Essay 1 Options for Essay 1 Due on March 9 and needs 2 sources for Works Cited
Option 1:
In an essay of 1,000 words, defend, refute, or complicate Cal Newport’s claim from his book excerpt from So Good They Can’t Ignore You that the Passion Hypothesis is dangerous and should be replaced by the craftsman mindset. For a second source, you can use “In the Name of Love” by Miya Tokumitsu. You won’t receive credit unless you have an MLA format Works Cited page at the end of your essay.
Option 2:
Read Karl Taro Greenfeld’s “My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me” and Andrea Townsend "A Teacher's Defense of Homework" and develop an argumentative essay about giving homework to middle school and high school students.
February 24 Go over Newport online chapters 1-3. Homework #2 for February 26: Read Karl Taro Greenfeld’s “My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me” and Andrea Townsend "A Teacher's Defense of Homework" and in 200-word paragraph, explain the dilemma parents face when struggling with their children’s homework.
February 26 Go over the homework debate. Homework #3 for next class: Read S-2 Sentence Fragments in your electronic Little Seagull Handbook and report on the following: What is a fragment? What are the types of fragments? Do the 3 Practice Quizzes, report your score, and explain how confident you are about avoiding fragments for your essays.
March 2 Chromebook In-Class Writing Objective: Do Homework Check 3 for S-2 Sentence Fragments. Our goal is to write an introduction paragraph, thesis paragraph, and one or two supporting paragraphs. Homework #4 for next class: Read S-3 Comma Splices, Fused Sentences and explain how to identify and edit comma splices and fused sentences. Take the 4 Practice quizzes, report your scores, and explain how confident you are about avoiding these errors in future essays.
March 4 Chromebook In-Class Writing Objective: Our goal is to write two supporting paragraphs, a counterargument-rebuttal paragraph, a conclusion, and a Works Cited page. Go over Homework #4, Comma Splices and Fused Sentences.
March 9 Essay 1 Due on turnitin.
Suggested Essay Structure:
Paragraph 1: Explain the homework dilemma facing America for your introduction.
Paragraph 2: Develop a thesis that agrees or disagrees with Greenfeld's contention that his daughter is assigned too much homework and this overload points to a broader problem about homework in American society.
Paragraphs 3-6 are your supporting paragraphs
Paragraph 7: Counterargument-Rebuttal Paragraph in which you anticipate how your opponents will oppose your thesis and your rebuttal to their counterargument.
Paragraph 8: Conclusion: Dramatic reiteration of your thesis.
1,000 words
Sources and Signal Phrases
You must use at least 2 sources and 6 signal phrases for your essay.
Sample Introduction and Thesis
Karl Taro Greenfeld writes a sympathetic account of the struggles that he and his daughter must suffer to keep up with his daughter's homework. They feel there is a gun pointed at their heads 24/7, they are sleep deprived, they feel constantly behind in the homework, and the father's complaints to his daughter's teacher are met with the standard "I'm merely following the core standards and if you wish me to demote your daughter to the remedial class, I can make that happen." Not willing to compromise his daughter's educational standing, he backs down, but he wishes to make the case that the American education system is so caught up in teaching core standards that it is unleashing a torrent of homework on children to their detriment.
While I agree with a lot of Greenfeld's observations, I sadly and reluctantly must argue against him. Our teachers have no choice but to continue to push lots of homework on our children in the cause of teaching core standards, in the cause of getting us caught up in STEM, in the cause of acknowledging that career competition is far more ruthless than when Greenfeld was a child, and in the cause of holding teachers accountable for exercising high classroom standards.
Default Setting Essay Template for 1,000-word essay
8 Paragraphs, 130 words per paragraph, approx. 1,000 words (1,040 to be exact)
Paragraph 1: Attention-getting introduction
Paragraph 2: Transition from introduction to argumentative claim (thesis)
Paragraphs 3-5: Body paragraphs that give reasons for supporting your claim.
Paragraphs 6 & 7: Counterarguments in which you anticipate how your opponents will disagree with you, and you then provide rebuttals to those counterarguments.
Paragraph 8: Conclusion, an emotionally powerful re-statement of your thesis.
Make sure to include a Works Cited page.
Your paper must be logically organized and focused.
Sample Response from Parent's Point of View
Teachers, I get it. You need to teach the core standards. You’ve got administration breathing down your neck and giving you ulcers because they want to make sure your students pass all the tests so you can keep your job and maybe even get a raise. So let’s make a deal. Let’s do the core standards in class, not at home. That’s right. Let’s cut the homework. Why? Because you know math, right? I mean, you are a teacher, yes? So let’s do the math. Most parents work, just like you. We don’t have the luxury of being a stay-at-home parent to curate our kids’ homework. Why? Because we’ve got bills to pay. By the time we get the kids home, make them dinner, have them shower, brush their teeth, and get some much needed physical exercise after being cooped up in a cage all day (you cut PE classes, remember?), we don’t have diddly squat time for homework.
But you’ve got time. You’ve got our kids from 9 to 3. That’s six hours you get to spend working on core standards. That’s more time than we’ve got.
Teachers, time isn’t the only issue. It’s the quality of the homework itself. Too often you give our kids busy work. This amounts to photocopied worksheets from a 15-year-old workbook you bought on Amazon that got an average one-star rating. You’re being lazy by larding on a bunch of busy work on our kids. Stop it. You’re not the solution, teacher. You’re part of the problem.
