privileged classes," can lead "a rich and meaningful life." Does Hooks provide enough context in her essay to defend such a position? Why are we as Americans horrified by poverty, not just from an economic, but a psychological sense? How do Hooks' views of the poor differ from most Americans'?
Writing Assignment Option 9
Defend, refute, or complicate Hooks' defense of the poor. Is poverty a virtue? Does poverty encourage integrity? Does poverty encourage moral values? Why? Why not? Explain.
Writing Assignment Option 10
In a 1,250-word essay, show how Kozol’s essay, “Still Separate, Still Unequal,” complements Ravitch’s argument that we need a macro view of the educational disparity crisis. Be sure to have a counterargument section and a Works Cited page with 3 sources minimum.
Review of Internet Dangers
One. Multitasking results in divided energy and mediocre work as we live in a state of continual partial attention.
Two. Death of intimacy results from preference of control and convenience over compromise and reciprocity. Everyone is "pauseable."
Three. A networked life encourages narcissism and constant need for social validation from others; also a networked life makes us feel we're the center of the universe.
Four. A networked life flattens our personae into emoticans.
Five. We suffer off-the-grid anxiety because we have an always-on mentality.
Six. We live in the New Solitude, which means we're mentally absent from others but at the same time we're tethered to each other in a degraded way.
Seven. We live in present shock in which we see "the diminishment of anything that isn't happening right now--and the onslaught of everything that supposedly is" (Rushkoff).
Eight. We suffer from digiphrenia, as Rushkoff writes, using technology to be in more than one place at the same time.
Nine. Internet alters our brain circuits for the worse, turning us into "skimmers."
People are degraded by our social media addiction in these ways:
People want to be interrupted. They are waiting for it. This speaks to a particular type of desperation.
There is no downtime. Therefore, there is no solitude, which is necessary for processing experience and information. Most importantly, as Turkle observes in her Ted Talk, solitude is the prerequisite for intimacy and connection with others.
Everything is rapid response without reflection. We lose our humanity.
Emoticons simplify who we are and strip us of nuance and complexity.
We lose the boundary between public and private life, sharing smartphone photos around the room.
The adolescent is denied alone time, a necessary rite of passage for independence. Instead of independence, the teenager becomes needy for approval and attention.
We have new emotional expectations. I know a young man who is mad at Facebook because his Facebook friends were either not commenting at all or enough at his posts.
We develop an unbalanced need for the validation of others rather than from our inner strength.
Being tethered makes us narcissistic: “. . . one speaks about narcissism not to indicate people who love themselves, but a personality so fragile that it needs constant support. It cannot tolerate the complex demands of other people but tries to relate to them by distorting who they are and splitting off what it needs, what it can use. So, the narcissistic self gets on with others by dealing only with their made-to-measure representations.”
Writing Assignment Option
In the context of the Media Studies essays in Chapter 13, support, refute, or complicate Turkle’s argument that technology is degrading our humanity in many ways, not the least of which is our “tethered self.” Be sure your 1,000-word essay has a counterargument section and three sources in your Works Cited page.
Thesis Examples (some weak; others strong)
We need to turn off our cell phones and computers and turn on to life.
We need to acknowledge that social media addiction is a disease that afflicts many of us.
Facebook is overrated.
I'm burned out from being on Facebook too much.
While there are obvious benefits from social networking, the empirical evidence so abundantly clear in Sherry Turkle's Alone Together points to a widespread social network-fueled pathology consisting of narcissism, false expectations of others, the distortion of time, the addiction to one's fictional cyber life, and compromised brain function from multi-tasking.
While social media is only about a decade old as of writing this research paper, Turkle makes a convincing case that our connection to social media is self-destructive in many ways, which include __________, __________, ____________, and ______________.
Turkle's diatribe against social media is a failed argument because her data cannot include long-term studies with such a new technology, she focuses on extreme cases, which can be found in anything, she uses too much anecdote rather scientific study, and she fails to counterbalance her claims with the prevailing benefits of social media.
Even though Turkle makes many valuable insights about the deleterious ways social networking affects us, her warning has come too late. Her book should have spent less time diagnosing our inevitable malaise and devoted more pages to the ways social networking can and should be used for our self-interests.
Those who dismiss Turkle as a Luddite offering no reasonable solutions to the problems she describes are misguided in their critique when we consider that ________________, _______________, _______________, and ___________________.
Turkle's pessimism is an exercise in intellectual charlatanism and buffoonery evidenced by her sensationalistic exaggerations of social network "mental diseases," her refusal to acknowledge the vast benefits of social networking, and her bullheaded stubbornness, which compels her to resist inevitable social and technological change.
