z
  • Home

Young Writers Society



Argumentative Essay (School Project! Reviews Needed!)

by zaminami


Her name is Kara. She is a child in America who suffers from depression, social anxiety, and various other mental disorders. She is also part of a poorer family who only has access to hand-me-down phones and school computers. Kara, because of the negative energy that she put off, had no friends at school and her family was never home. Because of this, she was a very lonely person. However, one day, she discovered a website that allowed her to be herself instead of changing who she really is around people. She made a lot of new friends on the website and she soon realized that she wasn’t going to be lonely anymore. Kara’s depression and anxiety became better very soon and people noticed the change. She was able to be herself. But now that Net Neutrality is repealed, she might not be able to access the website that changed her life. The FCC should bring back Net Neutrality because without it, the economic balance will fall farther apart, the neutrality rules out website discrimination, and the basic rights are threatened.

If there is no Net Neutrality, the economic balance will fall apart -- to put it simply, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The rich corporations such as AT&T and Verizon can charge money to access certain websites that they either don’t like or don’t trust. However, the poorer citizens that want to access those said websites aren’t able to pay it, unlike when someone would have Net Neutrality -- when they wouldn’t have to pay for certain websites. The lower class tries to keep accessing it until the higher class forces the poor to pay. The rich corporation receives money that it doesn’t really need and the poor who need the money lose valuable dollars. The Internet Service Providers, or the ISPs, charge different -- sometimes very high -- amounts for certain things: websites, videos, downloads, etc. If the lower classes want those privileges, they are forced to pay money to the people who don’t need it. In some cases, they can’t -- for paying means bankruptcy -- and they can’t access the information. The ISPs can also control and restrict the amount of websites, videos, and downloads that are being produced in their flow zone, which enables them the ability to inadvertently command smaller companies with what could be an iron fist. According to the University of Delaware, 81% of people disagree paying the ISPs for this reason, according to the article “What's at the Stake for Content Creators of the Net Neutrality Debate?” That is why the economic balance will fall farther apart if there is no Net Neutrality.

Now, “Imagine a new travel-booking website that always loads slower than Kayak or Orbitz. Impatient customers will quickly give up on it, and the new site will fail,” according to the Washington Post’s article on Net Neutrality, “How to Argue about Net Neutrality.” That is what website discrimination looks like. Website discrimination is when richer corporations support other richer corporations and leave smaller, startup websites in the dust, causing them to fail. This happened without Net Neutrality at least several times, when the larger companies paid lots of money for a faster downloading and loading speeds. However, the smaller companies can’t, since they need to use their money for other things. Our very own president Donald Trump also disproves of website discrimination. There was a recent case that Trump didn’t approve on where AT&T decided to buy Time Warner, another big corporation. Trump didn’t like the deal and created a whole case on the possible monopolization, stating that it was “Too much concentration in power [is] in the hands of the few.” Since Net Neutrality is repealed, other larger websites will have the power to do deals exactly like the one mentioned above -- the exact ones that Trump hates. This will cause the smaller companies to have even less of a chance than they had before to start off a company. Website discrimination should be decreased at all costs.

Freedom of speech: The ability to say what we want to say. That is a basic right in our country. However, without Net Neutrality, websites can be blocked that block the ability to say what we want to say, which, as mentioned, is a basic right in out country. “In a world where Netflix and Yahoo connect directly to residential ISPs, every Internet company will have its own separate pipe,” says Robert Larson of Dollars and Sense. Companies can block any website that they don’t agree with, such as a pro-Hillary website if they’re pro-Trump, and disallow any accessors from accessing it. This prevents a pro-Hillary citizen to have access to the the website that they want, preventing them from supporting Hillary. That is not freedom of speech. The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is also threatened as well, since cables can control the flow of information by forcing consumers to pay money, and if the consumers can’t pay, they are neglected from the information. Therefore, the FOIA is threatened.

Some people claim that we don’t need Net Neutrality for several reasons. The problem didn’t exist in the first place -- first of all, blocking and slowing down websites rarely happens, even if the possibility has been around since the Internet first began. There have been only four incidents where this has happened, all before 2007. However, blocking and slowing down websites can happen, and since corporations were pushed back by Net Neutrality for years, they might seize the new power and use it before the possibility that Net Neutrality will come back again. “But without Net Neutrality,” they say. “There are driven down prices of things that are bought from the Internet, such as goods on ebay and Amazon. It provides faster download speed -- for example, Europe has Net Neutrality and Europeans have slower downloading speeds than Americans did with Net Neutrality. Even if Net Neutrality was enabled, different factors enable different downloading speeds and different prices.” The higher prices aren’t nearly as much as paying for certain websites to access -- only one or two more dollars more. As for downloading speed, if Europeans can handle slower downloading speeds, Americans can too. Europe has a greater population than America anyways. “Oh, but,” they claim. “The law doesn’t say what you can or cannot provide with the internet, and Net Neutrality takes away the Manifest Destiny -- or patriotic service -- of discovering what the internet can do. Besides, the problem didn’t exist in the first place.” Obama and the government added Net Neutrality to prevent a future problem in the first place. Why wait for a problem when you can prevent it from happening? The FOIA does apply to the internet. Even if it doesn’t say the Internet specifically, it still applies there. That is why Net Neutrality is needed.

