academic english writing

Daniel Kevins

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LAL101 essay 3: Technology in our lives (cultural analysis)

I need the rough draft by Wednesday , and the essay next Saturday

Value: 100 points
Length: 1,000-1,200 words (3-4 pages)

Due dates:
Rough draft: ___________________ at class time (see Canvas calendar)

Final draft: ___________________ at 11:59 p.m. (see Canvas calendar)This assignment will involve a combination of informative and reflective cultural analysis writing. You will complete this writing in four parts:

  1. For a 24-hour period, keep track of your technology usage. This includes time you spend on your phone, computer, watching TV—anything that has a screen counts.
    1. For this to really work, you need to be accurate and honest—don’t worry about my judgment of you.
    2. You can be as simple or as techno-happy as you want about this—use a time management app (suggestions on Canvas), the ScreenTime feature if you have an iPhone, or keep a pen-and-paper log, or both. Feel free to make your own notes as part of your prewriting process.
    3. Do “count” multi-tasking—on a device (or watching a screen) while doing something else.
    4. Complete this part of the assignment by _________________.
  2. Organize your thoughts into a clear main idea about your technology usage and whatabout culture influences it – in a positive or negative perspective, or perhaps both. The important thing is that you have a claim (think “because”). We will talk about claims in class, and you have plenty of student examples to look at on Canvas (but don’t plagiarize!).
  3. Outline, draft, revise, and edit your essay.

a. For this essay, you are required to use at least two quotes from at least two sources from your Mercury Reader readings (Carr, Richtel, Pogue, or Turkle), and at least one quote from one EBSCOHost source (that you find on your own, using suggestions from the unit lectures).
b. This means you will also have to have a Works Cited page, which will have three sources total (two readings plus one EBSCOHost source). Examples are on Canvas.

See the end for suggestions for if you want to use the option of using this to analyze your use in this time period of coronavirus.

In its final form, this essay should be approximately 1,000-1,200 words (3-4 full pages), MLA style.

Remember, analysis gets beyond the “I” perspective – start thinking about audience-based reasons for your thesis and claims you want to make. How can you convincingly analyze your own usage and technology’s influence in a more objective way, getting beyond the “I” narration and thinking about a bigger picture? (As always, avoid “you” – this isn’t advice to others; it’s an analysis of your own usage as well as culture at large.)

Note: Do NOT use sources other than your readings for this paper, please. I am interested in your analysis and thoughts on the readings, not what other people have to say.

You will earn your grade based on:

  • Organization: Clear thesis statement and topic sentences that relate to this thesisstatement; essay follows conventional structure; transitions are employed asappropriate
  • Development: Specific examples to support thesis and topic sentences; each paragraphis focused around a clear main idea; signal phrases indicate use of sources
  • Grammar/mechanics: Attention has been paid to editing conventions, resulting in fewand only minor errors within the text
  • MLA style and formatting: Length and formatting requirements met; Works Cited pagewith proper entries included.For this paper, because it is the third major assignment that introduces you to the level of standards required for this course, I will allow you one rewrite if you wish to improve your grade and have not already taken the rewrite option for either of your first two essays. You may earn up to an 88 percent on the rewrite. To be eligible for the rewrite, you must meet these criteria:
  • Have turned the final draft in by the deadline
  • Have turned in a rough draft
  • Not have plagiarized any part of your final draft
  • Turn your rewrite in within one week of the date your paper is returnedIf these criteria are not met, you are ineligible for the rewrite. There is a separate box in the gradebook for rewritten assignments. This is the last assignment eligible for rewrites this semester.Some possible prewriting questions for you to think about:
  1. What did I spend the most time doing over the 24-hour period and why?
  2. Did I neglect homework, housework, or other responsibilities in favor oftechnology? If so, why?
  3. Did I use technology in any situations where I probably shouldn’t have (such as driving or the classroom)? If so, why?
  4. Why is my technology so important to me?
  5. Am I more comfortable spending my time using technology than I am doingother things? If so, why?
  6. Did anything about my log surprise me? Did I expect how much time I reallyspent using technology?
  7. How do my family and friends influence my technology usage? What aboutwork?
  8. Do I think that my technology usage plays a positive or negative role in my life?If it’s positive, how so? If it’s negative, what can I do about that, if anything?

* — This prewriting is NOT the same as a draft of your essay. You should not write one paragraph for each question and then turn that in as an essay. Instead, these questions are meant to generate ideas for you to think about as you attempt to draft an essay with a main idea and supporting reasons. You need to have a thesis statement about your technology use and what influences it, and these questions may help get you there. The bulk of the essay should not be “here’s what all I did.” I want to see you moving into more analysis and less narrative – think about the why, not just the what and how. Example essays are available on Canvas.

Details about the expanded option:

As I mentioned in my Sunday announcement/message, I thought it might be an interesting and timely idea to give you another option for essay 3 and analyzing your technology use.

Again, a lot of students like to take multiple opportunities to compare usage and see what they discover and how they think it might compare to others and what they observe in culture around them. So, this is a new opportunity – you could maybe think about how you would regularly use technology compared to the past week (and into the upcoming weeks) and analyze that way.

Remember that the key is that you’re making a because analytical claim that answers a question of why. I’m not interested in a big rundown of what you spent your time doing. What I’m interested in is why you did it, and what that tells you about the world around you. I’m interested in your critical thoughts and analysis. I’m interested in whether you see what Carr does – that so many bits and bytes of information affect our brain and thought patterns

(cognitive impatience), or whether you see what Richtel does – that so much multitasking can become commonplace but also produce effects that we may not be aware of, or what Turkle does – that so much reliance on our phones has made us less dependent on and connected with each other.

Here are some possible suggestions.

I offer you, then, another possible option for this essay: What if you took a look at analyzing the cultural impact of technology right now, when we are dealing with this coronavirus rapidly spreading and into what the World Health Organization has declared a pandemic?

  • Do you use it to stay connected to others in a time of “social distancing”?
  • Are you using it to share information?
  • Are you using it to help your kids learn if they are out of school – or do you plan to (I’malready collecting a list of resources)?
  • Is it going to be essential to you to use technology now that MACC has shifted its face-to-face classes to remote through April 6?
  • Are you feeling overwhelmed because of the sheer amount of information? Does itseem like a nonstop onslaught? How is that affecting your mental health or the mentalhealth of the nation?
  • Any similar track, as long as it considers not just what is happening or what you aredoing with your technology usage, but WHY. (That’s the key question of analysis: Why? Because …)Again, you can stick to the assignment as it is written – or, if you want to take it in a different analytical direction, one that feels more timely to you right now, you should feel free. I’m willing to give some more latitude with this assignment under these particular circumstances and give you the chance to analyze for yourself. Think about what because claim you can come up with.For current information, EBSCOHost is probably not your best use, unless you use the newspaper databases, which should be updated every few days. Here’s an easier solution: The Washington Post is making a number of its news articles free so that people can have reliable, accurate, ongoing news:https://www.washingtonpost.com/coronavirus/If you use one or two, please cite them. You would follow this pattern:

page4image11595584

Author (last name, first name). “Title of Article, in Quotation Marks.” The Washington Post 12 March 2020 (copyright date). http://www.washingtonpost.com (URL). Accessed 15 March 2020 (access date).

All of this information would be in these articles, because the Washington Post is one of the nation’s most well-established, accountable newspapers. They don’t publish what they can’t verify from a minimum of two sources.

See the next document for how to cite Washington Post sources. I’ll give you a few examples there.

these are the sources

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