Zhou 1
Synthesis Paper
Draft 1
Technology and its impact on our Lives
The 21st century has welcomed a new era of reading where people from all over the world
can access different sources of information from the click of a button, following a link or even
from the comfort of their smartphones due to the worldwide evolution of technology. In the 90s
and 80s, people would get immersed in reading long articles and books strolling through different
stretches of prose without breaking a sweat. Nowadays, that has changed. With the advancing of
technology, people have gained access to the internet via computers and smartphones and the use
of these devices has had some impact on the reading culture of people. Nowadays, people quickly
lose concentration after covering two or three pages, and their minds drift to doing something else
all the same. The act of in-depth reading that used to be a part of people is slowly drifting away as
people start embracing the internet era.
For almost a decade now, most of us spend time surfing the net, and the internet has made
it easier for us to take less time to conduct researches that would have carried more time before to
do in the library can now happen in a few minutes or hours. This advantage comes from the
numerous practices we have all day from our text message chats, sending emails, going through
different social media platforms and the likes. The internet has become the medium through which
pieces of information flows through from the sources to our eyes all the way to our minds. With
the fewer time, people spend on books, the art of reading and writing is slowly diminishing. An
excellent example of this scenario is the existence if limited character space in most of the social
media platforms and the continued use of abbreviations while communicating. However, the use
Zhou 2
of these abbreviations does not mean that the average youth does not have their fair share of
writing. This difference exists because there is a record that this generation writes fairly more than
other age that has been there because of the numerous chats and communication people have
through the internet.
At the beginning of every school year, you will come around pundits fretting about how
kids today cannot write. The reason for this is because social media platforms like Facebook and
Twitter have replaced well-crafted essays, and texting reduces formal language to bleak, sad
shorthand, and many term it as a literacy revolution, saying that technology is not destroying the
human ability to read and write but pushing the strength in other positive directions. Unlike their
predecessors who did most of their writing in the classroom, the majority of literature that
approximately 40% of the population does nowadays happens outside classrooms. This difference
is because in the past people did not write much outside the school unless it was homework or one
had a job requiring them to produce text virtually.
To this point, most of what you have written seems anecdotal.
However, there is still a group of people who feel that technology advancement does affect
the way we write, but affects how we express ourselves to each other on different issues. Form her
study between 2001 and 2006, Andrea Lunsford found out that in the past one could differentiate
between a formal letter sent to a teacher and a simple message sent to a friend. This difference was
visible as one could see the formality used in addressing the main points in the letter to the teacher,
and there was no formal arrangement of main points on the message to a friend since the writers
had their way of putting across the main points without having to follow a given formality
necessarily. Andrea believes that students nowadays do not put the same emphasis in writing
Zhou 3
formal letters as before. However, Andrea believes teachers should be in a position to teach the
students when and where the line between informal and formal writing happens to depend on the
audience. What is the main claim or trend for this?
According to one Nicholas Carr in his article “is Google making us stupid?” he believes
that he does not seem to be thinking in the same way he used to before. As he states in his article,
he used to be a deep reader, and he would spend hours reading long articles and books, and this
would catch up his mind in the narrative and prose helping him understand the turns of the
arguments even better. But ever since the era of Google, he now loses his concentration way easily
after reading about two to three pages. The study also goes on to report that the above individuals
cannot read more than two pages without moving to other sources or sites for more information.
Some are even recorded saving long articles and never referring to them again in the future. A
quote from the report indicates that “It is clear that computer users today are not reading online in
the traditional sense; indeed there are signs that new forms of “reading” are emerging as users
“power browse” horizontally through titles, contents pages, and abstracts going for quick wins. It
almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense”.
The best explanation to why people nowadays had developed the skimming activity when
reading is the fact that people tend to read more today than in the past when the television was the
only entertainment medium of choice. With this new kind of reading, our minds get exposed to a
new way of thinking, and it is because of this that people tend to put efficiency before anything
else. Wolf, a psychologist at Tufts University, believes that reading online makes us merely
decoders of information and our ability to interpret text from some of the mental connections we
make while engaged in in-depth reading will remain disengaged. Wolf explains that for us to
improve on how our minds translate these symbolic characters into a language, we can easily
Zhou 4
understand. In so doing the brain will be able to take control of some cognitive factors including
memory, and the mind’s ability to respond to visual and audio stimuli.
It is accurate technology has its impact on our lives, and the above examples are some of
how advancing technology impacts our reading capabilities differently. There are both positive
and negative effects brought about by the impact of technology advancement with the positive
being the internet being a source of accessing information faster and more efficient than the
traditional library. Also, people should also work hard to make sure that the new reading
techniques do not deprive them of their traditional reading skills which allowed for total
understanding and interpretation of written text.
Much of this paper is based on anecdotes/opinion and not enough on the claims of others.
You have some summaries, but the connection between them is not as clearly marked as need
be. Now you need to break your summaries apart and consider the different claims/central
themes or trends that the authors are discussing. For synthesis, you need to group authors
and their claims around a central idea/theme within technology and clearly show the
connections or relationships between them. You have a start, but there is some work that
needs to be done.
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Draft 2
Technology and its impact on our Lives
(Where is your introduction? This seems like a summary paragraph of Carr.)
The 21st century has welcomed a new era of reading where people from all over the world
can access different sources of information from the click of a button, following a link or even
from the comfort of their smartphones due to the worldwide evolution of technology. In the 90s
and 80s, people would get immersed in reading long articles and books strolling through different
stretches of prose without breaking a sweat. Nicolas Carr clearly laments this disappointing fact.
He alludes the new era of reading and information gathering is ‘changing’ his brain, not necessarily
destroying it. He confesses that he ‘does not think the way he used to’ and this fact is greatly
demonstrated when he reads. He confesses that his concentration drifts after two or three pages of
reading any literary piece of work. He attributes this new-found limitation in concentration to the
ease with which one can gather a colossal amount of information compressed in the form of a few
webpages, landing pages and hyperlinks. For almost a decade now, most of us spend time surfing
the net, and the internet has made it easier for us to take less time to conduct researches that would
have carried more time before to do in the library can now happen in a few minutes or hours.
This advantage creates more time for the numerous practices we have all day from our text
message chats, sending emails, going through different social media platforms and the likes. The
internet has become the medium through which pieces of information flow through from the
sources to our eyes all the way to our minds. With less time, people spend on books, the art of
reading and writing is slowly diminishing. An excellent example of this scenario is the existence
if limited character space in most of the social media platforms and the continued use of
Zhou 6
abbreviations while communicating. However, the use of these abbreviations does not mean that
the average youth does not have their fair share of writing. This difference exists because there is
a record that this generation writes fairly more than other age that has been there because of the
numerous chats and communication people have through the internet.
(How is Thompson connected to Carr?)Clive Thompson(To this point, you have only
discussed Carr without integrating any other sources.) states at the beginning of every school year,
you will come around pundits fretting about how kids today cannot write. He writes the reason for
this is, social media platforms like Facebook, power point presentations and Twitter have replaced
well-crafted essays, and texting reduces formal language to what professor John Sutherland
describes as bleak, sad shorthand. However, some people, like Andrea Lunsford, are of the opinion
that the internet is a literacy revolution, saying that technology is not destroying the human ability
to read and write but pushing the strength in other positive directions. According to Andrea
Lunsford, a writing and rhetoric professor at the Stanford University, she believes that the
advancement of technology is pushing the human ability to read and write in more positive
directions. As per the results of a study she conducted from 2001 to 2006, most of the writing
sample she collected from her students shows that the youth of today write more than the people
who are from the previous generation. Unlike their predecessors who did most of their writing in
the classroom, the majority of literature that approximately 40% of the population does nowadays
happens outside classrooms. This difference is because in the past people did not write much
outside the school unless it was homework or one had a job requiring them to produce text
virtually.
However, there is still a group of people who feel that technology advancement does affect
the way we write, but affects how we express ourselves to each other on different issues. Form her
Zhou 7
study between 2001 and 2006, Andrea Lunsford found out that in the past one could differentiate
between a formal letter sent to a teacher and a simple message sent to a friend. This difference was
visible as one could see the formality used in addressing the main points in the letter to the teacher,
and there was no formal arrangement of main points on the message to a friend since the writers
had their way of putting across the main points without having to follow a given formality
necessarily. Andrea believes that students nowadays do not put the same emphasis in writing
formal letters as before. As much as the idea is not as bad as it looks, the students nowadays have
managed to acquire a way of adding the man points to the narrative and keeping the essays as
impressive as they can. However, Andrea believes teachers should be in a position to teach the
students when and where the line between informal and formal writing happens to depend on the
audience. Andrea describes the nature of the audience, which has the ability to scrutinize and
assess information in real time, about real life issues as the major cause of the diminishing ‘efforts
students put in writing formal letters. Which, according to her, is a revolution of writing and
reading, as opposed to destruction of the same, as the people who disagree with her tend to think.