Teachers, we want our children to be more than overworked mediocrities jumping through your hoops. We want our kids to have time to do exceptional work whether it be joining student government, joining the chess club, or leisurely reading. Your busy work, on the other hand, is turning them into brain-dead, sleep-deprived zombies.
Teachers, you’re part of a broken, dysfunctional system, and my family is paying the price.
We need to start fixing the system, and we can begin by cutting out the unnecessary homework.
Should We Give Homework to Children?
One. What are Karl Taro Greenfeld’s concerns about his daughter Esmee’s homework?
One, memory over logic: Esmee chants the mantra, “Memorization, not rationalization,” suggesting it is better to saturation the brain the mindless memory rather than learn logic and the process of higher thinking.
So there is a concern for the type of homework.
Two, unreasonable volume of homework: But secondly, there is a concern for the sheer volume of homework. Esmee is doing three to four hours of homework to pass standardized tests based on core learning requirements that the school is legally bound to perform. In addition to the rigors of 3-4 hours of homework, Esmee, who is 13, is only getting 6.5 hours sleep a night.
Thirdly, Esmee’s pressure to do well in her homework is causing her to fake sleep, get up, and do more homework behind her parents’ backs.
Fourth, when Esmee tries to do his daughter’s homework, he finds it a daunting task. One night is 79 pages of a memoir, a Life Science assignment, and Algebra.
Fifth, the textbooks, such as the one in Life Science, are written in overwrought, crappy academic style that makes them unreadable for anyone, let alone a 13-year-old child.
Sixth, without doing any research, American schools are trying to play catch-up with other countries that are crushing us, especially in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math), but our solution may be worse than the problem.
Seven, When a parent such as Greenfeld, approaches a teacher with concern about his daughter’s lack of sleep and overall burnout, the teacher threatens to demote child to remedial class.
Eight, Greenfeld compares parent-teacher conferences to speed dating.
Nine, at times Greenfeld wonders if they have brainwashed his daughter into accepting overwork as natural work since she feels assured she is battle-tested for high school. In a broader problem, we seem to be a culture acclimated to a term coined by Derek Thompson, “Workism,” as he expounds in an essay.
Thompson writes:
What is workism? It is the belief that work is not only necessary to economic production, but also the centerpiece of one’s identity and life’s purpose; and the belief that any policy to promote human welfare must always encourage more work.
Homo industrious is not new to the American landscape. The American dream—that hoary mythology that hard work always guarantees upward mobility—has for more than a century made the U.S. obsessed with material success and the exhaustive striving required to earn it.
No large country in the world as productive as the United States averages more hours of work a year. And the gap between the U.S. and other countries is growing. Between 1950 and 2012, annual hours worked per employee fell by about 40 percent in Germany and the Netherlands—but by only 10 percent in the United States. Americans “work longer hours, have shorter vacations, get less in unemployment, disability, and retirement benefits, and retire later, than people in comparably rich societies,” wrote Samuel P. Huntington in his 2005 book Who Are We?: The Challenges to America’s National Identity.
There is nothing wrong with work, when work must be done. And there is no question that an elite obsession with meaningful work will produce a handful of winners who hit the workist lottery: busy, rich, and deeply fulfilled. But a culture that funnels its dreams of self-actualization into salaried jobs is setting itself up for collective anxiety, mass disappointment, and inevitable burnout.
In the past century, the American conception of work has shifted from jobs to careers to callings—from necessity to status to meaning. In an agrarian or early-manufacturing economy, where tens of millions of people perform similar routinized tasks, there are no delusions about the higher purpose of, say, planting corn or screwing bolts: It’s just a job.
“We’ve created this idea that the meaning of life should be found in work,” says Oren Cass, the author of the book The Once and Future Worker. “We tell young people that their work should be their passion. ‘Don’t give up until you find a job that you love!’ we say. ‘You should be changing the world!’ we tell them. That is the message in commencement addresses, in pop culture, and frankly, in media, including The Atlantic.”
Is America Making Burnout the New Normal?
My students are burned out.
Here are 7 takeaways from my college students:
One. Most of my students are decent people trying to play by society’s rules so they can climb the economic ladder.
Two. Most of my students show up to class with a chronic sleep deficit.
Three. Most of my students don’t have big chunks of time to study and contemplate the joys of education for its own sake. Rather, my students grit their teeth and squeeze in college with the rest of their frantic schedule.
Four. Most of my students live in a state of constant financial insecurity.
Five. Most of my students are playing academic catch-up to make up for wasted time in high school.
Six. The cumulative effect of the above pressure points makes most of my students feel constantly stressed and exhausted, a condition they face with a mix of stoicism and depression.
Seven. The state of affairs described above has gotten progressively worse since I started teaching college in the 1980s.
In Contrast:
My wife’s school district where she teaches sixth grade give limits based on grade: 10 minutes per grade level.
For example, a third-grader gets 30 minutes, a sixth grader gets 60 minutes, and so on.
Also, anything more than 2 hours is considered counterproductive, according to major Stanford Study. In addition, Psychology Today draws from several studies to recommend only one hour of homework a night.
