Hey guys, just wrote a practice LA essay and went way overtime, but would appreciate if you could mark it
It is the first article here: REMOVED Btw, I got the gender of the writer wrong in some places hahaha, it's meant to be she.
I have some questions
1. What would you give this out of 10?
2. What are the main things I should work on?
3. I am really having trouble with timing and with making sure I achieve full coverage of the material under timed conditions. My piece is way too long (1591 words!!) but I don't know where I would cut things down. Could you literally put a strike through parts of my piece that aren't necessary?
4. For some reason the start of the analysis always take me like half an hour, because most of the time it doesn't directly feed into the contention - it often seems to be more expository/introducing the topic (eg: here, the question 'How connected are you?' doesn't make the contention clear, it just kind of introduces the issue.). Therefore, am I correct in saying that when this happens, I should speak about the start of the piece, but only briefly, then quickly move onto things that feed into the contention? Is the way I did that in this essay okay?
Here it is - thanks in advance! I put each 'unit' of analysis on a new line just so I could check that I didn't forget to comment on technique/quote/etc. in any of the units.
At a school assembly in Broadway High School, Kylie Noble, the President of the Student Representative Council, spoke on behalf of the Council. Embracing a tone that vacillates between conversational colloquialism and strident critique, Noble uses her speech to advocate to the student body present at the assembly, notably those who are highly dependent on their phones, that though our increasingly connectedness and reliance on technology sacrifices genuine human communication, the potency of social media can be tamed for the betterment of lives around the world. He endeavours to garner support for the SRC Care Action, spurring them to follow the instructions in a message they will receive about supporting CARE, and to thus take action to reverse toxic and meaningless forms of communication. Thus Nobel propels them to avail themselves of media’s positive potential through CARE, by inciting change in the community.
Noble fires his key argument that the younger generation is too attached to technology, by planting the rhetorical question ‘How connected are you?’ in students’ minds, which is augmented by the bold text on his accompanying slide. Infused with a questioning and vernacular tone, he hopes to generate reflection on the integral role that technology plays in the students’ lives.
By following this question with a likely answer – that students would quote their ‘Facebook friend count’ – Noble employs hypophora to generate a strong sense of the prevalence of technology and social media in students’ lives, encouraging students to confront their increasing inter-connectedness and dependence on online connections.
Having cemented the prominence of media in students’ lives to them, Noble shifts to a definitive, unequivocal statement that we are becoming the ‘least humanly connected generation’. Here, by subverting his previously-established definition of ‘emails’ and ‘likes’ as true connection (better: by subverting ‘emails’ and ‘likes’ as the definition of true connection), Noble seeks to instigate a paradigm shift in students, challenging them to reconsider their previous value of online connection, and to perhaps view them as a deficient substitute for the creation of meaningful bonds.
This ‘danger’ is given visual reinforcement by the accompanying slide, which depicts a teenage boy and girl holding their phones to their faces. The way the image of lips on their phone screens complete their faces feeds into Noble’s belief that ‘we are the most connected generation’, implying that technology is impeding on our ability to truly connect with each other. The bitter ‘irony’ that students’ tools for communication – their mouths – are embedded in a screen – and the fact that they are gazing unflinchingly at the camera and fail to acknowledge each other’s presence – confronts students with a graphic image of the ‘frightening’ perils of technology in robbing humanity of the ability to interact with each other. In this light, students are implored to repudiate electronics as trivial forms of communication, and to thus be more inclined to engage in face-to-face conversation.
Noble persists in his attempt to alert students to the inadequacy of online forms of communication, when she recounts how ‘[texting]…in [her] own home’ drives [her] parents insane’. This transition from a global focus on the younger generation to a personal, colloquial voice refrains from alienating students still ambivalent or insistent on the vitality of technology, and may lead them to feel satisfied and understood if they have also experienced parents’ ‘loopy’ reproach of technology use. As Noble declares how he ‘actually got’ the ‘bigger picture’ of his parents’ judgement – that ‘genuine human communication is being usurped by ‘bland words’ – she widens her target audience to adult members of her audience such as teachers and the Principal. By engendering pride and contentment in adults critical of an over-reliance of technology that their concerns are being voiced, Noble seeks to gain parents’ trust and enhance their view of her as an intelligent, rational debater who is worthy of leading the SRC. Simultaneously, she uses a universal experience of teenagers, of being chided by parents, to cultivate a sense of solidarity amongst students, and to unite them in a shared understanding for their parents’ attitude and the jeopardies of an addiction to technology.
By then seguing from empirical evidence to the use of factual detail, declaring that ’47 percent of teenagers’ claimed ‘their social life would end’ without texting, Noble adds weight to his argument with the objectivity of numerical facts.
