Cohort X1388_16EW1

Assignment 1 Submission: Writing Plan (GRADED)

In Module One, you did a literal reading of your selected article. In Module Two, you learned some active reading strategies on how to dig a little deeper and apply critical analysis to “Turning Off, Dining In.” Finally, you began to think about the intended audience for your critical analysis essay, and you reflected on your goal in analyzing your selected article.

This week, you’ll be given access to an interactive Writing Plan generator that has specific questions to help you actively read and analyze your selected reading from Module One in its entirety. During the assignment, you’ll use analysis strategies learned in Module Two to determine the key significance of your selected reading. In doing so, you will respond to the author’s intended goal of the article in a clear and engaging manner and produce a Writing Plan to inform your creation of your Critical Analysis Essay (which will be due in Module 8).

The assignment below will ask you to consider how the following critical elements relate to your selected reading:

• author’s claim*
• key points*
• audience*
• your goal*
• evidence*
• feedback*
• revision*

Constructing Your Writing Plan

To complete this assignment, first actively re-read your selected article using the analysis techniques mentioned in Module Two. Write new notes (and revise old ones) to help you uncover the deeper meaning of your selected article (do not assume that your initial reading was the correct reading until you compare your notes from Module One with your notes in this Module). After you have finished re-reading the article and writing down new (or revised) notes, you will then build onto your Writing Notes assignment from Module One and determine your strategy for writing your critical analysis essay.

This process will allow you to develop a potential structure for effectively communicating and supporting your claim in the critical analysis essay. Your claim will have three components—1) it will clearly state the author’s goal in his/her article, 2) it will identify your reaction to this goal (e.g., do you agree or disagree); and 3) it will explain why you had that reaction to the article (does the author meet his/her goal with the evidence that is presented, does the author ignore counterarguments to try to make his/her article stronger, etc.). The Writing Plan will also be helpful in keeping your thought process on track when you begin writing and revising your essay.

Keep in mind that you do not need to answer the questions in any specific order. Each response should be one fully developed paragraph in length (5-8 sentences).

As you work on the Writing Plan, remember to refer to the assignment guidelines and rubric (click here) to make sure you’re fulfilling each aspect of the assignment. You can also download/print the rubric.

Your responses will be saved to the Notebook, which can be found under the “Course Tools” menu. You can also download all of your responses to a single Word document by following the directions at the bottom of this page.

The next activity uses a rich text area. You can tab to the editor body. Press ALT-F10 to get to the toolbar. Press ESC to return to the editor body. A save button is available in the top toolbar all the way to the right and will become visible when it receives focus.

1.Re-read your selected article and take careful notes, using analysis techniques described in Module Two as guidance. For a review of these techniques, please click here. Then, revisit your original interpretation of the author’s goal. Has the author’s goal changed with this analytical reading of the text? If so,how? If not, why not?

2. Have you identified new key points that the author uses to try to achieve his or her goal in the selected article? If so, include them here. If not, explain why the key points from your Writing Notes have remained the same, even after conducting an active reading of the article.

3. Consider the audience who will be reading your essay. What potential challenges will you have supporting your argument with this demographic?

4. Your goal is the end result that you wish to achieve in writing the critical analysis essay. What goal do you hope to accomplish with this essay? For example, you may disagree with the author and demonstrate why they are incorrect, or you may agree but want to further substantiate their claim.

5. Evidence is the material that supports your argument. Based on your claim, determine potential places where evidence would be most effective. Defend your choices. For example, if you disagree with an author’s point, you would want to use evidence to support your view.

6. You will be receiving feedback on this writing plan. Feedback is helpful information or criticism that explains what can be done to improve your essay. How can your own writing improve from receiving feedback from an outside party? How can that feedback be integrated in the final project?

7. During the revision process, a writer rereads the essay and makes significant changes in content, organization, etc. to build the argument in a stronger, more logical manner. You will learn more about revision strategies in Module 7, but some of the most common revision techniques are peer evaluation (where you have a classmate review your essay and provide you with feedback), read aloud (where you print out a hard copy of your essay and read it aloud slowly), and read backwards (where you read the essay backwards word by word or paragraph by paragraph). Identify a revision strategy that would be most effective in informing you while writing this essay. Why would this strategy be effective?

 

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Turning Off, Dining In

Last night at dinner, I suddenly realized that no one around our table had said anything for quite a while. I looked at my son, who had headphones on and whose face was aglow with the white-blue light of his phone on which he was watching a YouTube video. My daughter was also bathed in this same glow, but a tap-tap-tap was coming from her phone as she was texting a friend. My husband didn’t have a phone but was reading The Economist. I almost announced to my family that it was rude to bring phones or read at the table, but then I noticed that my own phone was right next to me. I tried to justify its presence to myself by reasoning that I thought my sister might call—she’s been having a rough time at work. But then I realized that I do generally have my phone with me at dinner and I often use it to catch up on personal email.

