I have always just gave myself the excuse that I am not a good writer and that’s how I am going to live. After reading chapter one I recognize that I have been letting myself live without giving myself a chance to catch up and learn what I need to know about the subject. After learning what is taught to me in this class I will need to keep using my new writing skills or they will be lost. My strengths are reading and understanding the assignment, typing the paper on the computer and generating creative writing skills. My weakness are using correct English grammar and punctuation, staying on topic and citing and references.
Abbys Lament Reaction Paper Every day, society is changing by setting new laws, political structures and upgrading everything around us. Who’s really in control of this power? After reading Abby’s Lament: Does Literacy Matter by Robert P. Yagelski, it seems correct that at a young age kids are all “irrelevant” after all, what’s the purpose of learning to read and write if it has little power in the life outside of school. I agree with Yagelski even though Abby feels irrelevant in the “political and institutional society” there is no reason for her to stop her education “Literacy does constitute power.” (pg. 4) I remember in elementary teachers would tell me “You can be anything you want to even the President of the United States.” I know I’m sure not the President now, but that did not stop me from pursuing a higher education and moving forward.
It demands from us respect, attention, and comprehension. Therefore, we need to choose books correctly, accordingly to our age and taste. In the essay “I was a Teenage Illiterate”, by Cathleen Schine, the author shares with us her experiences with literature and reading. Shine tells us how, in spite of her graduate work, she felt stupid among her new New York friends when she discovered her knowledge of literature contained only medieval authors and books. She seemed illiterate.
Analysis Question: Compare the ways that Ma and Pa view Loung. Answer: Ma views Loung as troublesome and un-lady like. Ma also continuously compares Loung to her siblings, and she wishes that Loung would simply sit still, not ask questions and grow up quickly. Pa on the other hand encourages Loung to be herself, ask questions and to act her age. Pa is quoted “Loung is too smart and clever for people to understand.” Synthesis Question: Write a diary entry from Loung’s point of view as they are leaving the city.
She states multiple times that the children within the education system are being cheated every day because they are not being forced to read more difficult books. “Such benefits are denied to the young reader exposed only to books with banal, simple-minded moral equations as well as to the student encouraged to come up with reductive, wrong-headed readings of mulitlayered texts” (Prose 97). The reader can blatantly see that Prose thinks negatively of the high school curriculum that today's students face. It seems clear that Prose does not want to hide her personal view or feelings, so she starts her essay out in a way that we do not have to read between the lines to get a sense of how she feels about what she is writing. She uses more emotional language when she says, "The intense loyalty adults harbor for books first encountered in youth is one probable reason for the otherwise baffling longevity of vintage mediocre novels, books that teachers may themselves have read in adolescence"(Prose
Not only does she persuaded her audience to understand that PC is getting out of hand, but that she is using the fact that we have the right to a freedom of speech, yet we have PC trying to censor us to say things such as “happy holidays” and “vertically challenged.” But she also beings attention to the fact that it is slowly influencing our colleges, high schools and educational system, as a country of freedom, a country that stands for freedom is slowly censoring the young minds of the next generation to consider that what they are saying is not correct, but we are now being told to say what should
Technology today does take away from the personal feelings that pen and paper can convey. Ellen Goodman was correct in her essay “In Praise of a Snail’s Pace” saying that new technology today is taking away from culture. I once saw a cartoon joke that had a person hugging their computer and saying “I love my computer, because all my friends live in it.” I laughed at that at first, but I think now I realize how true that is for some people. Technology today makes the way we communicate less personal and blander. We talk to our friends today through a computer screen more than we do face to face sometimes.
Students do not realize that plagiarizing someone else’s work is actually stealing. The educational system does not teach this to students. The educational system should teach that you have to cite an author even if you just take their idea and do not use their exact words. The online companies that generate essays for students should be outlawed. This is making it where students that have a lot of money can easily get by with actually learning how to write correctly.
Demi L. Steward English 243 Professor Brian Flynn 1 November 2013 Good versus Evil: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde “Both sides of me were in dead earnest; I was no more myself when I laid aside restraint and plunged in shame, than when I laboured, in the eye of day, at the furtherance of knowledge or the relief of sorrow and suffering.” Good vs. Evil, the ultimate conflict of life. We’re taught at an early age to do well, be the best person that we could possibly be. However, some form of evil still lies festering within everyone. We—people as a whole, have become so obsessed by suppressing these natural compulsions of evil that we’ve almost become a slave to it.
The consequences of Technology Clive Thompson’s “The New Literacy” argues against those that affirm that technology makes students become illiterate; he instead states technology in reality promotes students to write more. Although Gelernter agrees with Thompson in that technology has some benefits that can further expand students knowledge, he disagrees that technology promotes students to write more. Gelernter believes technology negatively affect students’ basic and critical thinking skills. Gelernter essay “Computers Cannot Teach Children Basic Skills” succeeds at being more persuasive in convincing its audience; the author achieves this by incorporating profound examples and facts in his essay to further emphasize the negative effect of technology. Gelernter and Thompson used techniques in their essays to try and persuade their audience to agree with them, yet both authors used different approaches to accomplish this.