McMahon's Thesis
While some of the homework given in the service of core standards looks like it is fulfilling its mission of helping my daughters achieve high standards in reading, writing, and math, I find that there is inconsistency in the quality of the homework depending on the teacher. One of my twin daughters has reasonable, high-quality homework; however, the other twin has a teacher who gives busy work, makes the students do long handouts that come from old workbooks purchased on Amazon with low customer ratings, has homework that is given without any lesson or context to give the homework meaning or explanation, and who lards long homework assignments as if the volume were a sign of the teacher's high quality when in fact the opposite is true. Perhaps, then, the problem isn't the homework; it's the teacher.
Counterarguments from Andrea Townsend’s “A Teacher’s Defense of Homework”:
Townsend writes that she is obliged to prepare her students for college. She writes:
I teach biology at the Charles School, a five-year early-college high school in Columbus, Ohio. I believe that my job is to prepare my students for college. In order to do that, I teach a wide variety of topics including cells, genetics, evolution, and ecology, using the National Science Standards. I teach each topic in depth so that the students understand and appreciate the information. I teach them about the scientific method, lab procedures, and scientific writing, all skills they will need in college. It’s a lot to fit into one short year, and my class requires a lot of effort from my students.
Townsend wish she could have students do more in-class work to reduce homework load, but the students aren’t efficient with their time. As she writes:
Unfortunately, many kids choose to socialize when I give them time to work on their own. The students always say, “I’ll just do this for homework” and neglect to get much, if any, of the assignment done in class. Then, they come home with a pile of homework, which many parents assume the teachers assigned at the end of class.
Townsend goes on to say that homework may be difficult, but it trains kids for adulthood:
A few times a year, I require students to write a scientific paper. We spend a significant amount of time on these assignments at school, but effort outside of class is required as well. And I think that’s great. Schoolwork prepares students for work-related tasks, financial planning, and any project that ends with the feeling of a job well done. Long-term planning, projects, and deadlines are a key part of adulthood.
Townsend also argues that homework is necessary to compete on the world stage:
Nevertheless, some parents think their kids are getting too much work. One argument, which Greenfeld uses, is to compare American students with those in other countries. In his article, Greenfeld cites the fact that students in many overseas countries are scoring higher than American children, while being assigned less homework. He uses Japan as an example. In 2011, Japan was ranked fourth in science scores in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study. But according to a study cited in Greenfeld’s article, Japanese students are actually assigned less homework by their teachers. Why, then, do they achieve more? The answer comes when you look at the differences in our cultures and our views on education. Japanese teachers may not be assigning much homework, but it turns out that Japanese kids are doing plenty of homework anyway.
I spoke with Chris Spackman, who is the English as a Second Language coordinator at my school. Chris taught for 13 years in Japan, and served on the Board of Education in the city of Kanazawa. I asked him why Japanese kids are scoring so high on achievement tests despite having relatively little homework. “Because Japanese kids go to juku,” he answered. He went on to explain that juku is a common after-school program that prepares Japanese kids for achievement testing. In Japan, senior high school is not required or guaranteed. Instead, students compete for spots at prestigious high schools by scoring high on achievement tests. “Some schools are for art, or college prep,” says Chris. “You have to study hard in junior high to get into the high school that you want.” In high school, Japanese kids continue to go to juku so that they can get into the college they want as well. So, Japanese kids do academic work outside of school, just not necessarily work assigned by their classroom teacher.
Townsend finishes her essay by arguing that a compromise should be made and for parents to realize that teachers are fighting for their kids’ best interests:
There is room for compromise on the homework debate. In their book Reforming Homework, Richard Walker and Mike Horsley state that while homework isn’t very beneficial for younger kids, it’s still beneficial for older students. I agree. I’ve learned, while preparing my students to start college early, that study skills become much more important than they were in primary school. It’s also important for teachers to assign work that’s high in quality, instead of quantity. The vast majority of teachers I know are careful to only assign work that’s important for student success. Remember, teachers have to grade all of these assignments – we wouldn’t want to spend extra time grading papers that have no value.
In the comments on Greenfeld’s article, some readers assume that teachers don’t have our students’ best interests at heart. But usually, teachers who aren’t incredibly devoted to their students don’t last in the profession. The teachers who do stay are committed to giving the best education to their students. We wouldn’t be assigning that homework, giving that test, or reading that book if we didn’t truly believe it was worthwhile. All we ask is that you trust us, just a little.
Signal Phrases Used for In-Text Citations
About 80% of your essay should be your writing and 20% should be quoted, paraphrased, and summarized material.
We use signal phrases to let reader know we are quoting, paraphrasing, or summarizing.
Here is an exhaustive list of signal phrases.
Adapted from A Writer’s Reference with Writing in the Disciplines 7th ed. by Diana Hacker and Nancy Sommers
How can I use them?
Below are some guidelines and tips for using signal phrases.
-
Signal phrases usually include the author’s name but can also include the author’s job title or background (“reporter for Washington Post,” “researcher,” “senator,” “scholar,” and so on) and/or the title of the source.
-
Signal phrases usually come at the beginning of a sentence before the source material, but they can also occur in the middle of a source or at the end.
-
To avoid monotony and repetition, try to vary both the language and placement of your signal phrases.
According to Maxwell and Hanson,…
As the 2017 IRS report indicates, …
Smith and Johnson state that …
Some scholars have shown…
Legal scholar Terrence Roberts offered a persuasive argument: “….”