Turkle's shrill diatribe against social networking is little more than a gloomy cloud of fraudulent brouhaha evidenced by _________, ___________, ___________, and _______________.
Sample A Introduction and Thesis in Support of Turkle
Recently I wrote something mildly amusing on Facebook about my twins, how they preferred to be lazy and take the elevator rather than be strong and take the stairs as I had urged them, and I started getting a torrent of “likes” and comments. I found myself checking my Facebook status more often than necessary to monitor the growing attention my post was getting and I realized I was enjoying a pathetic dopamine ego massage from all the adulation I was receiving. I was, for a brief while anyway, Facebook’s King of the Mountain and Super Funny Man, a talented force who no doubt, my post proved, could have made a handsome living doing the stand-up comedy circuit.
And then it hit me. I am pathetic. I am woefully and egregiously needy. I am a disgusting wretch who’s allowed the technology of his time, social media and Facebook specifically, to ratchet up his neediness.
Gloating over all my perceived exaltation was not a sign of my wit and strength. To the contrary, it showed how bereft and pathetically trivial my life had become. I was yet another pathological pawn in the social media game, trying to connect with my Facebook friends when in fact I was “together” on Facebook but woefully alone, or as Sherry Turkle’s book succinctly puts it, I was another casualty in the social media’s merciless mouth, a member of those who are Alone Together. Turkle’s convincingly analyzes the way technology has changed who we are degrading us in many ways, not the least of which is ______________, ___________, ______________, ________________, and __________________.
Another Successful Example
I am a nineteen-year-old student taking McMahon’s English 1A class, which features a final essay, the most heavily weighted essay in class, about the dangers of social media. I belong to a generation immured in Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter, Vine, to mention a few.
Is McMahon’s choice of book, Alone Together, an implicit excoriation of my generation? The book in question, by MIT professor Sherry Turkle, sounds off the alarm bells about the grave dangers of social media: It’s addictive; it makes us dumb; it disconnects us from others; it makes us insecure narcissists. The alleged weaknesses of Turkle’s argument are several and include the following: Because social media is such a new phenomenon, we don’t have any long-term data to support her claims; her extreme anecdotes point to outliers but not mainstream users of social media and we can always find outliers in any category of human behavior; her zeal to wean us off social media blinds her to its benefits for those of us who are not pathologically addicted to it; technophobe and Luddite arguments have been around for centuries and they always prove to be shrill, paranoid overreactions to inevitable change.
Having examined these criticisms in the face of a careful reading of the book, I have concluded that Turkle has written a legitimate, relevant, and compelling argument, supported by empirical research and sound logic, about the ways social media is destroying, not a fringe, but a pervasive segment of society in the realm of addiction, physical injury, narcissism, dehumanization, attention deficit disorder, and generalized loneliness.
Sample B Intro and Thesis Against Turkle
Is MIT professor Sherry Turkle, author of Alone Together, a healthy voice in the wilderness decrying the pathologies of social media or is she a shrill technophobe alarming us to the coming Technological Dystopia? As a nineteen-year-old college student, am I well served by heeding the vivid warnings in Turkle’s polemic? I doubt it, for while Turkle does a good job of showing the variety of pathologies engendered by social media, her argument collapses under the weight of her one-sided bias, her excessive focus on extreme, outlier anecdotes, her Procrustean exposition (picking only the data that serves your purposes and ignoring the data that contradicts your claims) forcing a narrative of dystopian madness to fit into her rigid, preconceived thesis; and her lack of access to any real long-term studies to give us an accurate, objective look at the alleged self-destructiveness from social media.
The above would be an A; however, it suffers from mapping overlap. Let's try to fix it.
Here's an A grade Revision
Is MIT professor Sherry Turkle, author of Alone Together, a healthy voice in the wilderness decrying the pathologies of social media or is she a shrill technophobe alarming us to the coming Technological Dystopia? As a nineteen-year-old college student, am I well served by heeding the vivid warnings in Turkle’s polemic? I doubt it, for while Turkle does a good job of showing the variety of pathologies engendered by social media, her argument collapses under the weight of her one-sided bias, her excessive focus on extreme, outlier anecdotes, her rigid either/or fallacy regarding the worthiness of the Internet; her confusion with correlation and causation; her willful ignorance of Sturgeon's Law to push her over-simplistic argument, and her lack of access to any real long-term studies to give us an accurate, objective look at the alleged self-destructiveness from social media.