That is why the FCC should bring back Obama’s Net Neutrality, so website discrimination is less likely to happen, so the economic balance won’t fall apart even more than it already has been, and to protect the freedoms of speech and freedoms to information.


Is this a review?


  

Comments



User avatar
806 Reviews

Points: 1883
Reviews: 806

Donate
Sun Jan 28, 2018 3:03 am
View Likes
Aley wrote a review...



Alright izanami, I've reviewed your paper.

So, I'm going to preface this review with saying that I'm an English Major out of College. I have my BA so I've been writing papers a LOT longer than you probably have been, and I've also studied rhetoric, so I've been studing how to argue in college. That's going to put me a bit outside of your curb of likes.

With that said, I'm going based off of a five paragraph essay where your teacher wants Introduction, transition, Body 1, transition, Body 2, transition, Counterpoint, Transition, Conclusion with the transitions imbedded into their respective paragraphs.

The major problem I saw with your paper is a good problem to have because most of the heavy lifting is overwith. You write well. That's a blessing for writing papers for school. You don't need more than a few pointers on ONE peice of punctuation, your capitalization is good, and the paper reads smoothly aside from one or two spots.

Your problem is transitions. That being said, it's going to feel like I'm ripping your paper up and chewing it for breakfast because I'm used to having good transitions. I've added a lot of suggestions for how to transition to give you examples. I am giving you written permission to use them as I used your ideas to create them, but you might want to rephrase them just for the sake of sounding like yourself. Any words you don't know, don't use.

And on that note, here are MY notes on your paper. I wrote these while reading and I stopped after every paragraph to critique, or sometimes in the middle if it was a rough paragraph and I needed time.

So, we don't really have a good opening paragraph here. Not in my opinion anyway. You jump right into a story rather than inviting in the reader with stating a name, but we don't know anything about why we should care about this name. For me, that's not enticing. Then as we go through the story you undermine your authority by explaining that Kara is lonely because she 'puts out negative energy' which sounds sort of like a hokus pocus science rather than a truth.

I don't think you should start out with trying to explain why she is feeling negative or how she doesn't have friends. Instead of analyzing Kara, introduce her situation in a more developed manner.

In an argumentative essay every quote or anicdote, which is what this is, should follow the pattern of introduction, support, rephrasing. Here, we're missing our introduction. It won't take much to fix, just a line like "Young people today are incresingly dependant on technology for situations like mental health, and development. Repealing Net Neutrality threatens that aid. One person who may suffer due to the repeal of Net Neutrality is 'a child in America who suffers from depression, social anxiety, and various other mental disorders. Her name is Kara.'" and go from there. The introduction makes it sound less like a novel and more like an argumentative paper where you want what you're arguing for or against up front. You want them thinking about the situation you're arguing for right in their face all the time. Here, you have a bit of a msytery show until the end of the paragraph which is far too late. It's good for a conclusion and a transition, but it's too late for an introduction paragraph.

It also makes the jump to Net Neutrality startling because I thought this paper was going to be an argumentative paper for everyone having access to computers or phones year round, and instead, it's about Net Neutrality. If you introduce Net Neutrality in the first sentence or two, you're going to have a more connected audience.

Onto body paragraph one. Here, you are jumping into your support without a transition. I have a hard time following your logic when you say that the economy is going to nosedive due to the repeal of net neutrality when the economy isn't run by poor people, it's just run by the rich. The balance already doesn't exist, and it will continue to grow but that's not going to ruin the economy. The economy will grow due to the larger corperations investing more, but a large economy doesn't mean there's no suffering.

That being said, your body paragraph assumes a lot is already going on, when in reality, AT&T and Verison, or any other internet provider, have yet to actually wheel out any new charge plans based on the repeal of net neutrality. Your paper makes it seem as though right now if I were to google "bad AT&T meme" I would get a pop up window saying "To view this website, you must pay $20 more a month." That's just not the case. In fact, that's not how it's going to work either. Net Neutrality protected our ability to access all websites at the same rate of download. At&t didn't have control over how fast we downloaded one website vs another. Now, they do. They can say 'If you want to watch Youtube, you'll have to wait' but the information will still be accessable. They can't just turn off certain websites because it's not a part of their company. The only thing they can do is make you wait hours and hours to connect to the page.