According to one Nicholas Carr in his article “is Google making us stupid?” he believes
that he does not seem to be thinking in the same way he used to before. As he states in his article,
he used to be a deep reader, and he would spend hours reading long articles and books, and this
would catch up his mind in the narrative and prose helping him understand the turns of the
arguments even better. But ever since the era of Google, he now lost his concentration way easily
after reading about two to three pages. Nicolas believes that the use of the internet has affected his
mental habits since he is no longer able to read and absorb long articles either in print form or
online. Bruce Friedman, a local medicine blogger, explained Nicolas’s situation as his brain
resulting to scanning only short text passages from numerous sources. Results from a recent study
Zhou 8
by scholars from the University College London shows that most people who source their reading
material online tend to have more of a skimming technique while reading. The study also goes on
to report that the above individuals cannot read more than two pages without moving to other
sources or sites for more information. Some are even recorded saving long articles and never
referring to them again in the future. A quote from the report indicates that “It is clear that computer
users today are not reading online in the traditional sense; indeed there are signs that new forms of
“reading” are emerging as users “power browse” horizontally through titles, contents pages, and
abstracts going for quick wins. It almost seems that they go online to avoid reading in the
traditional sense”. (Again, you are summarizing Carr without a connection to any other
author/claim.)
According to Ally Julseth, the best explanation to why people nowadays had developed the
skimming activity when reading is the fact that people tend to read more today than in the past
when the television was the only entertainment medium of choice. With this new kind of reading,
Ally asserts that our minds get exposed to a new way of thinking, and it is because of this that
people tend to put efficiency before anything else. Wolf, a psychologist at Tufts University,
believes that reading online makes us merely decoders of information and our ability to interpret
text from some of the mental connections we make while engaged in in-depth reading will remain
disengaged. Wolf explains that for us to improve on how our minds translate these symbolic
characters into a language, we can easily understand. In so doing the brain will be able to take
control of some cognitive factors including memory, and the mind’s ability to respond to visual
and audio stimuli.
(This paragraph is your first attempt at synthesis. The majority of your paper should be
done in a similar way.)It is accurate technology has its impact on our lives, and the above examples
Zhou 9
are some of how advancing technology impacts our reading capabilities differently. There are both
positive and negative effects brought about by the impact of technology advancement with the
positive being the internet being a source of accessing information faster and more efficient than
the traditional library. And, as Ally Julseth suggests, the internet has made it possible for people
to read and write more than people did earlier on. Some of the negative impacts of the internet,
according to Nicolas Carr involve the detachment of people from in-depth reading and resulting
to skimming through which reduces the memory capacity of people. Because of this, there is a
need for the relevant bodies to work on setting up rules on gearing the advancement of technology
in improving the reading and writing culture. Also, people should also work hard to make sure that
the new reading techniques do not deprive them of their traditional reading skills which allowed
for total understanding and interpretation of written text.
Work Cited
Carr, Nicholas. Is Google making us stupid? What the Internet is doing to our brains. Vol. 1.
July, 2008.
Thompson, Clive. "Clive Thompson on the new literacy." Wired magazine 17.9 (2009): 17-09.
Zhou 10
Technology and its Impact on our Lives
Our planet has been changing in many ways over the years. These changes have most
definitely had a great impact on our lives in close to every aspect. In the past two decades, the
changes that have shaped the world have mainly been based on information technology and the
advent of the internet in the 21st century. These changes have made it easy for people to access
information unlike in the past where information was scarce and not easy accessible as it is
today. The manner in which people communicate has also changed significantly with more
emphasis being paid to virtual forms of communication instead of the traditional face-to-face
communication that our forefathers were accustomed to in the past.
The aim of this essay is to delve into one of these changes that has been brought by the
advent of internet and how it has made information to be easily accessible than it was in the past.
To do this, I will consult one primary source by Nicholas Carr known as Is Google Making u
Stupid? I will also use a variety of scholarly sources from other authors to further deepen and
increase my knowledge base on the effects that such technology is having to the modern society.
Another author and journalist who I will incorporate in the argument is Clive Thompson through
sharing the ideas he has over the effect that technology is having on our lives. I will also consult
information from Professor Andrea Lunsford to create an argumentative basis between the three
individuals as to the effects of technology on our lives. Other authors whose thoughts will be
examined include Ally Julseth and Bruce Friedman.
The 21st century has welcomed a new era of reading where people from all over the
world can access different sources of information from the click of a button, following a link or
even from the comfort of their smartphones due to the worldwide evolution of technology. In the
Zhou 11
90s and 80s, people would get immersed in reading long articles and books strolling through
different stretches of prose without breaking a sweat. Nicolas Carr clearly laments this
disappointing fact. He alludes the new era of reading and information gathering is ‘changing’ his
brain, not necessarily destroying it. He confesses that he ‘does not think the way he used to’ and
this fact is greatly demonstrated when he reads. He confesses that his concentration drifts after
two or three pages of reading any literary piece of work. He attributes this new-found limitation
in concentration to the ease with which one can gather a colossal amount of information
compressed in the form of a few webpages, landing pages and hyperlinks.
For almost a decade now, most of us spend time surfing the net, and the internet has
made it easier for us to take less time to conduct researches that would have carried more time
before to do in the library can now happen in a few minutes or hours. This advantage creates
more time for the numerous practices we have all day from our text message chats, sending
emails, going through different social media platforms and the likes. The internet has become the
medium through which pieces of information flow through from the sources to our eyes all the
way to our minds. With less time, people spend on books, the art of reading and writing is slowly
diminishing.
An excellent example of this scenario is the existence if limited character space in most
of the social media platforms and the continued use of abbreviations while communicating. On
Twitter, there is a maximum number of characters that one can use when they are making a post.
The use of emoji in our different forms of communication also means that we are increasingly
becoming less willing to write but instead prefer to use symbols to relay our messages to the
various people we get into contact with. However, the use of these abbreviations does not mean
that the average youth does not have their fair share of writing. This difference exists because
Zhou 12
there is a record that this generation writes fairly more than other age that has been there because
of the numerous chats and communication people have through the internet.
In lieu of the thoughts Carr has towards the impact that technology has on how we
communicate and access information, Clive Thompson shares his ideas and there is a striking
similarity between the perceptions and notions that they have developed over the impact of
technology on our lives. However, it is imperative to notice that Thompson looks at how
technology is changing our minds for the better. Clive is a renowned author and journalist who
has spent decades in the industry thereby offering an indication of his extensive knowledge on
various aspects in regards to the effect of technology on our lives. Thompson states at the
beginning of every school year, you will come around pundits fretting about how kids today
cannot write. He writes the reason for this is, social media platforms like Facebook, power point
presentations and Twitter have replaced well-crafted essays, and texting reduces formal language
to what Professor John Sutherland describes as bleak, sad shorthand.
However, there are other individuals who are of a contrary opinion. One individual that
Thompson mentions is Professor Andrea Lunsford who is an educator at Stanford University.
According to her, the internet is a literacy revolution. It means that technology is not destroying
the human ability to read and write but pushing the strength in other positive directions. This can
be viewed as a change that is meant for the good and not a just that is causing damage to the
society. Her assertion suggests that the internet and the increased access to knowledge and
information is a new form of literacy that we should all embrace instead of being held back to
traditional and archaic modes of communication and studying that do not employ the various
products that are offered by the internet.
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According to Andrea Lunsford, a writing and rhetoric, she believes that the advancement
of technology is pushing the human ability to read and write in more positive directions. As per
the results of a study she conducted from 2001 to 2006, most of the writing sample she collected
from her students shows that the youth of today write more than the people who are from the
previous generation. Unlike their predecessors who did most of their writing in the classroom,
the majority of literature that approximately 40% of the population does nowadays happens
outside classrooms. This difference is because in the past people did not write much outside the
school unless it was homework or one had a job requiring them to produce text virtually.
However, there is still a group of people who feel that technology advancement does
affect the way we write, but affects how we express ourselves to each other on different issues.
Form her study between 2001 and 2006, Andrea Lunsford found out that in the past one could
differentiate between a formal letter sent to a teacher and a simple message sent to a friend. This
difference was visible as one could see the formality used in addressing the main points in the
letter to the teacher, and there was no formal arrangement of main points on the message to a
friend since the writers had their way of putting across the main points without having to follow
a given formality necessarily. Andrea believes that students nowadays do not put the same
emphasis in writing formal letters as before.
As much as the idea is not as bad as it looks, the students nowadays have managed to
acquire a way of adding the main points to the narrative and keeping the essays as impressive as
they can. However, Andrea believes teachers should be in a position to teach the students when
and where the line between informal and formal writing happens depending on the audience.
Andrea describes the nature of the audience, which has the ability to scrutinize and assess
information in real time, about real life issues as the major cause of the diminishing ‘efforts
Zhou 14
students put in writing formal letters. Which, according to her, is a revolution of writing and
reading, as opposed to destruction of the same, as the people who disagree with her tend to think.
According to one Nicholas Carr in his article “is Google making us stupid?” he believes
that he does not seem to be thinking in the same way he used to before. As he states in his article,
he used to be a deep reader, and he would spend hours reading long articles and books, and this
would catch up his mind in the narrative and prose helping him understand the turns of the
arguments even better. But ever since the era of Google, he now lost his concentration way easily
after reading about two to three pages. Nicholas believes that the use of the internet has affected
his mental habits since he is no longer able to read and absorb long articles either in print form or
online.
