Argument Essay Outline

          I remember when video games were first introduced into my life. I was about 5 years old when they were introduced to me. My dad bought a PlayStation 2 for my brother and I. Ever since then, I’ve always had a big passion for video games. Video games has always been a positive outlet for basically my whole life. The popularity in video games will always increase because even when the older kids grow up, they’ll still have some passion left in playing these games while as younger kids grow up, they will soon find this type of entertainment something that they cannot put down. With the popularity of video games, they’ll always be people who instead of looking at the positive aspects of video games, will focus on the negative aspects. Video games can teach people, especially young kids to make friends, learn to set goals, have confidence, have a competitive drive, and most importantly; to have fun. With these positive outcomes of video games, many people still see them as huge negatives. These people like to think that video games can cause laziness, obesity, and committing crimes in real life. From my experience, as someone who plays a lot of video games, I find myself contradictory to the previous statements. With laziness, the real question is; who isn’t lazy? Laziness is something that all humans have. Nobody wants to work 24/7 and are in need of some free time. Video games are an important past time for people with many positive outcomes.

 

Main points (positive aspects)

-          Endless entertainment

-          Learn to set goals from the achievements and unlockables in games

-          Make friends online

-          Method to bond with family members/friends

-          Learn about responsibilities

-          Have fun

Counter arguments for video games

-           Negatively affects social interaction

-          Leads to obesity

-          Makes laziness

Conclusion

-          Wrap up

-          summarize

 

Argument Introductions

          As someone who has been playing video games for almost my entire life, I’ve realized that so as long as video games exist, there will always exist a belief that video games influence violence in real life. From my perspective, I’ve used video games as entertainment along with coping with anger and depression. And I can’t be the only one. Many people view violent video games as huge influences to real life violence and crimes, but they have no correlation. Before video games were even invented, violence has always existed. As I mentioned, video games are nothing but a positive influence to people of all ages. Not only do they provide never ending entertainment, but also the opportunity to make friends online, build self-confidence, setting goals, learning to be competitive, and most importantly; having fun. With all of these positive outcomes from video games, violence in video games should never be compared to violence in real life.

 

          Violent video games has always been the most popular game type amongst people of all ages. To say that these video games are a huge influence to real life violence is complete craziness. If that were true, with millions of players of these violent games every day, there would be nonstop violence all around the world. People are so quick to blame video games considering many shootings involve teenagers who probably played video games. But if you compared the amount of people who play violent video games every day to the people who with mental instabilities, it’s clear to see what the real reason to real life violence is. Although these video games depict violence through shooting each other with guns, they don’t hold any influence to real life crime and shootings.

The Melting Pot of The World

          In the reading, “America: The Multinational Society”, talks about the diversity all around the world. As something that was written 30 years ago, the reading still holds up to present time. The reading holds up to present time because it’s impossible to change the past and history of our world. Certain events happened that will always hold a place amongst our history, good or bad. America has always been known as the melting pot of the world because of how diverse we are. The reading was primarily about diversity and the difference between certain races who live in a certain country but do not originate from there. The reading brings up a lot of events including the racism towards African Americans in the United States, the extermination of the Indian tribes in the early years of North America, and the rise of power of Adolf Hitler in Germany. Using these events as examples, he shows that even through these horrific events, America still has the ability to unite all of these different races in one country. While some countries primarily contain one race, our country has many people from all of the countries around the world. Even though the reading is 30 years old, it still holds up because not much has change in the past 30 years. The United States is united for a reason. The latest change was at towards the end of the 60s when African Americans received completely equal rights to the other inhabitants of the United States. The author also mentions the language barrier among our country. To be honest, there will always be a language barrier somewhere in the United States. There are constantly new immigrants coming to the country seeking a better life, but learning English is not easy. It’s a proven fact that the English language is not an easy language to learn so the language barrier will always be a thing. Overall, I think the reading is definitely viable even though it was written 30 years ago. Whether it be the different ethnic backgrounds or the language barrier in our country, this reading still holds the same power it had when it was written 30 years ago.

Professor rants about student rants

          In the reading, “7 Deadly Sins of Students”, the author is a college professor who talks about all of the common flaws that many students possess. Using the 7 Deadly Sins from the Bible, the author relates all 7 of them to problems that students have. To be honest, I have to agree with a lot of the points he’s made, but to me, it seems like he thinks that professors are perfect in teachings. Throughout the reading, the author brings up the website Ratemyprofessor. He mentions that most of these rates are rants about the teaching. The author quickly puts down these rants saying that they aren’t true and are bias because he thinks that the students posting on the website are just mad at their professor because of a bad grade. When he says this, I completely disagree with what he said. All throughout the reading until the last couple of sentences, he basically praises professors and how they have no flaws or errors. Throughout my education, I’ve had a good amount of bad teachers/professors. When professors read these comments and rants, they may not believe them because they think that they know everything about the course and that their students should only be blaming themselves for not doing well in their class. In my opinion, I think that’s completely wrong. As a student, my opinion is probably bias, but there are teachers out there who shouldn’t be qualified to be teaching their young students to be successful in the future. To add to that, as a professor, his opinions on students are obviously bias as well because throughout the reading, he seems to be only focusing on his “bad” students. It bothers me that he doesn’t mention that not all students share these 7 deadly sins. There are many students out there who exceptional with the real passion to learn in the classroom to become just as, if not more successful than their parents. Overall, I think the author is really bias and even though the reading was based on the bad qualities of students, the way he writes seems like he thinks that all students possess these 7 qualities.

 

Working until the End?