-
Choose a verb that is appropriate to the way you are using your source. Below is a list of verbs that can be used in signal phrases:
acknowledges adds admits affirms agrees answers argues asserts claims comments concedes confirms contends counters counterattacks declares defines denies disputes echoes endorses estimates finds grants illustrates implies insists mentions notes observes predicts proposes reasons recognizes recommends refutes rejects reports responds reveals speculates states suggests surmises warns writes
4 Steps of MLA In-Text Citations
You need to do four things when you quote, paraphrase, or summarize from a text.
Step One: The first thing you need to do is introduce the material with a signal phrase.
Make sure to use a variety of signal phrases to introduce quotations and paraphrases.
Step Two: The quote, paraphrase, or summary you use.
Step Three: The parenthetical citation, which comes after the cited material.
Kwon points out that the Fourth Amendment does not give employees any protections from employers’ “unreasonable searches and seizures” (6).
In the cultural website One-Way Street, Richard Prouty observes that Lasdun's "men exist in a fixed point of the universe, but they have no agency" (para. 7).
Step Four: Analyze your cited material. The analysis should be of a greater length than the cited material. Show how the cited material supports your thesis.
Example Set 3 Based on Categories PDF
Signal Phrases Examples
“Scientists Are Totally Rethinking Animal Cognition” by Ross Andersen (The Atlantic)
In the West, consciousness was long thought to be a divine gift bestowed solely on humans. Western philosophers historically conceived of nonhuman animals as unfeeling automatons. Even after Darwin demonstrated our kinship with animals, many scientists believed that the evolution of consciousness was a recent event. They thought the first mind sparked awake sometime after we split from chimps and bonobos. In his 1976 book, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes argued that it was later still. He said the development of language led us, like Virgil, into the deep cognitive states capable of constructing experiential worlds.
“Welfare for Those Unwilling to Work? It’s Not as Crazy as You Think” by Christine Emba (Washington Post)
As journalist Annie Lowrey, whose book “Give People Money” surveyed basic income programs around the world, points out, the United States is distinguished both by its exaltation of self-sufficiency and its unique racial divide. As it turns out, racism makes it hard to improve the safety net: Research shows that whites are less likely to support welfare programs when they’re told that blacks might benefit, even if they themselves are receiving social support. In fact, this was a flaw in the original New Deal: Agricultural and domestic laborers, most of whom were black, were purposefully excluded from many of the New Deal’s most important provisions.
“70,000 Years of Human History in 400 Pages” by Michael Saler (The Nation)
Through the ubiquity of such tools, scholars and laypeople alike are slowly being acclimatized to thinking in the long term, an outlook encouraged by Jo Guldi and David Armitage in The History Manifesto (2014). They argue that an emphasis on what the historian Fernand Braudel called the longue durée back in 1958 is now the approach best suited to a world awash in data of extended times and climes. Critics of The History Manifesto reasonably point out that while Big and Deep may be appealing, even seductive, size matters: Extra-large will not fit all, and specific historical questions will always determine the scope and method of investigation. Yet the existence of the debate itself (quite lively on Twitter, of all places) is testimony to the reincarnation of Braudel’s project.
“Can You Believe YouTube Caused the Rise in Flat-Earthers?” by Madison Malone Kircher
When YouTube said earlier this year that it would “begin reducing recommendations of borderline content and content that could misinform users in harmful ways,” people praised the decision. A certain ex-engineer called it a “historic victory” on Twitter and applauded the company for making such a move, possibly at a great expense to its business model. Which … ha. Among the types of videos YouTube said it would cut back on recommending was flat-Earth content. As in, videos peddling the idea that the Earth is not, as science has repeatedly proven, round. And while I’m all for quashing the spread of truly wrongheaded and potentially dangerous ideas, in the case of flat-Earth indoctrination, the damage has long since been done.
Researchers from Texas Tech University believe they’ve isolated YouTube videos as ground zero for the spread of flat-earth theories, The Guardianreports. Speaking with attendees at the biggest annual gathering of flat-Earthers both in 2017 and 2018, the research team found that people who fell into the world of the flat Earth were often those who were already spending time on YouTube watching other conspiracy videos (about 9/11, for example). This feedback loop — where watching conspiracy videos leads to being shown more conspiracy videos, which in turn motivates creators to make more conspiracy content — was also cited by the above-mentioned ex-YouTube engineer. It’s that circle that has enabled flat-Earth content to thrive. Researchers said one of the most popular videos is a nearly two-hour-long piece that details myriad reasons why, if you’re smart enough to think beyond what has been crammed into your brain by society for your whole life, the Earth is so obviously flat.
Writing Effective Introduction Paragraphs for Your Essays
Weak Introductions to Avoid
One. Don’t use overused quotes and cliches (long list of cliches):
“We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”
“My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”
“To be or not to be, that is the question.”
Two. Don’t use pretentious, grandiose, overwrought, bloated, self-regarding, clichéd, unintentionally funny openings:
Since the Dawn of Man, people have sought love and happiness . . .
In today’s society, we see more and more people cocooning in their homes . . .
Man has always wondered why happiness and contentment are so elusive like trying to grasp a bar of sudsy, wet soap.
We have now arrived at a Societal Epoch where we no longer truly communicate with one another as we have embarked upon the full-time task of self-aggrandizement through the social media of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, et al.