The situation of Nicholas has tried to be explained by Bruce Friedman, a local medicine
blogger. In his statement, he explained that Nicholas’s situation is as a result of his brain being
used to scanning only short text passages from numerous sources. The same can also be seen
among many social media users. Many people today suffer from reduced attention span with
many lacking the ability to concentrate for an elongated time than was the case in the past.
Results from a recent study by scholars from the University College London shows that most
people who source their reading material online tend to have more of a skimming technique
while reading. Most online users have become accustomed to using this technique due to the
manner in which they
The study also goes on to report that the above individuals cannot read more than two
pages without moving to other sources or sites for more information. Some are even recorded
saving long articles and never referring to them again in the future. A quote from the report
indicates that “It is clear that computer users today are not reading online in the traditional sense;
Zhou 15
indeed there are signs that new forms of “reading” are emerging as users “power browse”
horizontally through titles, contents pages, and abstracts going for quick wins. It almost seems
that they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense”. Looking at these ideas as presented
by Carr, one starts to question what a different author such as Professor Andrea Lunsford would
have to say about the behavior.
The modern students and their skimming techniques can be described to have better
reading skills compared to people from the past. As Professor Andrea Lunsford states,
technology has developed a new form of literacy that need to be embraced. This is mainly
because modern students can go through a great range of data and information when they are
conducting research. In the past, students would take longer time to perform a given study than
modern students. This is because they are often bombarded with a lot of information and this has
over time enabled them to pick out the information that they require for the research. Through
saving more time, it can be said that the students have become sharper and better than in the past
thanks to these new technologies.
According to Ally Julseth, the best explanation to why people nowadays had developed
the skimming activity when reading is the fact that people tend to read more today than in the
past when the television was the only entertainment medium of choice. With this new kind of
reading, Ally asserts that our minds get exposed to a new way of thinking, and it is because of
this that people tend to put efficiency before anything else. Wolf, a psychologist at Tufts
University, believes that reading online makes us merely decoders of information and our ability
to interpret text from some of the mental connections we make while engaged in in-depth
reading will remain disengaged. Wolf explains that for us to improve on how our minds translate
these symbolic characters into a language, we can easily understand. In so doing the brain will be
Zhou 16
able to take control of some cognitive factors including memory, and the mind’s ability to
respond to visual and audio stimuli.
It is accurate technology has its impact on our lives, and the above examples are some of
how advancing technology impacts our reading capabilities differently. There are both positive
and negative effects brought about by the impact of technology advancement with the positive
being the internet being a source of accessing information faster and more efficient than the
traditional library. And, as Ally Julseth suggests, the internet has made it possible for people to
read and write more than people did earlier on. Some of the negative impacts of the internet,
according to Nicolas Carr involve the detachment of people from in-depth reading and resulting
to skimming through which reduces the memory capacity of people.
In conclusion, there is a need for the relevant bodies to work on setting up rules on
gearing the advancement of technology in improving the reading and writing culture. Also,
people should also work hard to make sure that the new reading techniques do not deprive them
of their traditional reading skills which allowed for total understanding and interpretation of
written text. Students should also improve their skills are reading and writing by ensuring that
they avoid using language that may not be easily understandable to others.
Zhou 17
Works Cited
Carr, Nicholas. Is Google making us stupid? What the Internet is doing to our brains. Vol. 1.
July, 2008.
Thompson, Clive. "Clive Thompson on the new literacy." Wired magazine 17.9 (2009): 17-09.
Zhou 18
Argument paper
Draft 1
Gender Equality in the United States
Gender inequality is perhaps one of the oldest topics in the history of humans and the oldest type
of inequality other than the inequality between the mortal and immortal beings in religion.
Despite being around for centuries, even millennia, gender inequality has evolved in the society
and changed the way people live. Traditionally, the male gender has been portrayed as the
superior one with females being relegated to a secondary role. However, since the American
society has made significant steps towards equality and justice, it is considered one of the
countries with the highest degree of gender equality. One would then wonder whether gender
equality has been achieved in the United States. The society in the United States made significant
steps towards gender equality but still falls short of perfect gender equality in different aspects of
the society.
Equality has been achieved in many sectors and one of the most notable areas is the equality of
gender in the pay and wages systems in the society. Several critics and feminists argue that men
earn more than women in the society but a closer look reveals that the figures are exaggerated
and the difference cannot be said to be intentionally created to segregate against women.
According to Arends (2016), women in the same position as men get the same amount of wages
but differences in job choices and other factors such as height account for the overall difference.
This argument makes a lot of sense mainly because it is impossible for a man in the U.S to be
paid more than a woman in the same position, in the same organization. This has been made
possible by gender equality legislation in the country. Furthermore, it is a known fact that most
Zhou 19
women may prefer jobs that allow them to attend to their families and these jobs are generally
lower-paying than others which include a load of work and traveling as Arends claims.
Secondly, gender-neutrality in language and facilities has been largely achieved in the society.
Primarily, the binary identities of gender have been pushed away in the modern society to
introduce a more neutral approach. For instance, the use of the word they as a singular to denote
the non-binary identity of a person already known to the speaker is a way of showing how the
society of people who are concerned with language and linguistics is making significant steps
towards appreciating gender parity (The American Dialect Society, 2016). This view of the
language, which is sensitive to gender differences is a show that the society as a whole
appreciates the equal roles of both male and female genders in it. For instance, many writers
have been using the phrase ‘he or she’ when referring to an unknown being and has moved
further from using the word he alone in such cases. This gender parity is crucial in bringing out
equality in the society.
Moreover, the establishment of gender-neutral facilities in different institutions is a significant
feature of breaking the binary identity of gender. With gender and sexuality comes the issue of
LGBTQ identities in the society. According to Davis (2016), gender-neutral bathrooms is a way
of allowing people who do not belong to the genders of their sexual identities to feel included in
the society. This idea and many others regarding inclusive policies which do not discriminate
people by their gender have been adopted and are increasingly important in the American
society. They point to the very idea that the nation has reached a level of social awakening that
allows it to move away from the traditional gender stereotypes and into a more inclusive and
equal society.
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On the other hand, it is evident that not enough efforts have been applied to the issue of gender
equality and the society still lacks fundamental implements that will lead to a more gender-equal
America. The first issue that is most notable is the gender roles in the family unit. When
discussing the issue of equality of pay, it was said that the difference in gender when it comes to
paying comes from the choices of jobs. One has to wonder why, if true, women choose averagely
lower-paying jobs than men. The most simplistic answer to this question is that women are
responsible for taking care of the family. Brady (1972) presents a thorough explanation of why
people want wives and it all revolves around satisfying the needs of men in their lives as well as
caring for the children and the house chores. Although some American families may have moved
on from these traditional roles, the workplace is still highly viewed through this scope. Men are
seen taking jobs that involve high risk and long hours of working and also traveling while
women remain conservative of their choices (Arends, 2016). This notion in the society has
perpetrated inequality in the jobs that the majority of men and women hold mainly because the
female figure is still viewed as responsible for the children and household.
Moreover, equality in pay may have been achieved but the equality in employment has not been
fully realized in the nation where dreams come true. First and foremost, Cauterucci (2016)
presents the fact that women have not been allowed to be drafted into the military. The draft
allows only men aged 18-25 to register for the Selective Service. This is an outright display of
inequality in the employment terms and agreements in the government. The country has made
significant steps towards equal employment through such legislation as Equal Employment and
Opportunity Commission Act. However, if women are included in combat and military services
but excluded from Selective Service drafting, equality has not been realized yet.
Zhou 21
Elsewhere, the portrayal of women in popular media has continued to widen the gender gap by
sexualizing the appearances of women while men are not subjects of the same. It is notable that
even superhero women who are supposed to portray the power of women in the society are
presented using over-sexualized images such as unattainably curvy bodies and the exposure of
their skin as a sign of beauty (May, 2015). This presentation can be seen in films such as Wonder
Woman (2017) where the heroine’s armor exposes a lot of ‘flesh’ and exaggerates her curves.
Moreover, this presentation of the ideal woman as physically beautiful compels women to feel
that they ought to look like these idols. It further demeans the esteem of many women in the
society by setting the bar too high and basing it entirely on their physical appearance. This is
inequality at its worst. This idea can strongly be linked to the issue of mansplaining, which
McClintock (2016) identifies as a diminutive approach by most men who explain issues to
women in a condescending and patronizing manner. The idea that a man may be more
knowledgeable than a woman in a particular topic simply because he is a man is a show of
gender discrimination.
While the society has made giant steps towards gender equality, some aspects of the society still
demean women and portray men as the superior gender, and, therefore, the American society
falls short of a perfectly fair presentation of the male and female genders. The society today
recognizes women and gender equality more than it did a few decades ago. Using such issues as
gender equality in pay and wages, gender-neutral facilities, and gender-neutral roles and words,
it is evident that Americans have come a long way into accepting and integrating gender
equality. However, women are still portrayed as sexual beings whose beauty is required for their
identity to be noticed. Furthermore, gender roles are still diminutive thus restraining women to
Zhou 22
stick to lower-paying jobs. This shows that although the country has come a long way, it still has
a long way to go regarding gender equality.
