Eric Drown – Page 2 – ENG 110-O1 Summer 2020

Paper 2 – Emerging Adults and Social Media

Essential Question: How is social media impacting the human development of emerging adults?

Write a paper in which you write about how social media impacts the development of emerging adults. You’ll use the work of Konnikova, Henig, and your classmates, as well as your own ideas and experiences, to construct your own theory of how social media impacts the development of emerging adults.

In making your argument, draw on and develop your pre-writing and entering-the-conversation work done over the last several classes. That work focused on definitions of adulthood and emerging adulthood, the social and cultural changes in which emerging adulthood emerged, your own experiences as emerging adults, and the way social media might be a mixed blessing for emerging adults.

Your audience is a general reader who has NOT read Henig, Konnikova or your classmate’s work, nor thought much about the evolving nature of friendship or adulthood.

Your purpose is to advance your own perspective (view or argument) on how social media use impacts the development of emerging adults by synthesizing and responding to the ideas presented by Henig, Konnikova and at least one classmate. Be sure to analyze relevant examples from their texts and your own experiences.

Expectations:

Use this Google Docs template to set up your manuscript in MLA style.
Write a paper of 1,000 words or more in which you develop your perspective on how social media may be shaping the development of emerging adults
Briefly introduce Henig and Konnikova and the questions and issues that are raised when considering their work together. Do this in a way that leads readers to your initial perspective on the driving question of your paper.
Incorporate quotes from Henig and Konnikova and 1 from one of your classmate’s pre-writing.
Incorporate a least one moment in your essay in which you “play the believing game,” write about the merits of someone’s idea you find difficult to accept, and respond to those merits with complicating points of your own (or from one of your classmates). PRO TIP: Use Barclay’s Formula and Okay, But templates to help structure this.
Plant a naysayer in your essay
Engage the question of the mixed blessing of social media as a way for emerging adults to meet the developmental needs of their phase of life.
Document your sources using MLA style, with signal phrases, in-text parenthetical references, and a Works Cited page to signal your use of other writers’ words.

Information needed to write a MLA-style citation for “What Is It About 20-Somethings?”

Author: Robin Marantz Henig Article title: “What Is It About 20-Somethings?” Magazine title: New York Times Magazine Date Published: August 18, 2010

On “What Is It About 20-Somethings?” – Pre-writing 3

Respond in 3 lengthy paragraphs to the prompt below.

First, summarize Henig’s view, then use your own experience and quotes from Henig and Konnikova to frame your responses using Yes, No, or Okay, But and naysayer templates.

Prompt:

According to Henig, one of the elements of emerging adulthood is a focus on exploring one’s passions and life goals.

In what ways might social media and the internet facilitate these goals?

In your response, include and respond to the view to a naysayer who argues that social media sites like Instagram distract emerging adults (and others) from pursuit of their own unique passions and goals by serving them images of “influencers” whose sites seem designed to sell products and lifestyles to them.

Entering the Conversation – 4

Use what you learned reading “Skeptics May Object” to engage your classmates in written conversation about “What Is It About 20-Somethings?” and “The Limits of Friendship.

Deepen your understanding of the connections between Henig and Konnikova by composing lengthy paragraph responses to your classmates’ posts.

Expectations:

Respond to at least two different classmates’ posts.
Use your response to deepen our collective understanding of and thinking about the connections between “What Is It About 20-Somethings?” and “The Limits of Friendship.”
Use the fundamental They Say/I Say structure in your paragraphs.
Use templates from They Say/I Say to incorporate at least one naysayer in each response.
Incorporate quotes from “What Is It About 20-Somethings” and “The Limit of Friendship” in each response.
Use pivotal words to connect sentences.
Use well-chosen signal verbs.

On “What Is It About 20-Somethings” – Pre-writing 2

In this pre-writing activity, we’ll begin to make connections between what Henig (and Arnett) says about emerging adults and what Konnikova says about the limits of friendship.

Respond in lengthy paragraphs to each of the following prompts. Use what you’ve learned so far about summarizing, quoting, and responding to integrate your ideas with those of Henig and Konnikova.

To help you better structure your responses, use Barclay’s Formula for working with two or more sources.