In this modern world we face a new existential crisis with the advent of newfangled technologies rendering us razzle-dazzled with the overwhelming possibilities of digital splendor on one hand and painfully dislocated and lonely with our noses constantly rubbing our digital screens on the other.
Since Adam and Eve traipsed across the luxuriant Garden of Eden searching for the juicy, succulent Adriatic fig only to find it withered under the attack of mites, ants, and fruit flies, mankind has embarked upon the quest for the perfect pesticide.
Three. Never apologize to the reader:
Sorry for these half-baked chicken scratch thoughts. I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night and I didn’t have sufficient time to do the necessary research for the topic you assigned me.
I’m hardly an expert on this subject and I don’t know why anyone would take me seriously, but here it goes.
Forgive me but after over-indulging last night at HomeTown Buffet my brain has been rendered in a mindless fog and the ramblings of this essay prove to be rather incoherent.
Four. Don’t throw a thesis cream pie in your reader’s face.
In this essay I am going to prove to you why Americans will never buy those stupid automatic cars that don’t need a driver. The four supports that will support my thesis are ______________, ______________, _______________, and ________________.
It is my purpose in this essay to show you why I'm correct on the subject of the death penalty. My proofs will be _________, _______, _________, and ___________.
Five. Don’t use a dictionary definition (standard procedure for a sixth grade essay but not college in which you should use more sophisticated methods such as extended definition or expert definitions):
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines metacognition as “awareness or analysis of one’s own learning or thinking process.”
General Principles of an Effective Introduction Paragraph
It piques your readers’ interest (often called a “hook”).
It is compelling.
It is timely.
It is relevant to the human condition and to your topic.
It transitions to your topic and/or thesis.
The Ten Types of Paragraph Introductions
One. Use a blunt statement of fact or insight that captures your readers’ attention:
It's good for us to have our feelings hurt.
You've never really lived until someone has handed you your __________ on a stick.
Men who are jealous are cheaters.
We would assume that jealous men are obsessed with fidelity, but in fact the most salient feature of the jealous man is that he is more often than not cheating on his partner. His jealousy results from projecting his own infidelities on his partner. He says to himself, “I am a cheater and therefore so is she.” We see this sick mentality in the character Dan from Ha Jin’s “The Beauty.” Trapped in his jealousy, Dan embodies the pathological characteristics of learned helplessness evidenced by ___________, _______________, ________________, and _______________.
Rick Wilson, author of "Bob Woodward, Bane of Presidents, Turns His Fire on Cheeto Jesus," opens his essay with cogent language:
Washington, D.C. may soon be littered with the political bodies of people who believed they could spin their way out of the impact of the new Bob Woodward book, Fear. I’ve been to the Washington rodeo enough times to know that Woodward’s methodical, grinding style of investigation doesn’t lend itself to escaping unscathed, especially for bad actors and loose cannons. Hell, as a young Department of Defense aide in 1990, I saw it up close when his book, The Commanders, led to the firing of USAF Chief of Staff Mike Dugan. He had tapes then, as he does now.
This week, it’s Donald Trump’s turn under Woodward’s political electron microscope, and the President’s hissy-fit reaction tells us how close Woodward’s work has struck. Trump knows his White House staff, up to and including his daughter, thinks he’s off the rails, a danger to himself and the country, and unable to execute the duties of a Waffle House manager much less the President of the United States.
John Taylor Gatto opens his essay “Against School: How Public Education Cripples Our Kids, and Why” as thus:
I taught for thirty years in some of the worst schools in Manhattan, and in some of the best, and during that time I became an expert in boredom. Boredom was everywhere in the world, and if you asked the kids, as I often did, why they felt so bored, they always gave the same answers: They said the work was stupid, that it made no sense, that they already knew it. They said they wanted to be doing something real, not just sitting around. They said teachers didn’t seem to know much about their subjects and clearly weren’t interested in learning more. And the kids were right: Their teachers were every bit as bored as they were.
Boredom is the common condition of schoolteachers, and anyone who has spent time in a teacher’s lounge can vouch for the low energy, the whining, the dispirited attitudes, to be found there. When asked why they feel bored, the teachers tend to blame the kids, as you might expect. Who wouldn’t get bored teaching students who are rude and interested only in grades? If even that. Of course, teachers are themselves products of the same twelve-year compulsory school programs that so thoroughly bore their students, and as school personnel they are trapped inside structures even more rigid than those imposed upon the children. Who, then, is to blame?
Gatto goes on to argue in his thesis that school trains children to be servants for mediocre (at best) jobs when school should be teaching innovation, individuality, and leadership roles.
Two. Write a definition based on the principles of extended definition (term, class, distinguishing characteristics) or quote an expert in a field of study:
Metacognition is an essential asset to mature people characterized by their ability to value long-term gratification over short-term gratification, their ability to distance themselves from their passions when they’re in a heated emotional state, their ability to stand back and see the forest instead of the trees, and their ability to continuously make assessments of the effectiveness of their major life choices. In the fiction of John Cheever and James Lasdun, we encounter characters that are woefully lacking in metacognition evidenced by _____________, ______________, _____________, and _______________.
According to Alexander Batthanany, member of the Viktor Frankl Institute, logotherapy, which is the search for meaning, “is identified as the primary motivational force in human beings.” Batthanany further explains that logotherapy is “based on three philosophical and psychological concepts: Freedom of Will, Will to Meaning, and Meaning in Life.” Embracing the concepts of logotherapy is vastly more effective than conventional, Freud-based psychotherapy when we consider ________________, ______________, __________________, and ________________.