To magnify this sense of reliability, he aligns his opinion with an ‘eminent psychologist’, citing her description of technology as ‘superficial communication’ which is ‘replacing quality social interaction’, which is displayed in bold text on his next slide. In turn, he gives students some reason to feel pride in their decision to share her condemnation of ‘mindless web surfing’, assuring them that her opinion of technology is shared by someone of high prestige and expert opinion.
To bolster this sense of technology’s ‘overwhelming and depressing’ power, Noble includes a fear-mongering image of a baby lying on his back, grasping a phone to his mouth as a substitute for a milk bottle. The binary opposition of the natural and the ‘superficial’ – of the baby’s vulnerable stance and wide-eyed, innocent expression and the nefarious, man-made tool in his hand – engenders a visceral response in students, triggering them to view technology as an ‘evil little machine’ and ‘god’ inundating our future generation with mindless communication.
Imbued in the distressing portrait is a blatant appeal to our primitive humanitarian instinct to nurture and protect younger generations, capitalising upon students’ fears and instincts about the greater good of their future children. Noble thus instils a sense of defiance and determination to reverse the decline in real communication, invigorating them to be more vigilant in promoting genuine conversation and spending less time online.
The slide seems to substantiate Noble’s description of how her phone ‘controls’ her. Here, the strongly connotative word ‘controls’, laden with implications of freedom being unjustly stifled, is divisive in strategy, enabling Noble to characterize phones as sinister villains robbing humanity of sincere relationships. Students are thus further impelled to reject an overuse of technology.
Fully aware that students are now likely to be feeling disillusioned and despondent, Noble changes tactics and shifts the focus of his argument on technology’s potential to be ‘a good thing’, to refrain from casting herself as too biased and parochial, marked by an abated, rational tone.
The gruesome imagery of ‘horrifying disfigurement’ of Indian women, teamed with Noble’s signing of ‘an online petition’ which prompted a drop in the number of acid attacks’, ingrains a sense of hope and optimism in students that phones can be ‘a force for good’ to combat global crises. Hence, they are probed to be inspired by Noble’s personal experience of instigating positive change and ‘making connections’ through technology, and are enticed to join organisations such as ‘Fired-up’ themselves.
Shifting from a personal voice dominated by the use of first person, Noble shifts to a focus on the SRC’s attempt to ‘harness’ the power of social media. When describing the SRC as ‘[the students’] Student Action Team’, Noble creates a sense of co-dependency between the students and their governing body, endearing students to the SRC by implying that the group is speaking on behalf of the students.
To accentuate this notion of trust, Noble uses the active voice in divulging how the SRC has ‘decided to harness the power of social media’, punctuated by the active verb ‘harness’ which calls to mind heroism and courage, and offers a counterpoint to the way phones ‘[control]’ humans. Thus, she portrays the team as an admirable and powerful harbinger and force of change with great potential to ‘help end hunger’. Here, she plays on the intrinsic human desire to help those in need, predisposing students to align themselves with the SRC by supporting their ‘CARE’ project.
To exemplify this, the words ‘Connect And Reach Everyone’ shown on the third slide present the project as a powerful initiative dedicated to ‘making a difference’, further establishing acclamation and ovation for CARE and the SRC.
At this point, Noble delivers a direct address to students with the unembellished, declarative statement ‘We need your help’. Given that students are now likely to be feeling admiration and a deep desire to join organisations like Fired-up and support the SRC’s CARE project, the rallying phrase functions as a call to arms for proactiveness and loyalty.
To bolster this, the ‘If…then’ statement that follows awakens a sense of individual responsibility in students to help ‘CARE’ go viral, whilst also launching an appeal to group loyalty and camaraderie. In this way, students are encouraged to view ‘[following] the instructions in the message from CARE as an exciting challenge challenge with great potential to make a global impact, and to thus assiduously wait for the message.
In her final bid to bring agreement with the SRC’s ideologies of international impact and ‘influence’ in creating CARE, Noble’s tone grows in conviction as vibrantly optimistic, emboldening phrases such as ‘potential’, ‘echoes throughout the world’ and ‘changes things for the better’ creep into the piece. Through encapsulating and celebrating students’ potential to ‘make connections’ beyond their ‘own back yard’, Noble issues a challenge to students to use their phones for causes ‘worthy of attention’, invigorating them to have the audacity to ardently support CARE.
To amplify this inspirational notion, with the repetition of the inclusive chant ‘we’, the anaphora in sentence structure seeks to repeatedly instill into students a feeling of collective responsibility, fueling an aspiration to engage their efforts together to incite change in society, and to combat the superficial and toxic prevalence of using phones as a ‘mindless distraction’.
MOD EDIT: copyrighted material removed. I know this is from your school, but the link is clearly only meant for students of the school.
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