Sample Introduction and Thesis
If our posts on Facebook get us a lot of attention in the form of “likes” and comments and we find this attention makes us gloat like we’re the King of Facebook, we have to ask ourselves: Should we be getting our thrills in this manner? Of all the things to get thrilled about, the birth of a baby, the expulsion of a fascist leader, the discovery of a cure for some terminable disease, why do so many of us jump for joy upon getting Facebook “likes” and comments?
Could the answer be we’ve lowered our expectations about what defines our own happiness? Before Facebook, we had more exalted expectations that drove us, that defined our goals, which made us truly happy. But now we sit in a robe while eating a Pop Tart and copy and paste something someone else wrote on Facebook and the attention we get from our posts makes us happy.
Maybe we shouldn’t be happy. Maybe we should be ashamed. Maybe we should be full of self-loathing. Maybe we should be full of disgust.
In addition to a Facebook “like” category, there needs to be a “Get a Life, You Pathetic Loser” category, so that my real friends can remind me how far down the rabbit hole of a wasted life I’ve allowed Facebook and Twitter to send me.
Such are the sentiments of Sherry Turkle, the author of Alone Together who argues convincingly that Facebook and other forms of social media have denigrated the human condition by ________________, ________________, __________________, ___________________, and ___________________________.
Example Thesis Structures
Turkle's argument that social media has diminished our humanity is convincing when we consider ______________, ___________, _____________, ______________, and ________________.
Turkle's argument that social media presents dangers to our humanity is both exaggerated and erroneous evidenced by ___________, ___________, ________________, ____________, and _______________.
While Turkle does a good job of showing the narcissism and disconnection from the misuse of social media, her vision of a future techno-dystopia is misguided because _______________, ____________, _______________, and _________________.
Counterarguments or Objections to Sherry Turkle's Argument
One. She is too one-sided with only negative anecdotes and examples of the way technology disconnects us and makes us narcissistic.
Two. She exaggerates the pitfalls and dangers of social media.
Three. She offers no solutions to social media addiction and dehumanization.
Four. She resists the inevitability of change brought on by technology. The toothpaste is out of the tube. We can't put it back in.
Refutation of Sherry Turkle (and McMahon)
I've had to bear witness to McMahon's relentless diatribe against social media this semester in what is being called a "critical thinking" class. With the aid of his mentor Sherry Turkle, McMahon has attempted to frighten us away from the alleged social pathologies of Facebook, Twitter, et al. McMahon's "sky is falling" approach is both tiresome and preposterous. To focus on those brain-numbed zombies who've allowed social media to ruin their lives is a distraction from a vibrant digital age that gives us the freedom to either shackle ourselves to vain addiction or to explore new possibilities. McMahon's approach denies us this freedom, it denies us our powers of discretion, it focuses too much on outlier addicts, and it focuses too little on new ways of human philanthropy and fulfillment that McMahon, too blinded by his Turkle Kool-Aid, is capable of seeing.
Defense of Turkle (and McMahon)
The writer who attempts to blithely and audaciously dismiss McMahon's social media warnings reeks of hogwash. McMahon is not some old man shouting half-baked bromides at the neighborhood kids on his front lawn. To the contrary, McMahon has steeped himself into MIT expert Sherry Turkle to find credible evidence for the claim that social media addiction is not reserved for freaks and madmen but extends its slimy tentacles to the best of us. McMahon is no Turkle Kool-Aid drinker. He has, to the contrary, given us counterarguments to consider and has never been a Turkle cheerleader. Finally, in the ten years we've had this new experiment called social media, we have amassed enough evidence to mine adequate data on matters of declining empathy, increased narcissism, and screen time addiction. We can conclude the writer's feeble quest to discredit McMahon collapses upon even a modicum of scrutiny and renders the writer misguided, biased, and unduly and inexplicably strident.
Outstanding Resource for Your Essay
"I Used to be a Human Being" by Andrew Sullivan
Sullivan's essay, like much of Turkle's writing, describes the psychological rabbit hole of social media addiction.
An addiction consists of the following:
One. You prefer the addiction to people. People are to be used in the service of your addiction. This selfish behavior eventually cuts ties with others.
Two. Your addiction makes you spend more and more time alone, resulting in solipsism, the condition in which your self becomes the only reality as the self is cut off from other people and the rest of the world.
Three. Your addiction is as strong as your denial of the addiction. "I'm doing just fine. I don't need any help. I can stop whenever I want to."
Four. The addiction controls you, becomes an obsession, and penetrates the very core of your soul.
Five. The addiction eviscerates your humanity as you become a zombie version of your former self.
Six. The addiction impedes you from doing fulfilling, productive activities that you used to enjoy.