Three. Use an insightful quotation that has not, to your knowledge anyway, been overused:
George Bernard Shaw once said, “There are two great tragedies in life. The first is not getting what we want. The second is getting it.” Shaw’s insight speaks to the tantalizing chimera, that elusive quest we take for the Mythic She-Beast who becomes are life-altering obsession. As the characters in John Cheever and James Lasdun’s fiction show, the human relationship with the chimera is source of paradox. On one hand, having a chimera will kill us. On the other, not having a chimera will kill us. Cheever and Lasdun’s characters twist and torment under the paradoxical forces of their chimeras evidenced by _____________, _______________, ______________, and __________________.
Four. Use a startling fact to get your reader’s attention:
There are currently more African-American men in prison than there were slaves at the peak of slavery in the United States. We read this disturbing fact in Michelle Alexander’s magisterial The New Jim Crow, which convincingly argues that America’s prison complex is perpetuating the racism of slavery and Jim Crow in several insidious ways.
We read that in the latest study by the Institute for Higher Education, Leadership & Policy at Cal State Sacramento that only 30% of California community college students are transferring or getting their degrees. We have a real challenge in the community college if 70% are falling by the wayside.
8,000 students walk through El Camino's Humanities Building every week. Only 10% will pass English 1A. Only 3% will pass English 1C.
99% of my students acknowledge that most students at El Camino are seriously compromised by their smartphone addiction to the point that the addiction is making them fail or do non-competitive work in college.
Five. Use an anecdote (personal or otherwise) to get your reader’s attention:
When my daughter was one years old and I was changing her diaper, she without warning jammed her thumb into my eye, forcing my eyeball into my brain and almost killing me. After the assault, I suffered migraine headaches for several months and frequently would have to wash milky pus from the injured eye.
One afternoon I was napping under the covers when Lara walked into the room talking on the phone to her friend, Hannah. She didn’t know I was in the room, confusing the mound on the bed with a clump of pillows and blankets. I heard her whisper to Hannah, “I found another small package from eBay. He’s buying watches and not telling me.”
That’s when I thought about getting a post office box.
This could be the opening introduction for an essay topic about “economic infidelity.”
As we read in Stephen King’s essay “Write or Die”:
“Hardly a week after being sprung from detention hall, I was once more invited to step down to the principal’s office. I went with a sinking heart, wondering what new sh** I’d stepped in.”
Six. Use a piece of vivid description or a vivid illustration to get your reader’s attention:
My gym looks like an enchanting fitness dome, an extravaganza of taut, sweaty bodies adorned in fluorescent spandex tights contorting on space-age cardio machines, oil-slicked skin shrouded in a synthetic fog of dry ice colored by the dizzying splash of lavender disco lights. Tribal drum music plays loudly. Bottled water flows freely, as if from some Elysian spring, over burnished flesh. The communal purgation appeals to me. My fellow cardio junkies and I are so self-abandoned, free, and euphoric, liberated in our gym paradise.
But right next to our workout heaven is a gastronomical inferno, one of those all-you-can-eat buffets, part of a chain, which is, to my lament, sprouting all over Los Angeles. I despise the buffet, a trough for people of less discriminating tastes who saunter in and out of the restaurant at all hours, entering the doors of the eatery without shame and blind to all the gastrointestinal and health-related horrors that await them. Many of the patrons cannot walk out of their cars to the buffet but have to limp or rely on canes, walkers, wheelchairs, and other ambulatory aids, for it seems a high percentage of the customers are afflicted with obesity, diabetes, arthritis, gout, hypothalamic lesions, elephantiasis, varicose veins and fleshy tumors. Struggling and wheezing as they navigate across the vast parking lot that leads to their gluttonous sanctuary, they seem to worship the very source of their disease.
In front of the buffet is a sign of rules and conduct. One of the rules urges people to stand in the buffet line in an orderly fashion and to be patient because there is plenty of food for everyone. Another rule is that children are not to be left unattended and running freely around the buffet area. My favorite rule is that no hands, tongues, or other body parts are allowed to touch the food. Tongs and other utensils are to be used at all times. The rules give you an idea of the kind of people who eat there. These are people I want to avoid.
But as I walk to the gym from my car, which shares a parking lot with the buffet patrons, I cannot avoid the nauseating smell of stale grease oozing from the buffet’s rear dumpster, army green and stained with splotches and a seaweed-like crust of yellow and brown grime.
Often I see cooks and dishwashers, their bodies covered with soot, coming out of the back kitchen door to throw refuse into the dumpster, a smoldering receptacle with hot fumes of bacteria and flies. Hunchbacked and knobby, the poor employees are old, weary men with sallow, rheumy eyes and cuts and bruises all over their bodies. I imagine them being tortured deep within the bowels of the fiery kitchen on some Medieval rack. They emerge into the blinding sunshine like moles, their eyes squinting, with their plastic garbage bags twice the size of their bodies slung over their shoulders, and then I look into their sad eyes—eyes that seem to beg for my help and mercy. And just when I am about to give them words of hope and consolation or urge them to flee for their lives, it seems they disappear back into the restaurant as if beckoned by some invisible tyrant.