Zhou 23
References
Arends, B. (2016, Apr. 14). The idea of the ‘gender pay gap’ is mostly bogus. Market Watch.
Retrieved from https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-idea-of-the-gender-pay-gap-ismostly-bogus-2016-04-14
Brady, J. (1971). I want a wife.
Cauterucci, C. (2016, Feb. 3). Should women be required to register for the draft? Slate.com.
retrieved from
http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2016/02/should_women_be_required_to
_register_for_the_draft.html
Davis, K. (2016, Apr. 11). Gender-neutral bathrooms: Why they matter. The Red & Black.
Retrieved from https://www.redandblack.com/opinion/gender-neutral-bathrooms-whythey-matter/article_49dd586c-0013-11e6-9bc8-ef911a037fa5.html
May, C. (2015, Jun. 13). The Problem with Female Superheroes. Scientific American. Retrieved
from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-problem-with-female-superheroes/
McClintock, E. (2016, Mar. 31). The psychology of mansplaining. Psychology Today. Retrieved
from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/it-s-man-s-and-woman-sworld/201603/the-psychology-mansplaining
The American Dialect Society. (2016, Jan. 8). The word of the year is singular they. American
Dialect Society. Retrieved from https://www.americandialect.org/2015-word-of-the-yearis-singular-they
Zhou 24
Draft 2
Gender Equality in the United States
Gender inequality is perhaps one of the oldest topics in the history of humans and the oldest type
of inequality other than the inequality between the mortal and immortal beings in religion.
Despite being around for centuries, even millennia, gender inequality has evolved in the society
and changed the way people live. Traditionally, the male gender has been portrayed as the
superior one with females being relegated to a secondary role. However, since the American
society has made significant steps towards equality and justice, it is considered one of the
countries with the highest degree of gender equality. One would then wonder whether gender
equality has been achieved in the United States. The society in the United States made significant
steps towards gender equality but still falls short of perfect gender equality in different aspects of
the society.
Equality has been achieved in many sectors and one of the most notable areas is the equality of
gender in the pay and wages systems in the society. Several critics and feminists argue that men
earn more than women in the society but a closer look reveals that the figures are exaggerated
and the difference cannot be said to be intentionally created to segregate against women.
According to Arends, women in the same position as man get the same amount of wages but
differences in job choices and other factors such as height account for the overall difference. I
used evidence that is citing Arends to advance my argument that gender equality has been achieved to some
extend. This
argument makes a lot of sense mainly because it is impossible for a man in the U.S to
be paid more than a woman in the same position, in the same organization. This has been made
possible by gender equality legislation in the country. Furthermore, it is a known fact that most
Zhou 25
women may prefer jobs that allow them to attend to their families and these jobs are generally
lower-paying than others which include a load of work and traveling as Arends claims.
Secondly, gender-neutrality in language and facilities has been largely achieved in the
society. The use of bias creation is seen here where I presented a point which refutes that gender bias is present
in the society.
Primarily, the binary identities of gender have been pushed away in the modern society to
introduce a more neutral approach. For instance, the use of the word they as a singular to denote
the non-binary identity of a person already known to the speaker is a way of showing how the
society of people who are concerned with language and linguistics is making significant steps
towards appreciating gender parity (The American Dialect Society, 2016). This view of the
language, which is sensitive to gender differences is a show that the society as a whole
appreciates the equal roles of both male and female genders in it. For instance, many writers
have been using the phrase ‘he or she’ when referring to an unknown being and has moved
further from using the word he alone in such cases. This gender parity is crucial in bringing out
equality in the society.
Moreover, the establishment of gender-neutral facilities in different institutions is a significant
feature of breaking the binary identity of gender. With gender and sexuality comes the issue of
LGBTQ identities in the society. According to Davis (2016), gender-neutral bathrooms are a way
of allowing people who do not belong to the genders of their sexual identities to feel included in
the society. The use of evidence to convince the audience and back my argument. This idea and many
others regarding inclusive policies which do not discriminate people by their gender have been
adopted and are increasingly important in the American society. They point to the very idea that
the nation has reached a level of social awakening that allows it to move away from the
traditional gender stereotypes and into a more inclusive and equal society.
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On the other hand, it is evident that not enough efforts have been applied to the issue of
gender equality and the society still lacks fundamental implements that will lead to a more
gender-equal America. Contrasting viewpoints. Because I have already presented the positive argument, here I
present the common refutation for the argument to ensure that one can understand the difference.
The first issue that is most notable is the gender roles in the family unit. When discussing the
issue of equality of pay, it was said that the difference in gender when it comes to paying comes
from the choices of jobs. One has to wonder why, if true, women choose averagely lower-paying
jobs than men. The most simplistic answer to this question is that women are responsible for
taking care of the family. Brady (1972) presents a thorough explanation of why people want
wives and it all revolves around satisfying the needs of men in their lives as well as caring for the
children and the house chores. Although some American families may have moved on from
these traditional roles, the workplace is still highly viewed through this scope. Men are seen
taking jobs that involve high risk and long hours of working and also traveling while women
remain conservative of their choices (Arends, 2016). This notion in the society has perpetrated
inequality in the jobs that the majority of men and women hold mainly because the female figure
is still viewed as responsible for the children and household.
Moreover, equality in pay may have been achieved but the equality in employment has not been
fully realized in the nation where dreams come true. First and foremost, Cauterucci (2016)
presents the fact that women have not been allowed to be drafted into the military. The draft
allows only men aged 18-25 to register for the Selective Service. This is an outright display of
inequality in the employment terms and agreements in the government. The country has made
significant steps towards equal employment through such legislation as Equal Employment and
Zhou 27
Opportunity Commission Act. However, if women are included in combat and military services
but excluded from Selective Service drafting, equality has not been realized yet.
Elsewhere, the portrayal of women in popular media has continued to widen the gender gap by
sexualizing the appearances of women while men are not subjects of the same. It is notable that
even superhero women who are supposed to portray the power of women in the society are
presented using over-sexualized images such as unattainably curvy bodies and the exposure of
their skin as a sign of beauty (May, 2015). This presentation can be seen in films such as Wonder
Woman (2017) where the heroine’s armor exposes a lot of ‘flesh’ and exaggerates her curves.
Moreover, this presentation of the ideal woman as physically beautiful compels women to feel
that they ought to look like these idols. It further demeans the esteem of many women in the
society by setting the bar too high and basing it entirely on their physical appearance. This is
inequality at its worst. This idea can strongly be linked to the issue of mansplaining, which
McClintock (2016) identifies as a diminutive approach by most men who explain issues to
women in a condescending and patronizing manner. The idea that a man may be more
knowledgeable than a woman in a particular topic simply because he is a man is a show of
gender discrimination.
A summary of the gender equality levels in the United States presents two different opinions.
First, an analysis of gender equality in the country shows that there is considered a high level of
gender equality in the country. Several issues have shown this level of equality. First,
employment equality in the country makes women and men equal in the workplace and also their
opportunities for employment. This equality shows that gender equality in the country has highly
raised leading to a high level which acknowledges the rights of minorities and mostly women.
For instance, Arends (2016) claims that despite the cry from women regarding gender inequality
Zhou 28
in the workplace, the disparity that may exist has been handled by legislation and the job
descriptions may also encourage the same. Therefore, largely, it is evident that any type of work
gender inequality is mostly unintentional and channels for dealing with it exist in the federal and
state laws.
Furthermore, more women are getting in places of power than before. It was earlier portrayed
that job choices lead to differences in earnings. However, unlike earlier, it is evident that more
women are getting in places of power due to the equal employment policies in the country. The
effect of the same is adverse on men. Despite men striving to create equality in the workplace,
Arends (2016) argues that women in positions where they supervise or command men are highly
likely to be harsh and abusive to them. The main question then lingers as to why some people
might expect equal treatment but when given the opportunity; they misuse it and enhance
inequality. While this statement cannot be generalized to all women in supervisory roles, it
presents an attitude which increases inequality but then directed towards men who then become
the victims.
Elsewhere, it is arguable that women still face many problems regarding equality in the country.
For instance, the task and role definitions in the American culture still demean women and
relegate them to a second-class role in the society. As discussed that many women are charged
with the role of taking care of the family, it is the same case whereby many men are portrayed as
the providers while the traditional roles of women remaining at home persist. Americans have
stuck to their traditions and are persistent in that they do not want to abandon them and attain the
modern perspectives fully. While many Americans advance for gender equality, it is not
uncommon to see a few disapproving women’s abilities. This example can be portrayed by a
campaign which was done a few years ago where people were told to throw a ball like a girl. The
Zhou 29
results were laughable because they showed that a vast majority of Americans view girls as weak
and nonathletic. These portrayals are the opposite of women empowerment and equality.
The definition of a wife also highly portrays gender inequality in the country, but mostly, this
inequality is seen in the attitudes rather than practices of many. For instance, in the text “I want a
wife,” Brady (1971) presents a wife as a machine that takes care of everything required in a
household. This wife, therefore, is a utility of men. This text shows that although the society may
be moving towards equality as seen in legislative policies, diminutive attitudes towards the roles
of women in the community and more so in the family unit still exist and have not been done
away with.