          In the reading, “Against Work”, the author goes in depth in his life on throughout his life, he has always been thinking about work even at a very young age. From wanting to become a football player at a young age, to changing his mind to be a writer in high school, there is always work to be done no matter what job you’re in.  He brings up that in America, people seem to work longer at an efficient level than other countries around the world. In the reading, the author talks about a lot of experiences and different kinds of people he’s met throughout his life. These different kinds of people have difference situations themselves in terms of their economic class and opinions on when to retire. The main theme in the reading seems to be about hating to work. The author doesn’t seem to understand how people can possibly love their job. The author seems to know people who have seemingly boring and mindless jobs who say that they can’t wait for Monday to get past to work. The author can understand people who are professional athletes, artists, or researchers, but anything else should be deemed a living hell to go back to work. The author, as a writer, reflects on other pieces of work such as a Voltaire quote. The quote said, “Work keeps us from three great evils, boredom, vice, and need.” I feel like these quote goes against everything that he says about working to make a living. The part of the reading that strikes me the most is the final personal narrative part he adds to the reading. He mentions that he is talking to another worker on his opinion on retiring at the age of sixty five. Deep down, the author knows he wants to retire at sixty two but he keeps his mouth shut knowing that the other guy is that guy who loves working. Overall, I think the author brings a strong point in his reading and with the use of personal narratives, he is able to indirectly relate to the reader and make a strong connection to make the reader understand where he is coming from.

Vegetarian Story/ Nurture of Nature

          In “Meatless Like Me”, I feel like the author was very open and effective in explaining his situation and his beliefs of living the life of a vegetarian. He starts his story by sharing an experience that can well lead perfectly into his story. He told the reader about how people looked at him differently for being a vegetarian and that he came off as strange to some officials and didn’t receive a scholarship because of it. Throughout the reading, the author successfully uses humor to show that vegetarian are really no different from omnivores or carnivores. He explained how he knows how people think he should be physically and mentally if he was a vegetarian but he quickly disposes that idea and explains that he’s normal just like everyone else. To make his justification for becoming a vegetarian, he compares eating meat with a bunch of obnoxious things. He uses this humor to show readers who look at vegetarians differently that he is just a normal guy. Just because he is a vegetarian, doesn’t mean he’s completely different and should be shamed in society. He brings up that he became a vegetarian because he ended becoming disgusted of the things producers do to animals to get the meat. I personally liked how he was able to sum of being a carnivore by calling them “people who eat things that had eyes”. He also makes a lot insults to people who look at him differently. He often uses inappropriate language to show that he isn’t some stuck up non meat eater who thinks that he’s better than everyone else just because he isn’t a savage meat eater. Also goes to show that he really is just a normal guy. From the beginning, you could tell this writing was some kind of journal entry or some free response writing. Its very casual and very effective in getting his point across. At the end of his story, he mentions that he was smoking weed while coming up with his writing entry and I could say I’m not surprised. I guess he made all of those crazy relations to meat eaters from having a clear mind on everything.

 

          In the reading, “The Nurture of Nature”, the author describes how not only is seeing the environment a pleasant view, but also a way to cope with stress and pain. Throughout the reading, the author brings up different research from different psychologist and they all state that seeing the environment provides nothing but healthy and positive feelings. In the reading, there are three different research studies ranging from driving through the scenic route, trees in the window of hospitals, or seeing the environment through the higher floors of buildings instead of pavement. Pretty much all of the research studies stated that seeing the environment helps people deal with stress, anger, depression, and sadness. It seems like the beauty of the environment is pleasant to the human eyes. Seeing something you like often makes you happy or feel good about yourself and there’s pretty much no one in the world who doesn’t enjoy the beauty of the outdoors. Whether it be a beautiful open field, or trees lined up with a road going through, everyone can appreciate seeing something nice. The reading is pretty short and only really talks about the different research studies. To improve the reading, the author could’ve went more in depth in explaining what patients and other people think about the environment and relate to their research studies. The author also didn’t explain what exactly the environment is actually doing to people. I feel like the author is just taking the outcomes of different studies and just puts them together to make it a read that people will enjoy.

Comments to Advertisement Analysis

French Smoking ad - I really liked reading your ad analysis for many reasons. First of all, I felt like you went really in depth in explaining the actual ad. I totally agree with everything you said. Another part i really enjoyed was the first paragraph. Considering this is a foreign ad, you successfully explained its origin along with giving tons of background information such as explaining the differences between French advertisements and American advertisements. I was able to understand everything you were explaining and you used a lot of rich language and vocabulary which keeps readers on their toes. I also liked how you still used the words in French in your analysis instead of just translating it and leaving out the French wording. Overall, I think you did an excellent job and my only concern with it might be the length, but that can easily be fixed for the final draft.

Sephora - I think you did a good job analyzing the ad. To start off, you started in the right direction by started with the actual magazine. I feel like this is best way to start to essay. Now that I think about it, on my ad analysis, I started with the ad and then I randomly went into the origin of the magazine towards the end randomly. I should probably fix that. But anyway, I liked your explanations primarily when you brought up the different ethnicities of the girls on the ad. I liked how you put it in saying Sephora doesn’t want any girls to feel secluded and that everyone can be beautiful with their products “together”. Overall, I think you did a great job and I don’t have any criticism for your work.

Outrage - I think you did a good job in your analysis because you had many strong points. First of all, i liked how you implicitly explained your ad. It really goes to show how these ads can really hide many subliminal messages if you think about it. I liked how you said the guy’s body is unrealistic because it shows that guys can’t instantly get a body to look similar to that. I also thought explaining the girl’s side to this ad was strong. Bringing up how girls expect potential dates to have bodies like that make men seem like they have to work hard to get girls. Another strong point you had was when you added a personal story to help you describe your ad. Stating that achieving a body like that ad requires tons of time and dedication along with simply consuming a workout product won’t instantly turn your body into a chiseled piece of art. Overall, you had many strong points and were successfully in analyzing the ad both implicitly and explicitly.