Is there a generational component to the ability to connect in a digital age? By generational component, I mean differences between generations who reached adulthood before the emergence of always-on portable internet and those who reached after? How might emerging adults challenge the conventional understanding of the Dunbar number? Synthesize what you learned reading Henig and Konnikova to create your own answer to these questions.
Considering what Henig says in paragraphs 3, 7, and 8 about the real-world living conditions and psychological drives of emerging adults and what Konnikova says about the utility of “weak ties” in paragraph 6 of her article, how might friendships maintained through social media actually fulfill important needs for emerging adults? Be sure to summarize the relevant ideas from each writer before building on their work.

Expectations:

Incorporate at least one quote from Henig and one quote from Konnikova in each response
Use the Barclay’s Formula structure
Incorporate at least one “Okay, But” moment in one of your paragraphs

Entering the Conversation – 3

In this activity you are going to use what you learned reading “Yes / No / Okay, But” to engage your classmates in written conversation about “What Is It About 20-Somethings?”

Compose chunky responses listed below to your classmates’ posts here. Your responses should meet the expectations below.

Expectations:

Respond to at least two different classmates’ posts.
Use your response to deepen our collective understanding of and thinking about “What Is It About 20-Somethings?”
Use the fundamental They Say/I Say structure in your paragraphs – which means using what you know about summarizing, paraphrasing and quoting to summarize what your classmates say before responding to their points. Look back to Entering The Conversation – 2 for review.
Use templates from They Say/I Say to incorporate at least one “Yes” or “No” moment in each response.
Use templates from They Say/I Say to incorporate at least one “Okay, But” moment in at least one response.
Incorporate at least one quote from “What Is It About 20-Somethings” in at least one response.
Use pivotal words to connect sentences.
Use well-chosen signal verbs.

On “What Is It About 20-Somethings?” – Pre-writing 1

Activities like this one are designed to help you improve your understanding of the readings and generate ideas to write about in your formal papers.

This activity contributes directly to your Writing Process grade (10%) and your Active Reading grade (10%) and indirectly to your paper grade (9%), but you can also demonstrate MLA citation skills, control of Sentence-level Error skills, and Integrating Your Ideas with Those of Other Writers skills.

Respond in lengthy paragraphs to each of the following prompts. With the exception of question 4, use the They Say/I Say structures you’ve learned to incorporate key concepts and brief quotations from Henig in your responses.

What is emerging adulthood?
- Henig defines and develops the concept in multiple locations in the essay. You’ll need to pull materials together from different parts of the essay to answer this question well. Be sure to attribute ideas to the people they belong to, not just to Henig. You will likely need to name Jeffrey Jensen Arnett and other psychologists in your answer.
What are the key milestones that indicate someone has reached adulthood? Use these to develop your own definition of adulthood.
How have cultural and economic changes in society shaped the lives of emerging adults? What might be the economic impact of recognizing emerging adulthood as a life-stage that needs to be accommodated by society?
What do you expect your life will be like in your twenties?

Peer Review

The purpose of peer review in a composition class is to give your classmates feedback on their arguments, ideas, and expression so that they can revise and improve their essay.

You’ll provide feedback by inserting comments directly into your classmates’ Google Docs and by writing an end-comment summarizing your advice.

Writers need feedback at two levels: the global level and the local level.

Global feedback focuses on the quality of the ideas, evidence, and arguments made and how well the paper is organized. Changes made in one part of the paper tend to require changes made in other parts of the paper.

Local feedback focuses on paragraph and sentence-level issues that may limit the development of a writer’s ideas or impede the reader’s ability to understand the writer.

Consult the peer review rubric and the sample comment below for helpful information that can guide you as you provide global and local feedback to your classmates.

A good comment will:

Be generous and considerate in tone;
Describe what you see or think as a reader, leading to a diagnosis of a problem or description of an improvement to be made;
Suggest a specific strategy for improvement;
Provide additional insight by: asking leading questions, providing further detail, suggesting specific materials for inclusion, or engaging in dialogue with the writer.
Indicate whether this is a high-, medium-, or low-priority issue.

Though written under slightly different guidelines, this student-written comment is good example of what I’m looking for:

In an end comment, write some sentences that give the writer an idea of your overall impression or general effect of the paper. If you can, explain the central insight you have gotten from the paper as a careful reader. Make suggestions about what improvements the writer should prioritize as s/he continues to develop his or her paper’s argument in global revision.

Paper 1 – Social Media and Friendship

Essential Questions: How does social media change the nature of relationships such as friendships? To what degree should (or shouldn’t) we be concerned about this evolution of friendship?

Write a paper in which you evaluate the quality of relationships in the digital age, drawing from the work of Maria Konnikova and one of your classmates.

