Unit 3: Interacting with Texts Assignment

Unit 3: Interacting with Texts / Eng. 102, Jack Christian
Genre: Documented Argument  Length: 3-4 pages

NEW MEDIA: In this unit we will consider New Media and its effects on society.

Assignment / Process: For this essay, you will first choose which essay to respond to, either “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” or “Why I Blog.”

Then, you will choose 1-2 sentences from the essay that you find most important, most interesting, most troubling, etc.

In writing your paper, you will want to 1) explain why these sentences are meaningful in the context of the argument made by their author, 2) why/how they relate to New Media as you understand it.

Next, you’ll need to find 2-3 examples of writing, web-content, or other New Media phenomena that illustrate, expand, complicate, suggest a way to revise, or even refute the argument from “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” or “Why I Blog?” that you are analyzing.

Examples might include comments on a blog post, a photograph, an element of a book, a story in a newspaper, an element from a facebook page, something from another website we’ve looked at in class…

It is important that you explain and analyze each example and that you connect your analysis back to the original quotation you have chosen, i.e. tell how your example confirms, furthers, expands, refigures, etc the sentences you have chosen to respond. For each example, this may take one, or Several, paragraphs.

The most successful essays will use manage to spark an interesting conversation between themselves and the writer they are responding to, in conjunction with several well-chosen, complicating examples.


Schedule:
10/5: “Why I Blog,” 1-page informal response. Come to class with your two sentences already chosen.
10/7: No Class
10/10: Columbus Day
10/12: Complete Initial Draft Due, Peer-editing. Bring 2 COPIES!
10/12 – 10/14: Small Group Conferences beside Subway
10/17: Revised Draft Due.
10/19: Final Draft Due