Week 7 Overview Transcript

Welcome to this new week, student writers!

This week we will begin with a lesson on tone and style. As a college-level writer, you must learn to strike a balance between overly pretentious, stuffy writing and conversational, informal writing. This lesson on tone and style, then, will show you that successful, academic writing should follow the four C’s of effective communication; it should be clear, complete, correct, and concise. Once you finish that lesson, you will be ready to take the quiz on tone and style. In this quiz, you will be asked to revise sentences in order to eliminate wordiness, clichés, or slang. So, take your time with this lesson and please do not be afraid to make major changes to the sentences in the quiz in order to make them as clear and concise as possible.

In addition, this week, you will be reading the second two readings associated with the first prompt for the effects-based argument; this is the prompt that asks you to consider how technology affects social relationships or identity. You may or may not end up choosing this prompt, but it’s important that you read all four readings associated with it regardless because you will likely review at least one classmate’s draft about this prompt. Plus, you are also going to discuss all four readings in this week’s discussion board. As you will find out, some of the authors believe technology such as social media, the internet, and smartphones have been incredibly damaging to social relationships. These authors argue that we are quickly losing face to face communication skills when we rely heavily on social media to connect with our family and friends. They also think that creating the perfect identity on social media has led some users to experience depression and anxiety. In contrast, others believe that social media sites may be helping users overcome their shyness and develop significant relationships. In fact, some believe social media and the internet can actually combat anxiety. This week, you will get to read these various arguments and then decide for yourself what you think.

We are also giving you an opportunity this week to start brainstorming some ideas for your essay. This brainstorming/prewriting activity is an independent, non-graded exercise, but we think brainstorming a list of 10-25 effects of technology on either social relationships or intelligence this week will help you maintain your own voice when you draft your essay over the next few weeks.

Finally, our grammar assignments in LaunchPad will help you learn how to use pronouns correctly. Pronoun-antecedent errors occur when the pronoun does not match the noun it’s replacing in either number or gender. Pronoun reference errors occur when it is unclear what the pronoun is referring to. Pronoun errors are some of the most common and most frequent errors that we see in student writing, so we hope you work carefully through the LaunchPad unit on pronouns so that you can start avoiding pronoun errors in your writing.

I wish you a productive week of continued learning (and writing), and don’t forget that reply posts in discussion are due on Sunday!