Through the texts reviewed, creating effective arguments has been portrayed as taking strategic
initiatives in writing to ensure that the arguments advanced are clear and effective in persuading
the audience to whom they are directed. The gender equality texts reviewed earlier combine
these strategies which are also evident in the argument paper draft. Some of the strategies used in
persuading the audience include advancing contrasting viewpoints and comparing them, creating
bias in writing, and using evidence extensively to credit or discredit arguments. A combination
of these three strategies creates logical reasoning which allows one’s argument to be floated well
and thus make more sense to the audience.
The creation of bias in writing is evident as a strategy of presenting a one-sided argument which,
sometimes, may not be questioned. For instance, Arends starts his article by saying “Can
everyone please stop talking complete nonsense about the ‘gender pay gap?” (2016). This
outright attack on the argument for gender pay gap is a pure creation of bias in his argument.
This creation of bias is an approach that allows the arguer to advance their points without
Zhou 30
necessarily presenting a justification for their argument. The creation of bias is a way of openly
giving more weight to one side of an argument while demeaning the opposing viewpoints in the
argument as a way of making one side of the argument seem more reasonable and essential than
the other.
Secondly, an effective means of arguing is creating a contrasting situation whereby the
comparison and contrast allow the person the writer to present a convincing argument why their
point of view may be the correct one. This approach is seen with Cindi May (2015) who argues
against the use of female superhero to lift the status of women in the society. In this argument,
she presents the benefits of portraying women as superheroes in that it may inspire the female
power in the community. However, she also presents the downside of the same through the
perfect presentation of female superheroes and sexualization of the same. This approach presents
a logical argument which looks at both sides of the argument. The same approach is seen with
Kattie Davis (2016) who presents the argument for gender-neutral bathrooms as opposing the
argument that economic policies should matter more. By analyzing both sides of the argument,
the author allows the audience to compare the two arguments and understand why one is stronger
than the other. This approach to writing is a more neutral and logical approach compared to
creating a bias.
Finally, producing evidence for an argument is a crucial step used in validating the argument that
a speaker presents. Evidence may, mostly, come from research efforts and support a particular
argument. For instance, the different authors present research results to validate their arguments.
An example is Cauterucci (2016) who presents research results that in the 70s and 80s, polls
indicated that more than 70 percent of the country supported the Equal Rights Amendment. The
evidence here presents the issue of the draft and how it was supported in the past. The effect of
Zhou 31
using this piece of evidence is that it adds weight to the argument that women should be drafted.
By showing that people support the idea, it is possible to discuss and advance the thesis
statement of the writer.
The effectiveness of an argument can only be guaranteed by the use of specific strategies that
aim to convince the audience. The preview of the three strategies used by authors in the provided
texts presents the way that authors use rhetorical strategies. These strategies can be directed at
the audience for them to adopt a particular argument and they can also be used to refute others.
Using the argument models allow authors to write compelling articles that can convince the
targeted audience to adopt a particular viewpoint.
Since an overview of the convincing techniques that the authors use in discussing the issue of
gender equality has been provided, it is necessary to see whether they manage to effectively
advance their ideas and convince the reader about their views. It is crucial to realize that while
writers may seem to present an unbiased analysis of facts as they appear, they are also largely
involved in hidden convincing messages which are brought out by different methods to appeal to
the readers. Therefore, despite the arguments and claims of different authors, it is imperative to
identify their hidden messages and appeals that they use. Primarily, this analysis asks whether
gender equality has been achieved in the United States or not. An analysis of the texts presents
mixed opinions but the authors effectively convince their readers to adopt their points of view.
While the society has made giant steps towards gender equality, some aspects of the society still
demean women and portray men as the superior gender, and, therefore, the American society
falls short of a perfectly fair presentation of the male and female genders. As a way of conclusion,
I state both sides of the argument and compare them to make my point clear. This is a show of
Zhou 32
impartiality in my analysis.
The society today recognizes women and gender equality more than
it did a few decades ago. Using such issues as gender equality in pay and wages, gender-neutral
facilities, and gender-neutral roles and words, it is evident that Americans have come a long way
into accepting and integrating gender equality. However, women are still portrayed as sexual
beings whose beauty is required for their identity to be noticed. Furthermore, gender roles are
still diminutive thus restraining women to stick to lower-paying jobs. This shows that although
the country has come a long way, it still has a long way to go regarding gender equality.
Zhou 33
References
Arends, B. (2016, Apr. 14). The idea of the ‘gender pay gap’ is mostly bogus. Market Watch.
Retrieved from https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-idea-of-the-gender-pay-gap-ismostly-bogus-2016-04-14
Brady, J. (1971). I want a wife.
Cauterucci, C. (2016, Feb. 3). Should women be required to register for the draft? Slate.com.
retrieved from
http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2016/02/should_women_be_required_to
_register_for_the_draft.html
Davis, K. (2016, Apr. 11). Gender-neutral bathrooms: Why they matter. The Red & Black.
Retrieved from https://www.redandblack.com/opinion/gender-neutral-bathrooms-whythey-matter/article_49dd586c-0013-11e6-9bc8-ef911a037fa5.html
May, C. (2015, Jun. 13). The Problem with Female Superheroes. Scientific American. Retrieved
from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-problem-with-female-superheroes/
McClintock, E. (2016, Mar. 31). The psychology of mansplaining. Psychology Today. Retrieved
from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/it-s-man-s-and-woman-sworld/201603/the-psychology-mansplaining
The American Dialect Society. (2016, Jan. 8). The word of the year is singular they. American
Dialect Society. Retrieved from https://www.americandialect.org/2015-word-of-the-yearis-singular-they
Zhou 34
Draft 3
You are still working on it.
Portfolio Introduction Examples
Low
Dear Professor Tener,
My Overall Performance
Thought this quarter of study, I learned a lot of knowledge in class, including how to analyze
readings, how to think about the topic before writing, and how to make my paper more effective.
Before I state my advancement and shortcoming of writing, I want to talk about my performance
on this class.
Firstly, I think my performance on the papers is becoming better with each passing day, and my
performance includes the quality of paper and my attitude about writing papers. As the Chinese
old saying goes, “The onlookers see the most of the game”, this old saying indicates that
audience (classmates and professor) could always find some disadvantages about my paper with
I dose not notice.
For example, my partner indicated that my third paper’s second paragraph is over talking, which
I will never notice if she does not tell me. What’s more, you also indicated some shortcoming
about my paper which I dose not find out. For instance, I wrote that I broke my leg but did not
know how to call ambulance in my third paper’s draft one. However, you reminded me that this
sentence has no logic, because everyone know call 911. Therefore, I realized my mistake and
rewrote this sentence.
With the help of peer editing and professor, my paper’s quality is better and better. Also, my
attitude about writing papers is more and more serious. At first, I chuckled to myself because all
papers have three times to edit. Thus, I had a negative attitude about writing my first paper and
only wrote three pages, because I would have twice chance to edit it. However, when I did peer
editing with my partners, I found they all treated the draft one with a serious attitude since they
all wrote about severn or eight pages. I realized i would fall theis class if I did not change my
negative attitude. After that, I treated each of my draft seriously, and I think havea serious
attitude about this class is the basis of passing this class.
Secondly, I think my performance on discussions need to be improved. All of my comments of
classmates’ discussion were positive, and I rarely pointed out their shortages even I had found
out some shortages, because I was afraid that they might be angry if they saw some negative
discussion, I realized those comments were very very helpful, and I could improve my discussion
and thought by reading those comments. Therefore, I think my performance about discussion is
not good since I did not give my classmates my true comments.
Thirdly, I think my performance on class participation is good since I had improved a lot about
talking and sharing my ideas with classmates. At first, I felt very embarrassed about talking with
native students, and I only say “yes”, “umm”, “I don’t know”, and “I agree” to them, because my
speaking is not good. I always think native student will laugh at me in their heart and reject to
help me since i am not an American. However, when I first asked a question to my classmate,
she was very friendly and asked my question patiently. She even lent her notes to me t o help me
finish my notes. With her help, I could understand your class better, and I realized the meaning
of class participation. Now, I am not afraid of class participation, and I would like to talk and
share comments with classmates, because their comments and advise help me a lot about writing
paper and analyzing class reading.
Therefore, I think my my overall performance on papers, discussions, class participatioin is
good, but still need to be improved.
My advancement
With the help of in class activities, notes, discussion, revision, conferencing, and peer editing,
during those days, I think I have made significant progress about wiring. I have leant how to
analyze reading and how to build paper structure and how to make my paper full of details and
logics.
Firstly, I think class notes helps me make me more advancement in my writing. My analyzing
skill is improved a lot, because I you have taught how to do it a lot in class.
You taught us that drew a triangle to deivide a reading into “Author”, “Audience”, and “Text to
analyze a reading. You give us questions to think about for each thought or idea about authors
point of view. For example, my last homework “Summary/Analysis of One” has made big
progress, because I analyzed “The New Literacy” carefully before wrote paper. I thought about
questions and wrote that “Although many people think texting is bad for writing there is a
complex relationship between technology and writing. Technology give people a better way to
think about writing.” I think this sentence is good because my explanation of how technology
helps writing. This sentence also make sense to audience, because it is too easy to understand.