Seven. The addiction whittles away your friendships till you live on an Island of One (variation of traits #1 and #2).
Eight. The addiction often destroys your self-awareness or metacognition, the very quality you need to recognize your addiction so you can embark on a battle with it.
Nine. In some cases, people with complete self-awareness and strong metacognition skills have a keen sense of their entrapment to their addiction, yet find themselves feeling helpless to do anything about it.
Ten. Underneath any addiction is a sense of shame and self-loathing because one knows deep down that the addiction is self-destructive and therefore evidence of careless disregard for the self, a sign of self-hatred.
According to Andrea A. Lunsford in The St. Martin’s Handbook, Eight Edition, there are 20 writing errors that merit “The Top 20.”
One. Wrong word: Confusing one word for another.
Here's a list of wrong word usage.
A full-bodied red wine compliments the Pasta Pomodoro.
Compliment is a to say something nice about someone.
Complement is to complete or match well with something.
The BMW salesman excepted my counteroffer of 55K for the sports sedan.
The word should be accepted.
Kryptonite effects Superman in such a way that he loses his powers.
Effect is a noun. Affect is a verb, so it should be the following:
Kryptonite affects Superman in a such a way that he loses his powers.
There superpowers were compromised by the Gamma rays.
We need to use the possessive plural pronoun their.
Two. Missing comma after an introductory phrase or clause
Terrified of slimy foods, Robert hid behind the restaurant’s dumpster.
In spite of my aversion to rollercoasters, I attended the carnival with my family.
Three. Incomplete documentation
Noted dietician and nutritionist Mike Manderlin observes that, “Dieting is a mental illness.”
It should read:
Noted dietician and nutritionist Mike Manderlin observes that, “Dieting is a mental illness” (277).
Four. Vague Pronoun Reference
Focusing on the pecs during your Monday-Wednesday-Friday workouts is a way of giving you more time to work on your quads and glutes and specializing on the way they’re used in different exercises.
Before Jennifer screamed at Brittany, she came to the conclusion that she was justified in stealing her boyfriend.
Five. Spelling (including homonyms, words that have same spelling but different meanings)
No one came forward to bare witness to the crime.
No one came forward to bear witness to the crime.
Every where we went, we saw fast food restaurants.
Everywhere we went, we saw fast food restaurants.
Love is a disease. It’s sickness derives from its power to intoxicate and create capricious, short-term infatuation.
Its sickness derives from its power to intoxicate and create capricious, short-term infatuation.
Six. Mechanical error with a quotation
In his best-selling book Love Is a Virus from Outer Space, noted psychologist Michael M. Manderlin asserts that, “Falling in love is a form of madness for which there is no cure”.
In his best selling book Love Is a Virus from Outer Space, noted psychologist Michael M. Manderlin asserts that, “Falling in love is a form of madness for which there is no cure.”
In his best selling book Love Is a Virus from Outer Space, noted psychologist Michael M. Manderlin asserts that, “Falling in love is a form of madness for which there is no cure” (18).
“It forever stuns me that people make life decisions based on something as fickle and capricious as love”, Michael Manderlin writes (22).
“It forever stuns me that people make life decisions based on something as fickle and capricious as love,” Michael Manderlin writes (22).
Seven . Unnecessary comma
I need to workout when at home, and while taking vacations.
You do however use a comma if the comma is between two independent clauses:
I need to workout at home, and when I go on vacations, I bring my yoga mat to hotels.
I need to workout every day, because I’m addicted to the exercise-induced dopamine.
You do however use a comma after a dependent clause beginning with because:
Because I’m addicted to exercise-induced dopamine, I need to workout everyday.
Peaches, that are green, taste hideous.
The above is an example of an independent clause with a essential information or restrictive information. Not all peaches taste hideous, only green ones. The meaning of the entire sentence needs the dependent clause so there are no commas.
However, if the clause is additional information, the clause is called nonessential or nonrestrictive, and we do use commas:
Peaches, which are on sale at Whole Foods, are my favorite fruit.
Eight. Unnecessary or missing capitalization
Some Traditional Chinese Medicines containing Ephedra remain legal.
We only use capital letters for proper nouns, proper adjectives, first words of sentences, important words in titles, along with certain words indicating directions and family relationships.
Nine. Missing word
The site foreman discriminated women and promoted men with less experience.
The site foreman discriminated against women and promoted men with less experience.
Chris’ behavior becomes bizarre that his family asks for help.
Chris’ behavior becomes so bizarre that his family asks for help.