The above could transition to the topic of people of a certain weight being required to buy three airline tickets for an entire row of seats.
Seven. Summarize both sides of a debate.
America is torn by the national healthcare debate. One camp says it’s a crime that 25,000 Americans die unnecessarily each year from treatable disease and that modeling a health system from other developed countries is a moral imperative. However, there is another camp that fears that adopting some version of universal healthcare is tantamount to stepping into the direction of socialism.
Eight. State a misperception, fallacy, or error that your essay will refute.
Healthcare
Americans against universal or national healthcare are quick to say that such a system is “socialist,” “communist,” and “un-American,” but a close look at their rhetoric shows that it is high on knee-jerk, mindless paroxysms and short on reality. Contrary to the enemies of national healthcare, providing universal coverage is very American and compatible with the American brand of capitalism.
Civil War in America
In the South, it is still common to hear white people speak of the Civil War by denying its connection to the evils of slavery and treason. Rather, it is commonly spouted by white people in the south that the Civil War was the result of "Northern aggression" and "state rights," but these explanations are odious poppycock and are part of America's shameful history of fake news, which afflicts our country like an ugly, festering cancer sore to this very day.
Nine. Make a general statement about your topic.
From Sherry Turkle’s essay “How Computers Change the Way We Think”:
The tools we use to think change the ways in which we think. The invention of written language brought about a radical shift in how we process, organize, store, and transmit representations of the world. Although writing remains our primary information technology, today when we think about the impact of technology on our habits of mind, we think primarily of the computer.
Ten. Pose a question your essay will try to answer:
Why are diet books more and more popular, yet Americans are getting more and more fat?
Why is psychotherapy becoming more and more popular, yet Americans are getting more and more crazy?
Why are the people of Qatar the richest people in the world, yet score at the bottom of all Happiness Index metrics?
Why are courses in the Humanities more essential to your well-being that you might think?
What is the difference between thinking and critical thinking?'
Option 2:
Read Karl Taro Greenfeld’s “My Daughter’s Homework Is Killing Me” and Andrea Townsend "A Teacher's Defense of Homework" and develop an argumentative essay about giving homework to middle school and high school students.
Suggested Outline
Paragraph 1: For your introduction, summarize Karl Taro's Greenfeld's description of burnout as he and his daughter attempt to do what appears to be an onslaught of homework and the teacher's response when the father presents his complaint.
Paragraph 2: Make a claim that argues for or against the kind of rigorous homework discussed in the two essays above.
Paragraphs 3-6: Develop body paragraphs that support your claim.
Paragraph 7: Write a counterargument and rebuttal.
Paragraph 8: Write a conclusion that restates your thesis with emotional power
Signal Phrases
We use signal phrases to signal to the reader that we are going to cite research material in the form of direct quotes, paraphrase or summary.
We include the author's background information to give author credibility or ethos in our argumentation.
After we cite the information, we present our own analysis to show how this material supports our argument.
Examples of a signal phrases:
We are fools if we think we were put on Planet Earth to be happy. That is the fantasy of a four-year-old child. Ironically, this infantile pursuit of happiness makes us unhappy. In the words of John Mellencamp: “I don’t think we’re put on this earth to live happy lives. I think we’re put here to challenge ourselves physically, emotionally, intellectually.”
The idea of a meritocracy is that a healthy society allows people with merits, regardless of their economic privilege, to rise to the top of the power hierarchy. However, such a meritocracy does not exist as privilege, not merit, is the dominant force of acquiring power. As we read in Yale Law School professor Daniel Markovits' essay "How Life Became an Endless Terrible Competition": "Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale collectively enroll more students from households in the top 1 percent of the income distribution than from households in the bottom 60 percent. Legacy preferences, nepotism, and outright fraud continue to give rich applicants corrupt advantages. But the dominant causes of this skew toward wealth can be traced to meritocracy. On average, children whose parents make more than $200,000 a year score about 250 points higher on the SAT than children whose parents make $40,000 to $60,000. Only about one in 200 children from the poorest third of households achieves SAT scores at Yale’s median. Meanwhile, the top banks and law firms, along with other high-paying employers, recruit almost exclusively from a few elite colleges."
Variation of the above:
The idea of a meritocracy is that a healthy society allows people with merits, regardless of their economic privilege, to rise to the top of the power hierarchy. However, such a meritocracy does not exist as privilege, not merit, is the dominant force of acquiring power. According to Yale Law School professor Daniel Markovits in his essay "How Life Became an Endless Terrible Competition": "Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale collectively enroll more students from households in the top 1 percent of the income distribution than from households in the bottom 60 percent. Legacy preferences, nepotism, and outright fraud continue to give rich applicants corrupt advantages. But the dominant causes of this skew toward wealth can be traced to meritocracy. On average, children whose parents make more than $200,000 a year score about 250 points higher on the SAT than children whose parents make $40,000 to $60,000. Only about one in 200 children from the poorest third of households achieves SAT scores at Yale’s median. Meanwhile, the top banks and law firms, along with other high-paying employers, recruit almost exclusively from a few elite colleges."
Signal Phrases Used for In-Text Citations
About 80% of your essay should be your writing and 20% should be quoted, paraphrased, and summarized material.
We use signal phrases to let reader know we are quoting, paraphrasing, or summarizing.
Here is an exhaustive list of signal phrases.