Therefore, I think I have made significant progress about how to analyze reading before writing
paper.
Secondly, revision helps me make me more advancement in my writing. As you said, a good
essay need many times revision. Many times revision can not only help us find some grammar
errors, but also give us more chance to rethink how to write a good paper. For example, I
remember once you let us do revision by ourselves. You told us to cut a word, cut a sentence,
and cut a paragraph, also let use add a word, add a sentence, and add a paragraph.
Though this way to revise our paper, I could recognize both advantages and disadvantages in my
paper. For example, in my final essay, I added more details about my parents. I wrote that “It
was a 3000 miles journey, and they didn’t have cell phones. This caused the relationship to be
stressful.” I think this sentence is successful because the details like how far journey show
audience that only parents can stay together.
Thus, revision makes me get more advancement of my essay, and I have made significant
progress about how to make my paper full of details and logics.
Thirdly, conferencing helps me make more advancement of my writing. In conferencing, your
were too patient to give me many professional and correct advise about my paper. Your advise
made me rethink my topic, even a sentence --- why I write this sentence and how I can make this
sentence full of details.
Also, you never blamed me even my paper was very bad. You just encouraged me and gave me
confidence to write a paper since you said to me that the first draft must be bad. With your
encouragement, I was afraid of writing paper, and your advise helped me write a better paper.
For example, in my “Synthesis paper” draft two, I wrote more details on how does the quotes
connect to the other quotes. I added “Likewise, Carr noted that Google is changing the way our
brains function. He use sources like Wolfe to show the difference in how people think even in
other languages.” I think theses sentences is good because the word “likewise” shows that Carr is
agreeing with the other author.
What’s more, you also helps me build paper’s structures. I was not sure which sentence structure
is suit for my third essay “Argument paper” draft two, like layered structures or coming full
circle. You told me that I can use layers to build my essay with evidence and analysis, and I was
trying to do this.
I wrote, “Males and females are in biological categories, but we do not treat men or women as
inferior just because of gender (Dupre). In other words, this means that the genes do not measure
how people are treated. This is not a fair assumption.” I think this is good analysis because the
ending is my idea. This paper structure could make audience have enough information to see
what my point is.
In brief, in this quarter, with the help of class notes, revision, conferencing, and peer-editing, I
leant how to analyze reading and how to build paper’s structure and how to make my paper full
of details and logics.
My response to class readings
Until today, I have already accomplished most of drafts, discussions, and responses in Writing
39A class. Also I have finished read many class reading, which include “No Need to Call” “Is
Google Making Us Stupid?” “Bread” “In Defense of And/OR” and so on. In my opinion,
Writing 39A class can be divided into three part – Reading, Thinking, and Writing.
“Reading” means read articles carefully and check out some vocabularies which I do not
understand; “Thinking mans consider the purpose and structure of the article, analyze what
points does the author want me to think; and “Writing” means reply professor’s prompt
detailedly and correctly. There is no doubt that our paper would be bad if we do not read the
reading with patient and effort. Because it is obvious that writing is grounded in reading, and
reading is operated in writing.
For me, my response to readings is class reading is the most difficult part, because those articles
or books which I read in Writing 39A class include many technical terms and difficult phrases ,
which is very difficult for an international student. For example, in the article “In Defense of
And/Or” there exists many words which hard to find in English Chinese Dictionary. What’s
more, I think those readings are stuffy and unreadable, because I still can not understand what
the article says even if I read Chinese version.
However, I think read those class readings are very important to us, because they no only teach
us how to build the structure of sentence and how to write a successful paper, but also teach us
many rules and courses about how to live in this world.
Firstly, readings teach us how to build the structure of a sentence and how to write a successful
paper. For example, the article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” teaches us many different
evidences and “The Influencing Machines” teach us different paper structures.
Also, the most helpful class readings to my development is the writer the readings teaches me
how to build paper’s overall structure. The authors use anecdotes first, then give examples, and
analysis to examples, again and again. The articles full of details and after reading them, I know
how to make a paper look better. All the readings helped me a lot.
Secondly, these readings teach us some rules and course about how to live in this world. The
readings from They Say/I Say and The Anteater’s Guide to Writing and Rhetoric gave me
information about how to make a good argument. I think we did close reading in class because
your know that students should not only learn knowledge in university, but also should learn
information about new content.
For example, you choose “technology” at the beginning to help your students understand how
technology is in our lifes. Therefore, I think these readings are not only helpful to our writing
skill, but also helpful to our life.
Somewhere I need to accomplish
As I mentioned before, I leant how to analyze reading and how to build paper structure and how
to make my paper full of details and logics in this quarter. However, I still need to work hard
even in the class is very heard.
Firstly, I still need to recite more vocabularies, which is helpful for reading class readings. The
reason why “In Defense of And/Or” is hard for me to read because I do not know many words at
all. If I does not understand the meaning of words in the reading, then I will not understand the
meaning of readings. Therefore, reciting more words is a goal that I still need to accomplish.
Secondly, in my personal experience, I think I still need to work on writing abundant details,
which means that I need to pay more attention to write and think “Howe” and “What”. For
example, in my argument essay draft two, I gave an specific example that I thought is full of
details.
However, your told me that you did get all the details, and I need to write more about how and
why. You said I need explain more information for the reader to understand. Therefore, I have
realized I need to write my details more abundant and analyze “How” and “Why” and “What”.
What grade I think I should earn
Based on the rubric for the course, your comments on papers and in conferences, my overall
performance, and how much effort I have paid, I think my final grade is around “B+” and “A-“.
My revisions of each last draft are thoughtful and purposeful, because I got help from my peerediting partner, writing center, and you. Also, I have indicated my advancement and shortage in
cover letter genuinely.
I know that these drafts which I turned in the e-portfolio still has some shortcomings, but I hope I
can pass this course with a good grade and will try my best to fight in Writing 39B.
Sincerely,
Middle (from a different class)
High (from another 39A professor)
The New Literacy
Clive Thompson
(taken from The Bedford Guide for College Writers)
As the school year begins, be ready to hear pundits fretting once again about how kids
today can’t write – and technology is to blame. Face book encourages narcissistic blabbering,
video and PowerPoint have replaced carefully crafted essays, and texting has dehydrated
language into “bleak, balk, sad shorthand: (as University College of London English professor
John Sutherland has moaned). An age of illiteracy is at hand, right?
Andrea Lunsford isn’t so sure. Lunsford is a professor of writing and rhetoric at Stanford
University, where she has organized a mammoth project called the Stanford Study of Writing to
scrutinize college students’ prose. From 2001 to 2006, she collected 14, 672 student writing
samples – everything from in-class assignments, formal essays, and journal entries to emails,
blog posts, and chat sessions. Her conclusions are stirring.
“I think we’re in the midst of a literacy revolution the likes of which we haven’t seen
since Greek civilization,” she says. For Lunsford, technology isn’t killing our ability to write. It’s
reviving it – and pushing our literacy in bold new directions.
The first thing she found is that young people today write far more than any generation
before them. That’s because so much socializing takes place online, and it almost always
involves text. Of all the writing that the Stanford students did, a stunning 38 percent of it took
place out of the classroom- life writing, as Lunsford calls it. Those Twitter updates and lists of
25 things about yourself add up.
It’s almost hard to remember how big a paradigm shift this is. Before the Internet came
along, most Americans never wrote anything, ever, that wasn’t a school assignment. Unless they
got a job that required producing text (like in law, advertising, or media), they’d leave school and
virtually never construct a paragraph again.
But is this explosion of prose good, on a technical level? Yes. Lunsford’s team found that
the students were remarkably adept at what rhetoricians call kairos – assessing their audience
and adapting their tone and technique to best get their point across. The modern world of online
writing, particularly in chat and on discussion threads, is conversational and public, which makes
it closer to the Greek tradition of argument than the asynchronous letter and essay writing of 50
years ago.
The fact that students today almost always write for an audience (something virtually no
one in my generation did) gives them a different sense of what constitutes good writing. In
interviews, they defined good prose as something that had an effect on the world. For them,
writing is about persuading and organizing and debating, even if it’s over something as quotidian
as what movie to go see. The Stanford students were almost always less enthusiastic about their
in-class writing because it had no audience but the professor: It didn’t serve any purpose other
than to get them a grade. As for those texting short-forms and smileys defiling serious academic
writing? Another myth. When Lunsford examined the work of first-year students, she didn’t find
a single example of texting speak in an academic paper.
Of course, good teaching is always going to be crucial, as is the mastering of formal
academic prose. But it’s also becoming clear that online media are pushing literacy into cool
directions. The brevity of texting and status updating teaches young people to deploy haiku-like
concision. At the same time the proliferation of new forms of online pop-cultural exegesis – from
sprawling TV-show recaps to 15, 000-word videogame walkthroughs – has given them a chance
to write enormously long and complex pieces of prose, often while working collaboratively with
others.
We think of writing as either good or bad. What today’s young people know is that
knowing who you’re writing for and why you’re writing might be the most crucial factor of all.
Questions to Consider
1. Consider the Meaning: According to the author, what is the effect of the Internet on
writing?