Ten. Faulty sentence structure
The information which high school athletes are presented with mainly includes information on what credits needed to graduate and thinking about the college which athletes are trying to play for, and apply.
A sentence that starts out with one kind of structure and then changes to another kind can confuse readers. Make sure that each sentence contains a subject and a verb, that subjects and predicates make sense together, and that comparisons have clear meanings. When you join elements (such as subjects or verb phrases) with a coordinating conjunction, make sure that the elements have parallel structures.
The reason I prefer yoga at home to the gym is because I prefer privacy.
I prefer yoga at home to the gym because of privacy.
11. Missing Comma with a Nonrestrictive Element
Marina who was the president of the club was the first to speak.
The clause who was the president of the club does not affect the basic meaning of the sentence: Marina was the first to speak.
A nonrestrictive element gives information not essential to the basic meaning of the sentence. Use commas to set off a nonrestrictive element.
12. Unnecessary Shift in Verb Tense
Priya was watching the great blue heron. Then she slips and falls into the swamp.
Verbs that shift from one tense to another with no clear reason can confuse readers.
13. Missing Comma in a Compound Sentence
Meredith waited for Samir and her sister grew impatient.
Without the comma, a reader may think at first that Meredith waited for both Samir and her sister.
A compound sentence consists of two or more parts that could each stand alone as a sentence. When the parts are joined by a coordinating conjunction, use a comma before the conjunction to indicate a pause between the two thoughts.
14. Unnecessary or Missing Apostrophe (including its/it's)
Overambitious parents can be very harmful to a childs well-being.
The car is lying on it's side in the ditch. Its a white 2004 Passat.
To make a noun possessive, add either an apostrophe and an s (Ed's book) or an apostrophe alone (the boys' gym). Do not use an apostrophe in the possessive pronouns ours, yours, and hers. Useits to mean belong to it; use it's only when you mean it is or it has.
15. Fused (run-on) sentence
Klee's paintings seem simple, they are very sophisticated.
She doubted the value of medication she decided to try it once.
A fused sentence (also called a run-on) joins clauses that could each stand alone as a sentence with no punctuation or words to link them. Fused sentences must be either divided into separate sentences or joined by adding words or punctuation.
16. Comma Splice
I was strongly attracted to her, she was beautiful and funny.
We hated the meat loaf, the cafeteria served it every Friday.
A comma splice occurs when only a comma separates clauses that could each stand alone as a sentence. To correct a comma splice, you can insert a semicolon or period, connect the clauses with a word such as and or because, or restructure the sentence.
17. Lack of pronoun/antecedent agreement
Every student must provide their own uniform.
Pronouns must agree with their antecedents in gender (male or female) and in number (singular or plural). Many indefinite pronouns, such as everyone and each, are always singular. When a singular antecedent can refer to a man or woman, either rewrite the sentence to make the antecedent plural or to eliminate the pronoun, or use his or her, he or she, and so on. When antecedents are joined by or or nor, the pronoun must agree with the closer antecedent. A collection noun such as team can be either singular or plural, depending on whether the members are seen as a group or individuals.
18. Poorly Integrated Quotation
A 1970s study of what makes food appetizing "Once it became apparent that the steak was actually blue and the fries were green, some people became ill" (Schlosser 565).
Corrected
In a 1970s study about what makes food appetizing, we read, "Once it became apparent that the steak was actually blue and the fries were green, some people became ill" (Schlosser 565).
"Dumpster diving has serious drawbacks as a way of life" (Eighner 383). Finding edible food is especially tricky.
Corrected
"Dumpster diving has serious drawbacks as a way of life," we read in Eighner's book (383). One of the drawbacks is that finding food can be especially difficult.
Quotations should fit smoothly into the surrounding sentence structure. They should be linked clearly to the writing around them (usually with a signal phrase) rather than dropped abruptly into the writing.
19. Missing or Unnecessary Hyphen
This paper looks at fictional and real life examples.
A compound adjective modifying a noun that follows it requires a hyphen.
The buyers want to fix-up the house and resell it.
A two-word verb should not be hyphenated. A compound adjective that appears before a noun needs a hyphen. However, be careful not to hyphenate two-word verbs or word groups that serve as subject complements.
20. Sentence Fragment
No subject
Marie Antoinette spent huge sums of money on herself and her favorites. And helped to bring on the French Revolution.
No complete verb
The aluminum boat sitting on its trailer.
Beginning with a subordinating word
We returned to the drugstore. Where we waited for our buddies.
A sentence fragment is part of a sentence that is written as if it were a complete sentence. Reading your draft out loud, backwards, sentence by sentence, will help you spot sentence fragments.
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