Linguistics Writing Assignment

Purpose of Assignment:

Apply the concepts of our course readings to real world situations, including real-world assignments from past courses at UCSB

Consider our past experiences and recognize which writing strategies may and may not be applied to university level writing 

Experience the entire writing process, from brainstorming (writing sample), to analyzing (through forums and ELI review), to outlining, to drafting, to revising, to providing peer feedback

Improve vocabulary and language skills through the revision process

Task:

Situation and audience: You have recently joined OISS’s international student mentorship program. This program puts current UCSB international students (like you) in touch with incoming freshmen who want to know more about university life and studies. Your audience, therefore, is your new mentee whom you have never met before. 

Purpose for writing: OISS has told you that your new mentee is interested knowing what they should expect in terms of university level writing. Therefore, your purpose for writing this letter is to 1. Introduce yourself to your mentee and 2. give this student a preview of what types of writing to expect in college by offering real examples from courses you have taken and 3. advice on how to successfully transition into university writing. 

To accomplish this purpose, first, briefly introduce yourself and describe your past writing instruction that you received and explain how university level writing is similar to or different* from the types of writing required by the SAT, TOEFL, or other writing high school writing assignments. 

After you have discussed this, evaluate, to what extent** your past writing instruction prepared you for university level writing. In order to support your argument, consider the types of prompts/assignments you received in high school  with assignments you have been given at UCSB. Feel free to use language from the prompts (if you still have them) or simply paraphrase what you were required to do. As you discuss these assignments,  draw on key concepts from our readings to develop your ideas.

*Depending on your experiences and opinions, you might only identify similarities or differences, but you may also choose to address both. 

**to what extent = how much. In order to answer this, you want to use words like “greatly prepared, did not prepare, somewhat prepared” in your response

Outlining:

Dos and Don’ts

Compare the following parts of an outline from different essays:

A. Sample Outline of a Body Paragraph:

Topic Sentence: Improving writing

Evidence: a quote from Sommers

Example: Writing 1

B. Sample Outline of a Body Paragraph:

Purpose of Second Body Paragraph (paragraph #4): Show how Starting Lines helped me answer the question in the previous paragraph and connect to Sommers’s idea about gaining “insight” opposed to getting answers

· Topic Sentence: Starting Lines was a game changer.

· Evidence: Discuss how analyzing Starting Lines helped me with my writing.

· Connect to Sommers: “I got inspiration, I got insight, and I began to care deeply about my work” (page 49)

Which outline took more time to write?

Which outline will be more helpful when writing your essay? Why?

Outlining Dos:

Outlining Don’ts

1. Think about the purpose of each paragraph. What does the paragraph “do?”
Do you want to provide the reader with your background? Introduce your reader to a passage you read? Do you want to explain how a story from your life relates to a text you read? Do you want to compare, analyze, argue something?
Some helpful verbs that describe what paragraphs “do” include: compare, contrast, describe, demonstrate, explain, engage, tell, share, show, relate
2. Include exact examples and source material (quotes, paraphrases, summaries) with page numbers.

3. Spend 1-2 hours writing your outline. Gathering evidence and organizing your ideas will take time, but it will help you write your paper faster later.
4. Use bullet points to make it easy to read

1. Do not include vague ideas such as “I will put a quote here” or “example from my life here” → you need to include the quote itself or the specific example so I can see if they are appropriate
2. You do not need to write in complete sentences all the time.
3. Do not rush through it.

Sample Outline- Linguistics 12

Directions: Read the outline and letter below by a former ling 12 student. Your outline should be an entire representation of what you will write for your writing assignment. Using the following outline as a model, complete a thorough outline for your essay including all relevant source material (quotes, paraphrases, summaries- WITH PAGE NUMBERS). This should take several hours as you collect your ideas and evidence and then organize them.
Your outline should follow a similar format to the one below. Make sure you include what you want the audience to know, a title related to the content (not “Essay #1 Outline”), the purpose of each paragraph, topic sentences, and evidence/examples to develop the topic sentence

Your name (both Chinese and preferred)

Amy Joy Lashmet

Linguistics 12

10 February 2021

What I want the audience to know: I want to let my “boss” know that 996 working mode is not beneficial for the company’s long term development and try to persuade him to end 996. I will break down my reasoning to three perspectives: how 996 affects mental and physical health of workers, how 996 influences the company’s past and future, and what should be the desired working mode schedule of the company.