2. Identify Writing Strategies: Where does Thompson use comparison and contrast?
How does it support his argument?
3. Reading Critically: Who seems to be the intended audience for this essay? What is the
writer’s purpose? How well do you think he achieves it?
4. Expanding Vocabulary: In paragraph 5, Thompson writes, “It’s almost hard to
remember how big a paradigm shift this is.” What is a paradigm shift? Why is this
concept important to Thompson’s larger purpose?
5. Making Connections: According to Thompson, The Internet and other new forms of
media are stimulating literacy. How might Carr respond to Thompson’s article? What
would he make of this “paradigm shift”?
Analyzing “The New Literacy”
Ally Julseth ---Student Critical Reading Response
(taken from The Bedford Guide for College Writers)
Being part of a generation that spends an immense amount of time online, I find it rather
annoying to hear that youth today are slowly diminishing the art of writing. Because Facebook
and Twitter have limited character space, I do use abbreviations such as s.m.h. (shaking my
head), “abt” (about), and “u” (you). However, my simplistic way of writing informally for online
media has no correlation with my formal writing. In “The New Literacy” essay, Clive Thompson
indicates that this lack of correlation seems to be the case with many more students.
Thompson explores the idea that the advancing media is changing the way students write.
After citing Professor Sutherland blaming technology for “bleak, balk, sad shorthand” (qtd. In
Thompson), he goes on to describe the Stanford Study of Writing, conducted by writing
professor Andrea Lunsford. She studied over 14, 000 examples of student writing from academic
essays to e-mails and chats. From these samples, she learned that “young people today write fare
more than any generation before them” (547). I completely agree with this point based on the
large volume I write socializing on the Internet. I believe that eh time I spend online writing onedimensional phrases does not weaken my formal writing as a student.
Thompson goes on to explain that the new way of writing on the Internet is actually more
similar to the Greek tradition of argument than to the essay and letter-writing tradition of the last
half century. Lunsford concluded that “the students were remarkably adept at what rhetoricians
call Kairos –assessing their audience and adapting their tone and technique to get their point
across” (547). Their Internet writing is like a conversation with another person.
I find this conclusion interesting. As I advance in my writing as a student, I remember
being taught as a child that there is a distinct line between writing an essay that is due to a
teacher and writing a letter to a friend. Although the two are different, there are similarities as
well. The nice thing about writing on the Internet is that I can choose what I write about and how
I say it. When I’m writing to a friend, sticking to the point isn’t exactly the goal, but I do get my
main point across. However, I never write a formal essay unless it is assigned. Like the Stanford
students, I do not look forward to writing an essay simply for the grade. Writing for a prompt I
did not choose does not allow me to put my full-hearted passion into the essay. When I was
younger, I wrote essays that were bland and straight to the point. As I write now, I try to think as
though I am reading to a room full of people, keeping my essay as interesting as I can.
Thompson ends his piece on the importance of good teaching. This importance is true;
teaching is the way students learn how to draw that line between formal and informal writing and
how to write depending on audience. I appreciate and completely agree with Thompson’s essay.
I feel that he describes the younger generation very well. He is pushing away what high-brow
critics say, and he is saying we are almost inventing a new way of writing.
Work Cited
Thompson, Clive. “The New Literacy.” The Bedford Guide for College Writers with Reader,
Research Manual, and Handbook, edited by X.J. Kennedy, Dorothy M. Kennedy, and
Marcia F. Muth, 11th ed., Bedford/St. Martin’s 2017, pp. 547-48.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Questions to Consider
1. According to Julseth, what is the issue the Thompson raises, and what is his position on
this topic? Where does Julseth present this information?
2. What are Julseth’s main points in her analysis?
3. How does Julseth apply this reading to her own life?
4. How has Julseth demonstrated both literal and critical reading responses?
5. How does Julseth develop her analysis? What kinds of material does she draw from the
essay?
Is Google Making Us Stupid?
What the internet is doing in our brains
Nicholas Carr
"Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave?” So the supercomputer
HAL pleads with the implacable astronaut Dave Bowman in a famous and weirdly
poignant scene toward the end of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Bowman,
having nearly been sent to a deep-space death by the malfunctioning machine, is calmly,
coldly disconnecting the memory circuits that control its artificial “ brain. “Dave, my
mind is going,” HAL says, forlornly. “I can feel it. I can feel it.”
I can feel it, too. Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone,
or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry,
reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing.
I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading.
Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get
caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling
through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration
often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking
for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the
text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.
I think I know what’s going on. For more than a decade now, I’ve been spending a lot of
time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the
Internet. The Web has been a godsend to me as a writer. Research that once required
days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes. A few
Google searches, some quick clicks on hyperlinks, and I’ve got the telltale fact or pithy
quote I was after. Even when I’m not working, I’m as likely as not to be foraging in the
Web’s info-thickets’reading and writing e-mails, scanning headlines and blog posts,
watching videos and listening to podcasts, or just tripping from link to link to link.
(Unlike footnotes, to which they’re sometimes likened, hyperlinks don’t merely point to
related works; they propel you toward them.)
For me, as for others, the Net is becoming a universal medium, the conduit for most of
the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind. The advantages
of having immediate access to such an incredibly rich store of information are many,
and they’ve been widely described and duly applauded. “The perfect recall of silicon
memory,” Wired’s Clive Thompson has written, “can be an enormous boon to thinking.”
But that boon comes at a price. As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in
the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of
thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing
is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now
expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream
of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface
like a guy on a Jet Ski.
I’m not the only one. When I mention my troubles with reading to friends and
acquaintances—literary types, most of them—many say they’re having similar
experiences. The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on
long pieces of writing. Some of the bloggers I follow have also begun mentioning the
phenomenon. Scott Karp, who writes a blog about online media, recently confessed that
he has stopped reading books altogether. “I was a lit major in college, and used to be [a]
voracious book reader,” he wrote. “What happened?” He speculates on the answer:
“What if I do all my reading on the web not so much because the way I read has
changed, i.e. I’m just seeking convenience, but because the way I THINK has changed?”
Bruce Friedman, who blogs regularly about the use of computers in medicine, also has
described how the Internet has altered his mental habits. “I now have almost totally lost
the ability to read and absorb a longish article on the web or in print,” he wrote earlier
this year. A pathologist who has long been on the faculty of the University of Michigan
Medical School, Friedman elaborated on his comment in a telephone conversation with
me. His thinking, he said, has taken on a “staccato” quality, reflecting the way he quickly
scans short passages of text from many sources online. “I can’t read War and
Peace anymore,” he admitted. “I’ve lost the ability to do that. Even a blog post of more
than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it.”
Anecdotes alone don’t prove much. And we still await the long-term neurological and
psychological experiments that will provide a definitive picture of how Internet use
affects cognition. But a recently published study of online research habits, conducted by
scholars from University College London, suggests that we may well be in the midst of a
sea change in the way we read and think. As part of the five-year research program, the
scholars examined computer logs documenting the behavior of visitors to two popular
research sites, one operated by the British Library and one by a U.K. educational
consortium, that provide access to journal articles, e-books, and other sources of written
information. They found that people using the sites exhibited “a form of skimming
activity,” hopping from one source to another and rarely returning to any source they’d
already visited. They typically read no more than one or two pages of an article or book
before they would “bounce” out to another site. Sometimes they’d save a long article, but
there’s no evidence that they ever went back and actually read it. The authors of the
study report:
It is clear that users are not reading online in the traditional sense; indeed there are
signs that new forms of “reading” are emerging as users “power browse” horizontally
through titles, contents pages and abstracts going for quick wins. It almost seems that
they go online to avoid reading in the traditional sense.
Thanks to the ubiquity of text on the Internet, not to mention the popularity of textmessaging on cell phones, we may well be reading more today than we did in the 1970s
or 1980s, when television was our medium of choice. But it’s a different kind of reading,
and behind it lies a different kind of thinking—perhaps even a new sense of the self. “We
are not only what we read,” says Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist at Tufts
University and the author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the
Reading Brain. “We are how we read.” Wolf worries that the style of reading promoted
by the Net, a style that puts “efficiency” and “immediacy” above all else, may be
weakening our capacity for the kind of deep reading that emerged when an earlier
technology, the printing press, made long and complex works of prose commonplace.
When we read online, she says, we tend to become “mere decoders of information.” Our
ability to interpret text, to make the rich mental connections that form when we read
deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged.
Reading, explains Wolf, is not an instinctive skill for human beings. It’s not etched into
our genes the way speech is. We have to teach our minds how to translate the symbolic
characters we see into the language we understand. And the media or other technologies
we use in learning and practicing the craft of reading play an important part in shaping
the neural circuits inside our brains. Experiments demonstrate that readers of
ideograms, such as the Chinese, develop a mental circuitry for reading that is very
different from the circuitry found in those of us whose written language employs an
alphabet. The variations extend across many regions of the brain, including those that
govern such essential cognitive functions as memory and the interpretation of visual and
auditory stimuli. We can expect as well that the circuits woven by our use of the Net will
be different from those woven by our reading of books and other printed works.
