How to Say Nothing in 500 Words Michelle Dutra Eng 121 Composition I Allison Boldt August 10, 2015 In this story “How to Say Nothing in 500 Words” Paul Roberts gives instructions with different examples to help college students learn how to write a good essay. He talks about how an essay by a college student is boring. He gives different examples on how a writer should avoid creating a boring essay. One example used is don’t just fill the papers with just words, or other rewordings use important information to reach your goal word count. When you do this, it turns a boring topic into an interesting and fun essay for the audience.
Watching TV Makes You Smarter: Critical Analysis A lazy man’s fantasy is to do nothing and get something out of it. This is precisely what Steven Johnson preaches in his article “Watching TV Makes You Smarter”. And no, he is not talking about the knowledge gained from educational TV. He is saying that after watching The Sopranos, you will have gained intelligence from following a complicated plotline. Although Johnson and fellow couch potatoes would truly love to believe that watching TV works wonders on your brain, it is surely a fantasy with no relation to real life Johnsons’ main argument is that TV has gotten more complicated over the years and our brains have to compensate for that.
According to Stephen Johnson, the “sleeper curve” is popular media growing and becoming more complex every year with a lot of violence, is actually nutritional and instead of being the evil in our society, is making us smarter. Johnson thinks it’s important because it helps the mental development of young people today by enhancing our cognitive faculties. Johnson thinks that television gives us cognitive benefits in paying attention, making inferences and tracking complex social issues. Johnson’s general view of television is that watching shows that make us think is good for our brain and makes us common viewers smarter. Dana Stevens summarizes Johnson’s essay by stating his claim that shows are becoming more complex and more complicated over the last two decades and watching it makes you smarter.
Some people in today’s society think TV is not good for you, but in Steven Johnson’s Watching TV Makes You Smarter, hemakes the argument that TV is very complex. He talks about how multiple threading in TV shows have many cognitive benefits. He also says thattelevision today makes you think more than it did previously. Overall TV affects people in more positive ways than they realize. Steven Johnson makes the argument that multiple threading has a positive impact on television today.Johnson believes that the show Hill Street Blues successfully had a combination of a complex narrative structure and complex subject matter.
At first, the topic “What High School Is,” seemed appealing to me, because it is a familiar subject to me as a high school graduate. As I began to read part of the topic, I just didn’t like it very much. So, I decided to read “Why Games Are Good for You,” and it showed a lot explanations and facts behind it. As a game enthusiast, I had to read the topic. It was what I had expected, before I read the book, I thought that the writer will argue how gaming is more effective in learning than the traditional method of reading.
Critical Evaluation Essay Outline This is the structure most typical. Read various reviews and articles and evaluations found through research to determine the structure that best fits your own subject. All of the points here need to be addressed, but there are variations in order. Introduction • Present the Subject. Write a paragraph introducing the subject to the reader by 1) Over-viewing the “big-picture” of your subject, its influence on people, why it’s important to evaluate, and 2) Establish the evaluative criteria you will be using to prove your thesis.
Johnson makes many good points in his essay “Watching TV Makes You Smarter”, but more than that he visually lays his ideas out for you in graphs and concrete examples. Johnson suggests that people ought to view TV’s form instead of content for instance when he says “There may be more (quote) negative messages (unquote) in the
* Do your research. Step 2: Drafting Write * Put the information you researched into your own words. * Write sentences and paragraphs even if they are not perfect. * Read what you have written and judge if it says what you mean. * Show it to others and ask for suggestions.
I didn’t understand because I had never heard of something called an annotated bibliography. I finally decided to open my computer and do some research about the topic. This is the same as writing a bibliography, but instead of writing a long essay, one has to write a brief paragraph explaining what one source was about. As the time went along my classmates and I kept on asking the professor brief questions to the professor. Such as, what is an annotated bibliography?
Although high school students have history classes to learn about historical facts, learning it through literature gives students a new perspective on what has already been taught in a previous class. As said by Nancy Methelis, “The history books will give us facts, which we are told are true, but we know they are chosen for the particular text. It generally doesn’t connect in the same emotional way that a fictional work does” (Methelis). Reading Huck Finn gives students a greater understanding of how life was back when slavery was still accepted and common. Its historical accuracy makes it an essential book to be read and discussed in the classroom.