Creative Title: To Be or Not to Be: The Future of 996

Purpose of Introduction Paragraph: Introduce myself to Jack Ma and provide a reason for writing.
· Intro: Dear Jack Ma, My name is Jiayi and I am a software engineer at Alibaba.
· Background info 1: Many top tech companies in China are adopting 996 which is inhumane, to compete with other big companies in America.
· Background info 2: Introduce Jack Ma’s recent praise of 996 working mode (paraphrase Covert’s article)
· Working Thesis: Though the 996 working mode seems to benefit the company in the short-run, it is harmful to both mental and physical health of workers, and may ruin the corporation’s reputation, which leads to economic loss in the long-run.
Purpose of the First Body Paragraph (paragraph #2): Introduce mental and physical health issues caused by 996 and raise examples from readings. (I might further separate mental and physical health issues into two paragraphs if the combined one is too long. Not decided yet)
· Topic sentence: The first drawback of 996 working mode is the irreversible mental and physical health problems related to overworking.
· Evidence/Example: “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has also warned that putting in extra hours is associated with poorer health, including weight gain and higher alcohol and tobacco use…” (Covert). Direct quote to include specific physical health issues.
· Evidence/Example: “This carries over into the workplace, where mental health problems are now the leading cause of sickness absence in the U.K. 70 million work days are lost every year due to mental health issues, costing employers £2.4 billion per year” (Bennett)

Purpose of the Second Body Paragraph (paragraph #3): Concession: First admit that the 996 working mode did boost economic and technology by exploiting workers in the past few years, and then argue that it will indeed drain innovation and creativity of employees.
· Topic sentence: 996 working mode is indeed earning the small benefit at the cost of the future.
· Evidence/Example: “The secret ingredient, the one that supposedly set China’s companies apart from Silicon Valley’s, was the hustle” (Qiqing).
· Evidence/Example: “There’s a ceiling on how much more someone can get done by simply spending more time at work” (Covert). More specifically: “While there may be an initial burst of activity from overworking, people who work more than 55 hours a week perform worse than those who go home at a normal hour and get some rest.” There are many detailed examples from Covert, I plan to develop my idea from low productivity to less creativity in the future and add these examples to support my step-by-step reasoning.

Purpose of the Third Body Paragraph (paragraph #4): Argue that keeping the 996 working mode will ruin the company’s reputation: including employees leaving their positions and new workers being unwilling to join the company. Then introduce some of the potential solution adoptable working modes which are currently used by Silicon Valley’s companies.
· Topic sentence: Aside from the negative effects of 996 on personal well-being, it is ruining the company’s reputation as well.
· Evidence/Example: “The 996.ICU GitHub repository — basically a folder for a project’s files — has since been“starred” more than 230,000 times, indicating people’s level of interest” (Qiqing). Paraphrase to show my boss that more and more workers have noticed the unfairness of 996 working mode.
· Evidence/Example: “Good relationships keep us happier and healthier” (Waldinger). Here I will summarize Waldinger’s findings and explain how the company helps employees build good relationships with partners by banning 996 working mode and developing a humanized working environment in the light of Silicon Valley’s companies.

Conclusion：
· I want to tell Jack Ma that the working conditions of 996 are inhumane
· I want him to view 996 differently- Although it seems like it might increase productivity, it has worse, long term negative effects.
· I will sign my name in a creative way (ex. Sincerely, A tired Alibaba Worker)

Sample letter below!