I remember growing up and eating dinner with my mother and sister almost every night. There was a routine. Mom would cook, and my sister and I would take turns setting the table and cleaning up. This routine made sure that for at least an hour, we were all present in the same room with our hands occupied so that we were forced to acknowledge each other’s existence, and maybe even talk. It wasn’t always easy—adolescence is a stormy period—but at least we were present with each other.

I don’t remember specific conversations that we had—nothing life changing most of the time—but generally we offered an account of how we had spent our time that day and what the schedule was likely to be tomorrow. It was also a time for negotiations about weekend plans, whether I could borrow the car, whether my sister could buy a designer shirt, and why that shirt was very necessary for her. Even though my parents split when I was young, I think these dinners helped us stay out of trouble, while other kids of divorced parents found it a bit too easy to evade the distracted attention of harried parents.

It seems to me that smartphones are slowly eroding connected quality time for families, and at no other time does this become more clear than at dinner time, which has traditionally been a time to reconnect and reinforce relationships through conversation.

I found that there’s actually research backing up my views on this. According to a study printed in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, the mere presence of a cell phone can decrease the quality of one-on-one conversation. Researchers Andrew K. Przybylski and Netta Weinstein of University of Essex, UK demonstrated that interpersonal closeness and trust are less likely to form when a phone is present during a conversation about a meaningful topic. In addition, research subjects who conversed with a phone present reported that they felt their conversation partners had less empathy toward them (244).

Closeness, trust, and empathy are all important factors in family relationships. If a parent-child relationship lacks these characteristics, children are much more likely to operate independently of parents, often to their disadvantage. But parents are also more likely to miss key moments in their children’s lives, finding that they know more about a colleague’s project than their child’s recent soccer game.

In a different study, cell phones were also found to reduce “prosocial” behaviors and lead to dehumanization. University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business found that after using a cell phone—or even thinking about using their cell phone—research participants were more likely to dehumanize strangers and were less charitable (Waytz and Epley 74). Although not often acknowledged, the relationship between parents and their children is prone to dehumanization and stereotyping: Children may think their parents are artifacts of a bygone era and don’t “get” them, and parents may think that their children aren’t mature enough to have real feelings or make important decisions for themselves. Is it possible that in an already-strained relationship, texting with friends or checking email while eating with your family might encourage more “us vs. them” thinking about family members?

So would putting down the smartphone at dinner ensure that families stay connected and children make it to adulthood without too much turmoil? Those who have studied the question can’t provide a definitive answer. Some recent research has shown that while families who eat dinner together do see healthier, happier children, this relationship is one of correlation rather than causation. Children fared best in families with strong relationships between parents and children, participation in shared activities, effective monitoring, and financial resources, whether or not these families ate dinner together. However, a family with all of these characteristics is more likely to choose to have dinner together on a routine basis (Musick and Meier 492).

But even if dinner together is not a cure-all for the modern turmoil of adolescence, it is a shared activity, an opportunity to develop strong relationships, for parents to find out information about their children’s lives that will help them keep their kids out of trouble. And dinner is a good candidate for family quality time. The process of preparing, eating, and cleaning up a meal makes it a good “togetherness” task. If the whole family is going to eat at the same time, they may as well sit in the same place, and so they should probably just agree to treat that time as family time. People have recently begun various techniques for detaching from the technology, including screen-free weekends (weekends where people spend time actually doing stuff rather than watching TV, viewing the internet, or messaging with friends), screen-free evenings, and even screen-free weeks or months. These are generally a hard sell for modern teens. But a screen-free dinner is a good compromise that may lead to stronger relationships.

Works Cited

Musick, Kelly, and Ann Meier. “Assessing Causality and Persistence in Associations between Family Dinners and Adolescent Well-being.” Journal of Marriage and Family. 74.3 (2012): 476-493. Web.

Przybylski, Andrew K., and Netta Weinstein. “Can you Connect with Me Now? How the Presence of Mobile Communication Technology Influences Face-to-Face Conversation Quality.” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 30.3 (2012): 237-246. Web.

Szalavitz, Maria. “How Being Socially Connected May Sap Your Empathy.” Time. Time, 28 October 2011. Web. August 22, 2013.

Adam Waytz, and Nicholas Epley. “Social Connection Enables Dehumanization.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48 (2012): 70-76.

 

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