Paper 2 Introduction

The paper two introduction should answer two questions.

1. What are you observing?
2. Why do you want to observe it?

You can include the thesis statement either at the end of the introduction or the beginning of the body.

Example:
I observed the clientele at Hong Kong Disneyland during the weekend of October 24. I was interested in Hong Kong Disneyland because its visitors come from a wide variety of places. There are Southeast Asians, Mainland Chinese, Hong Kongese, Taiwanese, Australian, etc. I'm interested in how the park is able to entertain this many different types of people, and I'm interested in how people behave in large groups at a family theme park, especially when the people are from varied backgrounds.
Thesis statement example: Hong Kong Disneyland is able to entertain a wide variety of clients because it is well organized and because it concentrates on extralinguistic forms of entertainment: all of the park visitors can enjoy the attractions in the same way no matter what language they speak.

Comma Rules and Notes on the Paper 1 Re-Write

The Comma

1.

A comma separates items in a list.
--I invited Sean, John, and Don to the party.

2.

A comma comes after an introductory clause or word.
When I was young, I was always sick. However, I still had good school attendance.

3.

A comma precedes a coordinating conjunction.
--John is very strong, yet he is not very aggressive.

4.

A comma separates an appositive from the rest of the sentence.
--Sean, my teacher, thinks he is funny and smart and handsome.
--NTU, a major University in Taiwan, is located near Gongguan station in Taipei City.

5.

A comma separates the addressee from the rest of the sentence.
--Did you know, Steve, that there is a basketball game tonight?
--“Comma splice”: A mistake in which you use a comma when you should use a period.
--Ted is very funny, he is always telling jokes.
“then” “and then”
-He went to the movies, then to the grocery store. <--Okay (Should be, “He went to the movies, and then he went to the grocery store.”)

Next Week: Paper 1 Rewrite

--Turn in the entire paper 1.
--Do not expect a lot of corrections from me.
--If your rewrite grade is better than your previous grades, you will get the new grade. If your rewrite grade is not better, you will keep the original grade.


--Do not commit these errors:
Mislabeling titles
--Awkward spacing. Format 12 font, double space.
--An introduction that is a list instead of a paragraph.

The director is Mike Nichols. The stars are Jay Chou and The Rock. (Yes!)

Director: Mike Nichols
Cast: Jay Chou
The Rock (No!)

Have a clear thesis statement at the end of the introduction.

Evaluative language, Evidence in Support of an Idea: Show why you make a claim. If you claim something is sad, say how it is sad.

--“This is one of the greatest movies of all time.” <--Too vague
--“I highly recommend this to anyone who likes action movies.” <--Better but still vague

--The audience expects the main character to be successful, so when the main character dies unexpectedly at the end of the movie, the audience cannot help but shed tears. <> (This explains that the movie is sad because we expected the character to succeed, but instead he dies. So this evaluation answers the "how" and "why" question well.)

Paper 1 Intro, Summary and Analysis example

--Introduction Example

Rebel Without a Cause is a 1955 American film. It was directed by Nicholas Ray. The cast includes James Dean, Sal Mineo and Natalie Wood. It is a good film because it looks intelligently at the emotional struggles of teenagers.

Summary Example

Jim Stark (James Dean) is a new High School student in Southern California. His family moves a lot because Jim gets in trouble often. He goes to a new High School, where he becomes friends with Plato (Sal Mineo), a shy boy whose parents have abandoned him. (His father does not live with him. His mother leaves for long periods of time. Only his mother’s black servant seems to care about him.) Jim gets in trouble with a gang during a school trip to the Planetarium. After a knife fight, Jim agrees to race the gang’s leader, Buzz, that night.

Buzz dies during the race. Jim takes Buzz’s girlfriend, Judy (Natalie Wood), home. Jim wants to turn himself in to the police, but his parents don’t want him to do that.

Jim goes to the police station, but the cop that he trusts is not there, so he goes back home. Judy is waiting for him. They go to an old house that Plato told Jim about. Plato meets them there, and for a time they pretend to be a family. Some of the gang comes to get them, and a frightened Plato takes a gun and starts to shoot at them.

The police come. Plato, still frightened, starts to shoot at the police as well. Jim tries to save Plato, but Plato is shot outside the Planetarium.

Analysis examples

The movie shows how teenagers feel helpless emotionally. One interesting example is the Planetarium’s show about the Earth. It is a very strange presentation about how the Earth will be destroyed and how the Universe will not care that the Earth is gone. We see that some of the students are scared by the show. Plato is especially scared: he even hides before the show is over. The Planetarium’s show is a metaphor for how teenagers feel. They think that they are alone and that no one understands them or cares about them.

Plato’s fear of the light show allows Plato and Jim to start talking about what they are afraid of. “What does he know about ‘Man alone’?” Plato says to Jim. This idea that no one understands Plato’s sense of loneliness again illustrates a common fear that young people have.

The movie also looks at teenagers’ need to have a sense of belonging. When Plato and Jim and Judy are all at the abandoned mansion, they pretend that they are a family, with Plato the son. But before they pretend to be a family, Plato pretends to be a real estate agent trying to rent the mansion to Jim and Judy. The three of them make jokes about how adults don’t like to listen to children. These scenes show that teenagers desire to have a sense of “family,” yet they feel that adults are not interested in making children part of their family.