Your Name (Both Given and preferred)
Professor Amy Joy Lashmet
Linguistics 12
30 May 2020
To Be or Not to Be: The Future of 996
Dear Mr. Ma,
My name is Shuo Wang, and I am from the technology department here at Alibaba. Nowadays, working 996 has become a trend among top tech companies in China, but this schedule is inhumane. Your previous speech saying that “996 is a blessing instead of a problem” has also triggered heated debate in our office and disappointed some rookie programmers who were passionate about changing the future of China with Alibaba. Though “996” seems to benefit our company in the short-run, it is harmful to both the physical and mental health of workers and may ruin the corporation’s reputation, which leads to economic loss in the long-run. Therefore, as the employee representative, I want to petition to reduce working hours.
The first drawback of 996 is the irreversible physical health problems related to overworking. After the third revolution of science and technology, people moved their workplaces to offices instead of factories and changed their tools from hammers to computers. It seems like workers are free of industrial pollution and can work in a more comfortable environment than before. However, due to the unreasonable working hours like 996, workers rarely have any leisure time to work out after a day of intensive work. Thus, they become more vulnerable to diseases and health issues related to lack of exercise. Also, these health problems are usually cumulative, which are hardly self-cured under the successive overwhelming workload. For example, researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention point out that “putting extra hours is associated with poorer health, including weight gain and higher alcohol and tobacco use, and increased injury, illness and even mortality” (Covert). Hence, 996 brings more potential physical health risks to workers, which is against human rights.
Besides physical health issues, people nowadays are also concerned about emotional well-being, which many programmers fail to achieve under the heavy workload of 996. In a TED talk, from his 75-year research, Waldinger concluded that “good relationships keep people happier and healthier.” It is essential to be socially connected to other people, like friends, family members, or community members. However, employees whose company enforces 996 spend all day coding and debugging, and cannot spare any time to foster relationships or even accompany their families for a while. Without enough connection to society, they may feel lonely and are more likely to suffer from unhappiness and depression (Waldinger). Moreover, hardworking employees may also gradually lose their passion for work since they lack contact with other people. Reports have shown that mental health problems related to stress and unhappiness about working are now “the leading cause of sickness absence” (Bennett). Monetarily speaking, these absences are costing employers more money to cover the lost productivity than the benefits they earn from exploiting employees. For instance, “70 million workdays are lost every year due to mental health issues, costing employers £2.4 billion per year” (Bennett). Therefore, for the sake of both the physical and mental health of employees, 996 should be banned to ensure their legal right to relax.
Admittedly, in the past few years, 996 did help many enterprises achieve significant economic development since China has the largest market for Internet-based industry. An author Lin Qiqing notes that the “hustle” was key to the astonishingly rapid development of China’s leading tech corporations. However, after these companies reached the same level of technology as American companies in Silicon Valley, 996 no longer provides support to further improvement. Instead, 996 is making limited profits at the cost of employees’ innovation and creativity, which are crucial factors of sustainable development. Many entrepreneurs still hold the belief that the longer employees work, the more productive they will be. This opinion is obsolete and has been disproven by a Stanford economist. He argues that there is “a ceiling” of the total productivity of a single worker (Covert). In addition to the loss of productivity, the creativity of employees also drops sharply after 48 working hours a week. Unlike traditional manufacturing where workers perform repetitive tasks every day, internet-based development focuses more on content-creating and requires time for programmers to think about their projects creatively. If employees spend twelve hours each day to finish their assigned coding tasks, they will have no time to self-learn cutting-edge algorithms, not to mention innovating new methods on their own. A lack of personal innovation will eventually lead to the deficiency of the company’s innovation capability, which impedes the development of the company in the long run.
The last disadvantage is that enforcing 996 will ruin the company’s reputation and make it more difficult to acquire talents. One year ago, developers voluntarily initiated a GitHub repository “996.ICU” to list the companies which require employees to work 996 and it has already been “starred” more than 230,000 times, meaning that hundreds of thousands of people are getting sick of 996 and are preparing to overthrow it someday (Qiqing). Unfortunately, Alibaba is on top of the blacklist, which definitely ruins our company’s reputation, and silently frightens away our potential employees. Also, since China’s economic growth has benefited most people, newly graduated students are no longer under the pressure of earning money to meet the basic living standard. Therefore, many people are transitioning to average-paid yet undemanding occupations, which allow them to have more leisure time. If our corporation continues to implement 996, it will be a major reason people reject our offers. What is worse is that this inhumane working schedule even intimidates some professional algorithm researchers who wish to show off their talent through Alibaba. Thanks to globalization, many gifted Chinese students choose to pursue a degree overseas. Though they want to pay back the country and work for us after graduation, most of them switch to American enterprises, like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, all of which are leading tech companies that implement 955 working schedule (Qiqing). Thus, it is crucial to learn from foreign corporations and abolish 996 as the first step of reform.
Overall, working 996 only provides limited short-run profit, and it will hurt the company’s long-term development by causing health problems for employees, killing their innovation, and ruining our company’s reputation. Therefore tech leaders need to be aware of the drawbacks of 996 and abandon it as soon as possible. In my opinion, 2020 would be a perfect turning point to adjust our working schedule back to 955, and the cost of the transformation is merely a temporary productivity loss. After banning 996, we can seek another round of development by hiring professionals and experts to expand our team and embrace future technology in China. As a national enterprise, we can also provide more job opportunities and take on social responsibility. By doing these, I believe we will build our company’s reputation upon the humane working condition and obtain more considerable progress in the long-run. (Word Count: 1220)
Sincerely,
A tire Alibaba Employee