Adapted from A Writer’s Reference with Writing in the Disciplines 7th ed. by Diana Hacker and Nancy Sommers
How can I use them?
Below are some guidelines and tips for using signal phrases.
-
Signal phrases usually include the author’s name but can also include the author’s job title or background (“reporter for Washington Post,” “researcher,” “senator,” “scholar,” and so on) and/or the title of the source.
-
Signal phrases usually come at the beginning of a sentence before the source material, but they can also occur in the middle of a source or at the end.
-
To avoid monotony and repetition, try to vary both the language and placement of your signal phrases.
According to Maxwell and Hanson,…
As the 2017 IRS report indicates, …
Smith and Johnson state that …
Some scholars have shown…
Legal scholar Terrence Roberts offered a persuasive argument: “….”
-
Choose a verb that is appropriate to the way you are using your source. Below is a list of verbs that can be used in signal phrases:
acknowledges adds admits affirms agrees answers argues asserts claims comments concedes confirms contends counters counterattacks declares defines denies disputes echoes endorses estimates finds grants illustrates implies insists mentions notes observes predicts proposes reasons recognizes recommends refutes rejects reports responds reveals speculates states suggests surmises warns writes
4 Steps of MLA In-Text Citations
You need to do four things when you quote, paraphrase, or summarize from a text.
Step One: The first thing you need to do is introduce the material with a signal phrase.
Make sure to use a variety of signal phrases to introduce quotations and paraphrases.
Step Two: The quote, paraphrase, or summary you use.
Step Three: The parenthetical citation, which comes after the cited material.
Kwon points out that the Fourth Amendment does not give employees any protections from employers’ “unreasonable searches and seizures” (6).
In the cultural website One-Way Street, Richard Prouty observes that Lasdun's "men exist in a fixed point of the universe, but they have no agency" (para. 7).
Step Four: Analyze your cited material. The analysis should be of a greater length than the cited material. Show how the cited material supports your thesis.
Example Set 3 Based on Categories PDF
Signal Phrases Examples
“Scientists Are Totally Rethinking Animal Cognition” by Ross Andersen (The Atlantic)
In the West, consciousness was long thought to be a divine gift bestowed solely on humans. Western philosophers historically conceived of nonhuman animals as unfeeling automatons. Even after Darwin demonstrated our kinship with animals, many scientists believed that the evolution of consciousness was a recent event. They thought the first mind sparked awake sometime after we split from chimps and bonobos. In his 1976 book, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes argued that it was later still. He said the development of language led us, like Virgil, into the deep cognitive states capable of constructing experiential worlds.
“Welfare for Those Unwilling to Work? It’s Not as Crazy as You Think” by Christine Emba (Washington Post)
As journalist Annie Lowrey, whose book “Give People Money” surveyed basic income programs around the world, points out, the United States is distinguished both by its exaltation of self-sufficiency and its unique racial divide. As it turns out, racism makes it hard to improve the safety net: Research shows that whites are less likely to support welfare programs when they’re told that blacks might benefit, even if they themselves are receiving social support. In fact, this was a flaw in the original New Deal: Agricultural and domestic laborers, most of whom were black, were purposefully excluded from many of the New Deal’s most important provisions.
“70,000 Years of Human History in 400 Pages” by Michael Saler (The Nation)
Through the ubiquity of such tools, scholars and laypeople alike are slowly being acclimatized to thinking in the long term, an outlook encouraged by Jo Guldi and David Armitage in The History Manifesto (2014). They argue that an emphasis on what the historian Fernand Braudel called the longue durée back in 1958 is now the approach best suited to a world awash in data of extended times and climes. Critics of The History Manifesto reasonably point out that while Big and Deep may be appealing, even seductive, size matters: Extra-large will not fit all, and specific historical questions will always determine the scope and method of investigation. Yet the existence of the debate itself (quite lively on Twitter, of all places) is testimony to the reincarnation of Braudel’s project.
“Can You Believe YouTube Caused the Rise in Flat-Earthers?” by Madison Malone Kircher
When YouTube said earlier this year that it would “begin reducing recommendations of borderline content and content that could misinform users in harmful ways,” people praised the decision. A certain ex-engineer called it a “historic victory” on Twitter and applauded the company for making such a move, possibly at a great expense to its business model. Which … ha. Among the types of videos YouTube said it would cut back on recommending was flat-Earth content. As in, videos peddling the idea that the Earth is not, as science has repeatedly proven, round. And while I’m all for quashing the spread of truly wrongheaded and potentially dangerous ideas, in the case of flat-Earth indoctrination, the damage has long since been done.
Researchers from Texas Tech University believe they’ve isolated YouTube videos as ground zero for the spread of flat-earth theories, The Guardianreports. Speaking with attendees at the biggest annual gathering of flat-Earthers both in 2017 and 2018, the research team found that people who fell into the world of the flat Earth were often those who were already spending time on YouTube watching other conspiracy videos (about 9/11, for example). This feedback loop — where watching conspiracy videos leads to being shown more conspiracy videos, which in turn motivates creators to make more conspiracy content — was also cited by the above-mentioned ex-YouTube engineer. It’s that circle that has enabled flat-Earth content to thrive. Researchers said one of the most popular videos is a nearly two-hour-long piece that details myriad reasons why, if you’re smart enough to think beyond what has been crammed into your brain by society for your whole life, the Earth is so obviously flat.
Comments