Taking it Further Activities:
“Remember Me” by Sam Trimbone : Speech to class about the dangers of social media obsessions, p. 63
Arguments and Techniques
Step 1: Examine Sam’s persuasive/reasoning techniques
Views: Sam advises /warns/exhorts/implores students to refrain from using social media sites because they are an unnecessary distraction and undermine educational opportunities.
- Personal real life examples: students in class, and students at home
- Teacher’s personal/professional experience
- Psychologist’s professional observation
- Attacking devices – attacking social media and students who obsessively use social media
- Stereotype – students using social media
- Figurative language – image of a butterfly learner
- Rhetorical: Is this the best way to learn
- Appeals to responsibility and time management ; good learning habits
- Words: “cutting edge students” – (obsessive – “ I was hooked”)
- Tone: dogmatic; solicitous, accusatory, censorious (adopts the high moral ground); high-minded; passionate; conversational; forthright; determined; resolute; solicitous; candid
- Values: to remind students about their roles and responsibilities; opportunities and future; time-management skills; responsibility
Step 2: Taking it further; Group together common techniques/purpose
1. Sam’s evidence: personal / professional observations. He uses this evidence to analyse a problem: the students, teachers, their attitudes and behaviour
- Self: Year 11: “I was hooked”: anti-social in the home; obsessively addicted to social media; indifferent; lazy and rude (impertinent) to his mother (family example) ;
- Students: indifferent, secretive, surreptitiously concealing books; deceptive; dissembling; (rhetorical question)
- Teacher’s experience: students are indifferent; careless; lazy; disrespectful behaviour (smartphones) (students are nonchalant; insouciant); apathetic
- Psychologist’s observation; “butterfly” students; purposeless; disconnected; behaviour is desultory; unmethodical; (image – figurative language)
- Purpose: remind them of their responsibilities; to shame them into action; to make them fearful about lost opportunities; To jolt students out of their sense of complacency; to alarm unsuspecting or naïve students; to unsettle students who ….
Write a paragraph on Sam’s evidence (as above) and its purpose
(Intersperse quotes and references to purpose etc. ) Sam relies on a combination of personal and professional experience to … … Firstly, in a candid, conversational tone, Sam divulges his own personal experience in a bid to (warn/admonish his young adult audience members about the serious dangers of social media addictions) . . . Likewise, he refers to the activities in the classroom to shame disrespectful students, who surreptitiously try to conceal their online activities. The psychologist’s evaluation of young adults also seeks to unsetttle all those students who are displaying dysfunctional learning habits.
OR
2. Group together Sam’s attacking devices: appeals; criticisms; tone
Explain who and what Sam is criticising and why?
- Students : their addictive behaviour on social media
- Criticises students’ casual indifference; Appeals to time-management etc. suggest that students should be more responsible
- Rhetorical – accusatory/critical tone: “Is this really the best way to learn” ; kids; a learning system that enables students to be anti-social and distracted;
- Stereotypes: Encourage students to oppose/subvert/ go against the stereotypical image of social-media obsessed students.
Write a paragraph on Sam’s attacking devices
(Intersperse quotes and references to purpose etc. ) By appealing to values such as time management and responsibility, Sam (shames those who fail to take advantage of their opportunities in the classroom and who compromise/jeopardise their future) . . . Sam uses the stereotypical image of the social-media obsessed students to show their foolish attitude to learning… He thereby seeks to challenge students who … . The rhetorical question, “…. “ is directed at all those students who surreptitiously conceal their social media activities under the desk. Such examples seek to expose the degree of indifference and their disrespectful attitudes . . .
- See Quick Answers to Sam’s Speech: Exercise 36, p. 63
- Return to Green Online Study Exercise Program