In making your argument, draw on and develop your pre-writing and entering-the-conversation work done over the last several classes. That work focused on the qualities of friendship, your own experiences with friendship and social media, and the impacts of virtual friendships.

Your audience is a general reader who has NOT read Konnikova or your classmate’s work, nor thought much about the evolving nature of friendship in the digital age. They do however have considerable experience with friendship in general and social media.

Your purpose is to advance your own perspective (view or argument) on what Konnikova and your classmate tell us about friendship and social media by synthesizing their ideas and analyzing relevant examples from their texts and your own experiences.

Consider using your classmate’s writing to confirm or complicate Konnikova’s view or your own.

Expectations:

Use this Google Docs template to set up your manuscript in MLA style.
Write a paper of 1,000 words or more in which you develop your perspective on how social media may be changing the nature of friendship.
Briefly introduce Konnikova and the questions and issues she raises in her article in a way that leads readers to your initial perspective on the question.
Incorporate 3 quotes from Konnikova and 1 from one of your classmate’s pre-writing in a series of They Say/I Say exchanges.
Incorporate a least one moment in your essay in which you “play the believing game,” write about the merits of someone’s idea you find difficult to accept, and respond to those merits with complicating points of your own (or from one of your classmates).
Engage Konnikova’s concerns about social skill development and Dunbar’s research on the nature of friendship.
Document both sources (Konnikova and your classmate) using MLA style, with signal phrases, in-text parenthetical references, and a Works Cited page to signal your use of other writers’ words.

Information needed to write a MLA-style citation for “The Limits of Conversation”

Author: Maria Konnikova Article title: “The Limits of Friendship” Magazine title: The New Yorker Date Published: October 7, 2014

On “The Limits of Friendship” – Pre-writing 3

Respond in lengthy paragraphs to each of the following prompts. Use what you’ve learned about the arts of summarizing and quoting to give Konnikova’s ideas a fair but critical hearing.

You’ll use the same basic structure in each of your responses.

First, use the arts of summarizing and quoting to convey her view to a reader who hasn’t read the article. Your reader should be able to understand her view without having to read the article.

Next, help your reader understand the sources of her views and why her views are worth taking seriously, whether you agree with them or not. You may need to provide your reader with information from earlier in the article to help them understand that her views are based in her careful consideration of ideas, facts, and viewpoints.

Then, having given her ideas a fair hearing, use the “They Say/I Say” templates from “Entering the Conversation” to respond to her views. Remember, the They Say/I Say exchange should happen more than once in each response and be focused around related ideas, deepening your reader’s understanding with each exchange.

In paragraph 7, Konnikova points to the importance of shared experiences for friendship. Convey and consider her view and respond.
In paragraphs 9-11, Konnikova reports on Dunbar’s research on the role of touch in social bonding in order to suggest that virtual connections may not bond people in friendship as effectively as in person connections. Convey and consider her view and respond.
In the last paragraph of her essay, Konnikova worries that “some social skills may not develop as effectively when so many interactions exist online” (para. 13). Convey and consider her view and respond.

In order not to lose work from an unexpected glitch, don’t compose your answers in the Leave a Reply box below this post. Instead, compose and save your answers in a word processor or Google Docs and then copy-and-paste your responses into the Leave a Reply box.

Entering the Conversation – 2

In this activity you are going to use what you learned reading “The Art of Summarizing” and “The Art of Quoting” to engage your classmates in written conversation about “The Limits of Friendship.” You’ll post your replies here, but keep reading.

Your responses to classmates’ posts should start by summarizing their overall view and then narrow down to to some specific point they make. Remember, as Graff and Birkenstein told us, good summaries “play the believing game” by fairly and accurately representing the views of other writers (31). They also have “a focus or spin that allows the summary to fit with your own agenda” (34). When summarizing and quoting, be sure to choose effective signal verbs from pp. 40-41 or 39-40 (depending on which edition you have) to introduce your summary.

As you narrow into your classmates’ more specific point, choose relevant quotes from their posts and frame them to set up your consideration of what they say and your response. They Say/I Say addresses quote framing on or around pp. 45-50 depending on which edition you have. As you work to confirm, complicate, or challenge some of your classmates’ ideas, use some of the pivotal words in this list at the beginnings of your sentences to connect your points to theirs.

Expectations:

Respond to at least two different classmates’ posts.
Use the fundamental They Say/I Say structure in your paragraph
Use specific templates drawn from “The Art of Summarizing” and “The Art of Quoting” to frame your quotations
Use pivotal words