Sometime in 1882, Friedrich Nietzsche bought a typewriter—a Malling-Hansen Writing
Ball, to be precise. His vision was failing, and keeping his eyes focused on a page had
become exhausting and painful, often bringing on crushing headaches. He had been
forced to curtail his writing, and he feared that he would soon have to give it up. The
typewriter rescued him, at least for a time. Once he had mastered touch-typing, he was
able to write with his eyes closed, using only the tips of his fingers. Words could once
again flow from his mind to the page.
But the machine had a subtler effect on his work. One of Nietzsche’s friends, a
composer, noticed a change in the style of his writing. His already terse prose had
become even tighter, more telegraphic. “Perhaps you will through this instrument even
take to a new idiom,” the friend wrote in a letter, noting that, in his own work, his
“‘thoughts’ in music and language often depend on the quality of pen and paper.”
“You are right,” Nietzsche replied, “our writing equipment takes part in the forming of
our thoughts.” Under the sway of the machine, writes the German media
scholar Friedrich A. Kittler , Nietzsche’s prose “changed from arguments to aphorisms,
from thoughts to puns, from rhetoric to telegram style.”
The human brain is almost infinitely malleable. People used to think that our mental
meshwork, the dense connections formed among the 100 billion or so neurons inside
our skulls, was largely fixed by the time we reached adulthood. But brain researchers
have discovered that that’s not the case. James Olds, a professor of neuroscience who
directs the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study at George Mason University, says that
even the adult mind “is very plastic.” Nerve cells routinely break old connections and
form new ones. “The brain,” according to Olds, “has the ability to reprogram itself on the
fly, altering the way it functions.”
As we use what the sociologist Daniel Bell has called our “intellectual technologies”—the
tools that extend our mental rather than our physical capacities—we inevitably begin to
take on the qualities of those technologies. The mechanical clock, which came into
common use in the 14th century, provides a compelling example. In Technics and
Civilization, the historian and cultural critic Lewis Mumford described how the clock
“disassociated time from human events and helped create the belief in an independent
world of mathematically measurable sequences.” The “abstract framework of divided
time” became “the point of reference for both action and thought.”
The clock’s methodical ticking helped bring into being the scientific mind and the
scientific man. But it also took something away. As the late MIT computer
scientist Joseph Weizenbaum observed in his 1976 book, Computer Power and Human
Reason: From Judgment to Calculation, the conception of the world that emerged from
the widespread use of timekeeping instruments “remains an impoverished version of the
older one, for it rests on a rejection of those direct experiences that formed the basis for,
and indeed constituted, the old reality.” In deciding when to eat, to work, to sleep, to
rise, we stopped listening to our senses and started obeying the clock.
The process of adapting to new intellectual technologies is reflected in the changing
metaphors we use to explain ourselves to ourselves. When the mechanical clock arrived,
people began thinking of their brains as operating “like clockwork.” Today, in the age of
software, we have come to think of them as operating “like computers.” But the changes,
neuroscience tells us, go much deeper than metaphor. Thanks to our brain’s plasticity,
the adaptation occurs also at a biological level.
The Internet promises to have particularly far-reaching effects on cognition. In a paper
published in 1936, the British mathematician Alan Turing proved that a digital
computer, which at the time existed only as a theoretical machine, could be
programmed to perform the function of any other information-processing device. And
that’s what we’re seeing today. The Internet, an immeasurably powerful computing
system, is subsuming most of our other intellectual technologies. It’s becoming our map
and our clock, our printing press and our typewriter, our calculator and our telephone,
and our radio and TV.
When the Net absorbs a medium, that medium is re-created in the Net’s image. It injects
the medium’s content with hyperlinks, blinking ads, and other digital gewgaws, and it
surrounds the content with the content of all the other media it has absorbed. A new email message, for instance, may announce its arrival as we’re glancing over the latest
headlines at a newspaper’s site. The result is to scatter our attention and diffuse our
concentration.
The Net’s influence doesn’t end at the edges of a computer screen, either. As people’s
minds become attuned to the crazy quilt of Internet media, traditional media have to
adapt to the audience’s new expectations. Television programs add text crawls and popup ads, and magazines and newspapers shorten their articles, introduce capsule
summaries, and crowd their pages with easy-to-browse info-snippets. When, in March
of this year, TheNew York Times decided to devote the second and third pages of every
edition to article abstracts , its design director, Tom Bodkin, explained that the
“shortcuts” would give harried readers a quick “taste” of the day’s news, sparing them
the “less efficient” method of actually turning the pages and reading the articles. Old
media have little choice but to play by the new-media rules.
Never has a communications system played so many roles in our lives—or exerted such
broad influence over our thoughts—as the Internet does today. Yet, for all that’s been
written about the Net, there’s been little consideration of how, exactly, it’s
reprogramming us. The Net’s intellectual ethic remains obscure.
About the same time that Nietzsche started using his typewriter, an earnest young man
named Frederick Winslow Taylor carried a stopwatch into the Midvale Steel plant in
Philadelphia and began a historic series of experiments aimed at improving the
efficiency of the plant’s machinists. With the approval of Midvale’s owners, he recruited
a group of factory hands, set them to work on various metalworking machines, and
recorded and timed their every movement as well as the operations of the machines. By
breaking down every job into a sequence of small, discrete steps and then testing
different ways of performing each one, Taylor created a set of precise instructions—an
“algorithm,” we might say today—for how each worker should work. Midvale’s
employees grumbled about the strict new regime, claiming that it turned them into little
more than automatons, but the factory’s productivity soared.
More than a hundred years after the invention of the steam engine, the Industrial
Revolution had at last found its philosophy and its philosopher. Taylor’s tight industrial
choreography—his “system,” as he liked to call it—was embraced by manufacturers
throughout the country and, in time, around the world. Seeking maximum speed,
maximum efficiency, and maximum output, factory owners used time-and-motion
studies to organize their work and configure the jobs of their workers. The goal, as
Taylor defined it in his celebrated 1911 treatise, The Principles of Scientific
Management, was to identify and adopt, for every job, the “one best method” of work
and thereby to effect “the gradual substitution of science for rule of thumb throughout
the mechanic arts.” Once his system was applied to all acts of manual labor, Taylor
assured his followers, it would bring about a restructuring not only of industry but of
society, creating a utopia of perfect efficiency. “In the past the man has been first,” he
declared; “in the future the system must be first.”
Taylor’s system is still very much with us; it remains the ethic of industrial
manufacturing. And now, thanks to the growing power that computer engineers and
software coders wield over our intellectual lives, Taylor’s ethic is beginning to govern the
realm of the mind as well. The Internet is a machine designed for the efficient and
automated collection, transmission, and manipulation of information, and its legions of
programmers are intent on finding the “one best method”—the perfect algorithm—to
carry out every mental movement of what we’ve come to describe as “knowledge work.”
Google’s headquarters, in Mountain View, California—the Googleplex—is the Internet’s
high church, and the religion practiced inside its walls is Taylorism. Google, says its
chief executive, Eric Schmidt, is “a company that’s founded around the science of
measurement,” and it is striving to “systematize everything” it does. Drawing on the
terabytes of behavioral data it collects through its search engine and other sites, it
carries out thousands of experiments a day, according to the Harvard Business Review,
and it uses the results to refine the algorithms that increasingly control how people find
information and extract meaning from it. What Taylor did for the work of the hand,
Google is doing for the work of the mind.
The company has declared that its mission is “to organize the world’s information and
make it universally accessible and useful.” It seeks to develop “the perfect search
engine,” which it defines as something that “understands exactly what you mean and
gives you back exactly what you want.” In Google’s view, information is a kind of
commodity, a utilitarian resource that can be mined and processed with industrial
efficiency. The more pieces of information we can “access” and the faster we can extract
their gist, the more productive we become as thinkers.
Where does it end? Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the gifted young men who founded
Google while pursuing doctoral degrees in computer science at Stanford, speak
frequently of their desire to turn their search engine into an artificial intelligence, a
HAL-like machine that might be connected directly to our brains. “The ultimate search
engine is something as smart as people—or smarter,” Page said in a speech a few years
back. “For us, working on search is a way to work on artificial intelligence.” In a 2004
interview with Newsweek, Brin said, “Certainly if you had all the world’s information
directly attached to your brain, or an artificial brain that was smarter than your brain,
you’d be better off.” Last year, Page told a convention of scientists that Google is “really
trying to build artificial intelligence and to do it on a large scale.”
Such an ambition is a natural one, even an admirable one, for a pair of math whizzes
with vast quantities of cash at their disposal and a small army of computer scientists in
their employ. A fundamentally scientific enterprise, Google is motivated by a desire to
use technology, in Eric Schmidt’s words, “to solve problems that have never been solved
before,” and artificial intelligence is the hardest problem out there. Why wouldn’t Brin
and Page want to be the ones to crack it?
Still, their easy assumption that we’d all “be better off” if our brains were supplemented,
or even replaced, by an artificial intelligence is unsettling. It suggests a belief that
intelligence is the output of a mechanical process, a series of discrete steps that can be
isolated, measured, and optimized. In Google’s world, the world we enter when we go
online, there’s little place for the fuzziness of contemplation. Ambiguity is not an
opening for insight bu...
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