Work Cited
Waldinger, Robert. “What Makes a Good Life? Lessons from the Longest Study on Happiness.” TED.
November 2015. https://www.ted.com/talks/robert_waldinger_what_makes_a_good_life
_lessons_from_the_longest_study_on_happiness?language=en

Bennett, Nick. “The Secret Of Success – Is It Happiness?” Forbes, 18 Nov. 02018.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/nickbennett1/ 2018/11/18/ the-secret-of-success-is-it-
happiness/ #4d744c716aa9. Accessed 31 July. 2019.

Covert, Bryce. “The Richest Man in China Is Wrong. 12-Hour Days Are No ‘Blessing.’” The New

York Times. 21 April 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/21/opinion/jack-ma-996.html
Accessed 31 Jul. 2019.

Qiqing, Lin, and Zhong, Raymond. “‘996’ Is China’s Version of Hustle Culture. Tech Workers Are
Sick of It.” The New York Times. 29 APr. 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/29/
technology/china-996-jack-ma.html. Accessed 31 Jul.
2019.

Linguistics 12 Writing Assignment 1:

Outline Due: Sunday, January 10th (beginning of week 2)

Rough Draft Due: Sunday, January 17th @ 11:59pm

Final Draft Due: Thursday, February 4th @ 11:59pm

Requirements:

· Word Count: 1200-1500 words

· Citation Style: MLA (must include works cited)

· No outside sources may be used

· You may only directly quote 1 time- choose your quote wisely! (you must paraphrase the rest in your own words)

· Please include 10 new vocabulary words from our unit 1 list and put them in red

Purpose of Assignment:

· Apply the concepts of our course readings to real world situations, including real-world assignments from past courses at UCSB

· Consider our past experiences and recognize which writing strategies may and may not be applied to university level writing

· Experience the entire writing process, from brainstorming (writing sample), to analyzing (through forums and ELI review), to outlining, to drafting, to revising, to providing peer feedback

· Improve vocabulary and language skills through the revision process

Task:

Situation and audience: You have recently joined OISS’s international student mentorship program. This program puts current UCSB international students (like you) in touch with incoming freshmen who want to know more about university life and studies. Your audience, therefore, is your new mentee whom you have never met before.

Purpose for writing: OISS has told you that your new mentee is interested knowing what they should expect in terms of university level writing. Therefore, your purpose for writing this letter is to 1. Introduce yourself to your mentee and 2. give this student a preview of what types of writing to expect in college by offering real examples from courses you have taken and 3. advice on how to successfully transition into university writing.

To accomplish this purpose, first, briefly introduce yourself and describe your past writing instruction that you received and explain how university level writing is similar to or different* from the types of writing required by the SAT, TOEFL, or other writing high school writing assignments.

After you have discussed this, evaluate, to what extent** your past writing instruction prepared you for university level writing. In order to support your argument, consider the types of prompts/assignments you received in high school with assignments you have been given at UCSB. Feel free to use language from the prompts (if you still have them) or simply paraphrase what you were required to do. As you discuss these assignments, draw on key concepts from our readings to develop your ideas.

*Depending on your experiences and opinions, you might only identify similarities or differences, but you may also choose to address both.

