Category: English and Literature

Overview

The purpose of this assignment is to continue your practice with the rhetorical, academic moves you are learning in your textbook, the “They Say, I Say” format, in order to compose a short response to a text. In They Say, I Say, you are learning how to define what others are saying, as well as craft your own response in order to produce academic writing and response. For this essay, you will work on synthesizing your skills in comprehension, analysis, summary/paraphrase/quotation, response, and anticipating objections.

Furthermore, today’s employers place a lot of value on thinking critically, ethical judgment and integrity, intercultural skills, innovation, and a life-long desire to learn. One way to continue to learn outside of school, get exposure to new ideas, and hone your own position is by regularly reading, viewing, and listening to high quality material, as well as discussing it with others. This assignment will allow you to organize your use of the templates in They Say, I Say, as well as show the progress you are making in the acquisition of academic skills and desirable professional qualities.

Academic Values: Critical Thinking, Critical Analysis, Discourse, Claims Based on Evidence, Close Reading, Basic Web Research

Process

For this assignment, you will locate, analyze, and respond to a review or critical viewpoint related to a television show, podcast, movie, album, video game, social media platform, or other cultural product that you enjoy. You should choose an article that reviews or makes a critical argument about the tv show, movie, podcast, album or cultural product. (Here is an example of the type of article you might analyze about Game of Thrones: “Game of Thrones and the Paradox of Female Beauty  (Links to an external site.).) After reading this assignment, you should start looking for an article on the internet that might interest you. Good examples of publications with thoughtful reviews and analysis include The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Atlantic.

In order to respond to the text, you must first read it and comprehend the author(s) viewpoint, position, or argument. The first part of your assignment will therefore be an explanation of the author’s position using summary, paraphrase, and perhaps some quotation. The second part of the assignment will be your response, using the concepts you learned in Chapters 4, 5, and 6 of They Say, I Say. Your essay will start to bring together and synthesize your growing understanding of the templates in They Say, I Say, and the practice with them we have been doing in this course, as well as introduce basic internet research.

Therefore, on this assignment you will be assessed on comprehension, summary, analysis, understanding of the rhetorical situation, and the logic of your own response. You will also begin to use MLA format in order to design your document and cite your source(s) and practice generating an original title for your essay. Remember, you are not expected to know everything there is to know about academic reading, writing, and rhetoric, but to show that you are building the skills necessary for success in academic and professional contexts. The more practice you have, the better you will become!

The download is an example that was given to us.

Here is an example of what was provided:
Example Passage

From “Google, Democracy, and the Truth about Internet Search” by Carole Cadwalladr (Ch. 18):

This is all happening in complete darkness. We have no way of knowing how our personal data is being mined and used to influence us. We don’t realize that the Facebook page we are looking at, the Google page, the ads that we are seeing, the search results we are using, are all being personalized to us. We don’t see it because we have nothing to compare it to. And it is not being monitored or recorded. It is not being regulated. We are inside a machine and we simply have no way of seeing the controls. Most of the time, we don’t even realize that there are controls (491).

Example Response

The dangers of major technological conglomerates like Facebook and Twitter pose to democracy have been debated fiercely since the 2016 elections and Brexit referendum. In her essay, Carole Cadwalladr examines what is happening to our data and how it is being mined to influence us. She claims, “We are inside a machine and we simply have no way of seeing the controls. Most of the time, we don’t even realize that there are controls” (491).

Here are the 3 I need to answer:

1)From “The New Liberal Arts” by Sanford J. Ungar (Ch. 17):

Many states and localities have officials or task forces in charge of “work-force development,” implying that business and industry will communicate their needs and educational institutions will dutifully turn out students who can head straight to the factory floor or office cubicle to fulfill them. But history is filled with examples of failed social experiments that treated people as work units rather than individuals capable of inspiration and ingenuity. It is far wiser for students to prepare for change–and the multiple careers they are likely to have–than to search for a single job track that might one day become a dead end (337).

2)From “Hidden Intellectualism” by Gerald Graff (Ch. 17):

If I am right, then schools and colleges are missing an opportunity when they do not encourage students to take their nonacademic interests as objects of academic study. It is self-defeating to decline to introduce any text or subject that figures to engage students who will otherwise tune out academic work entirely. If a student cannot get interested in Mill’s On Liberty, but will read Sports Illustrated or Vogue or the hip-hop magazine Source with absorption, this is a strong argument for assigning the magazines over the classic (375).

3)From “Smarter Than You Think: How Technology is Changing Our Minds for the Better” (Ch. 18):

Every new tool shapes the way we think, as well as what we think about. The printed word helped make our cognition linear and abstract, along with vastly enlarging our stores of knowledge. Newspapers shrank the world; then the telegraph shrank it even more dramatically. With every innovation, cultural prophets bickered over whether we are facing a technological apocalypse or utopia (449).

his written assignment should be 4 pages-long, 12-pt-font, 1-inch margin all around, double-spaced. You will be graded based on the articulation of your ideas and analysis!

THIS IS ABOUT YOU! I WANT TO HEAR YOUR VOICES! BE HONEST & TRUTHFUL!

This paper should NOT be a summary of your life but a critical explanation/ analysis/ assessment of meaning of your racial/ethnic identity in the context of your presence in the U.S.

This identity paper is about developing an introspective analysis of who you are and how you have become yourself. More precisely, I want you to think critically and reflect on the process by which you have developed your identity. There is NO RIGHT or WRONG! Knowing that race, ethnicity and other identification markers are socially defined, what are the meanings associated with who you are, about what you are trying to achieve and the struggles you face everyday?

You are writing a letter to Nick Carraway, so you probably want to start out with Dear Nick. As you write, think about Nicks personality and interests. You will have to decide how to organize your description. What section of town will you begin with? What part of town will be left to the last? How will you decide to divide up the neighborhoods? By wealth and social class? By ethnicity and language? By some other criteria? Remember to thank Nick for taking an interest in your neighborhood.

Compose your draft. Before you turn it into your teacher, try to share it with a classmate who lives in a different neighborhood to see if it makes sense to an outsider.

THIS IS ABOUT THE GREAT GATSBY, be my perspective for answering the prompt above

You are writing a letter to Nick Carraway, so you probably want to start out with Dear Nick. As you write, think about Nicks personality and interests. You will have to decide how to organize your description. What section of town will you begin with? What part of town will be left to the last? How will you decide to divide up the neighborhoods? By wealth and social class? By ethnicity and language? By some other criteria? Remember to thank Nick for taking an interest in your neighborhood.
Compose your draft. Before you turn it into your teacher, try to share it with a classmate who lives in a different neighborhood to see if it makes sense to an outsider.
THIS IS REFERRING ABOUT THE GREAT GATSBY