**to what extent = how much. In order to answer this, you want to use words like “greatly prepared, did not prepare, somewhat prepared” in your response

Sources & Citations:

Sometimes books contain chapters written by different authors. In our textbook, each chapter was written by different people. Therefore, when citing, you must cite the author of the chapter for your in-text/parenthetical citations and include the editors in the words cited page.

Also, please notice that the last names are listed first. Please use authors’ last names when citing them! DO not say “Dana say…” but rather, “Ferris says…”

De Oliveira, Luciana C, and Sharon L Smith. “Interactions with and around Texts: Writing in Elementary Schools.” Changing Practices for the L2 Writing Classroom: Moving beyond the Five-Paragraph Essay, by Nigel A. Caplan and Ann M. Johns, The University of Michigan Press, 2019, pp. 65–70.

Ferris, Dana, and Hogan Hayes. “Transferable Principles and Processes in Undergraduate Writing” Changing Practices for the L2 Writing Classroom: Moving beyond the Five-Paragraph Essay, by Nigel A. Caplan and Ann M. Johns, The University of Michigan Press, 2019, pp. 116-119.

Pessoa, Silvia, and Thomas D. Mitchell. “Preparing Students to Write in the Disciplines” Changing Practices for the L2 Writing Classroom: Moving beyond the Five-Paragraph Essay, by Nigel A. Caplan and Ann M. Johns, The University of Michigan Press, 2019, pp. 150-161.

Structure for your letter:

Introduction:

1. Begin with a greeting “Dear __,” (you may choose a name) and an introduction of yourself and reason for writing

· When introducing ourselves, we never say “I am + Name” (this is a common mistake among my students)

· Instead, say “My name is __, and I am __ (your mentor/ a fellow student etc.)

2. What was your previous writing instruction like before attending college? (what was taught, how was it taught, why were you taught this – description)

3. Thesis/argument: How effective was this instruction in preparing you for university level writing? Why? (somewhat effective, not effective, very effective)

Body:

4. To answer the “WHY”- analysis

· First, consider the types of writing assignments you were required to do in high school. Then, compare those to the writing assignments you have been given at UCSB (description)

· How are the assignments different? How are they similar? (analysis)

· How did your previous writing instruction prepare you (or not) for assignments you have received at UCSB? (argumentation)

· Use the readings to discuss expectations of certain
disciplines
(fields: ex. history, vs theater, vs music vs. lab reports) compared to your past experiences. Were you exposed to writing in various fields? or did you only write for one field (maybe English)? or in only one way (for example, TOEFL/SAT)?

· Use key concepts from our textbook to explain any similarities or differences between the two types of writing (from high school to college).

Conclusion:

5. End with suggestions, hopeful words of encouragement, or advice for your mentee

6. Remember that they are a fellow student- so maybe mentioning how you relationship might be once school starts

Tone: Remember you are writing to a real person! (Forget about Amy Joy!)
While I do want you to be academic and polite, try to simplify the concepts of our reading so that a new freshman would understand them.
Use your own words to paraphrase the ideas even if they use simpler vocabulary. English writing values clarity over fancy words and you can still be polite and academic without using extremely infrequent jargon. All in all, ask yourself, “would a new freshman understand this?” if the answer is no, try to simplify to make the point clear.

Criteria/Rubric: What Amy Joy is Looking For:

25

10

10

Assignment Element
Introduction (can be 1-2 paragraphs) includes a SHORT self intro and provides background information about previous writing instruction. The intro ends with a thesis statement that evaluates (argues) “to what extent” this writing instruction was useful for university level writing (greatly prepared, somewhat prepared, did not prepare)			10
Body paragraphs support the thesis statement by using examples of writing assignments from high school and UCSB to demonstrate how previous writing instruction might prepare/not prepare students for university level writing		25
Discourse frameworks and concepts from our readings/handouts are applied to the prompt analysis (knowledge transformation)
Conclusion offers unique insight, including but not limited to: suggestions, hopeful words of encouragement, or advice for your mentee
Language has been proofread and minimal errors are made in verb tenses, word forms, and clauses. Word choices and collocations appear to have been checked using Writefull. Sources have been summarized/ paraphrased by explaining concepts in your own words.	20
Cohesion devices and logical organization are used to express complex relationships between paragraphs and sentences. This helps the reader follow along and goes beyond “adding information” as seen in the cohesion presentation