Right now your argument feels weak as well because you hold your punches. Put the University of Delaware information up front, and use a direct quote from it. Right now I'm not sure what "for this reason" is actually referring to and I'd love to hear the statistic. It should look something like "According to the University of Delaware in the article “What's at the Stake for Content Creators of the Net Neutrality Debate?”, the author states '81% of people disagree paying the ISPs for [reason].' [jump into paraphrasing the article]." This will help convince people that what you're saying is accurate [as you can see, I'm not exactly convinced] since you'll sound like you've done some research by reading an article from the University of Delaware.

Alright, the next pararaph is pretty good, but you've GOT to USE Transitions! "Now" might be a transition word, but I want more from you. Introduce your next argument point with something like "Now that net neutrality is repealed, website discrimination will become a problem." You should always have at least a sentence before any quote you use. The sentence should introduce why you are using the quote. After the quote, cap it off with a paraphrase, or a rephrase of your quote to follow the thought from why you used it to how it's applicable to your situation even if it's obvious. That's because not everyone will read the quotes the same, and they need to for you to make a concrete argument.

Okay, I just looked at the first "sentence" in the next paragraph and I need to catch my breath XD. Okay. colons. : Colons are used when you're making a list ; semi-colons are used when you're making a definition or adding a sentence into another sentence like you did here. You don't use a capital letter at the beginning of the connected sentence.

That aside, Transition!!!!!! Transition us from "Website discrimination should be decresed at all costs" into "Freedome of speech; the ability to say waht we want to say." and please, please, make your transition explain why you're telling us that.

Oh, okay. I continued reading. So, a good transition there would be something like "Aside from the right to the persuit of happiness, freedome of speech is also threatened by the repeal of net neutrality. The Freedom of Speech is the ability ...".

Aside from the lack of transitions into the quotations, looks good.

YESSS I'M SO HAPPY YOU HAVE A COUNTERPOINT <3333

I found a weird sentence. Here it is in quotes. "The higher prices aren’t nearly as much as paying for certain websites to access" this is awkward. "The higher prices aren't nearly as much as it would be to pay to access to certain websites"? I don't like that either. It's clunky. Rephrase it. The rest of your paper is better than this. Suggestion: "The higher prices with net neutrailty are only one or two dollars, which is far cheaper than having to pay to access certain websites."

who is they? If you don't have a direct source, don't use quotations. Instead, introduce it like "Some argue that" or "The argument has been made that"

Alright, last comment from my read through: BEEEEEF UP your conclusion please.

I want you to go through your arguments in a sentence each for your conclusion. It should be at least as many sentences as your paper is paragraphs, that's intro to conclusion!

THAT BEING DONE!

If you need help, want to chat, or just want to scream at me for eating your paper alive because it's due tomorrow and you have no time for these corrections, feel free to send me a PM!

-please don't hurt me.- >.o




zaminami says...


thank you! I want my paper eaten up lol

but the first draft is only due today :wink:



Aley says...


Oh thank god xD



zaminami says...


XD im already almost done with rewriting things with your comments :D



Aley says...


Do you want me to take another crack at it or are you going to re-post?



zaminami says...


I'm going to repost and I'll tag you :D



User avatar
1249 Reviews

Points: 145925
Reviews: 1249

Donate
Sun Jan 28, 2018 2:12 am
View Likes
alliyah wrote a review...



Ah, a good ol' persuasive essay. Well I'm here to leave a few thoughts.

So I didn't notice many typos or spelling errors, if any, so great job editting the piece. One thing I noticed is that you use a lot of double-dashes. There are very few instances where this punctuation mark is actually needed, and it ends up having the effect of an overused exclamation mark. I'd suggest taking all of those double-dashes out, because they're just space fillers, and end up getting a bit distracting.

As far as the logical flow of the piece, I thought your intro story was really good, sets the stage and makes readers realize this isn't just a big "out-there-somewhere" political issue, but that it's personal. This is a really effective technique in persuasive essays to make sure that your means of persuasion hit readers at every level (logic, emotion/sympathy, desire, fear, etc.). It would be nice if you revisited the personal side of story in the closing paragraph somehow, to bring us back to the effect that it's personal.

I thought there could have been a bit more statistics actually about the actual numbers in the predictions, I know this is hard to find, and might be annoying for people who don't like numbers - but a few more facts and figures might be a good addition.

One issue in flow is when you started out a paragraph with basically the definition of "freedom of speech". I think that this seemed a bit of an unnatural way to start a paragraph. Think about if you were trying to convince your best friend that the loss of net neutrality was an issue. Would you say, "Freedom of Speech:here's the definition" or would you say, "Do you care about Freedom of Speech? It's pretty important, let's talk about it" -- all I'm saying is that a transition would be good in there rather than just going straight to the definition.

I like that you took a look at some of the arguments that others are making for the other side of the issue. This shows a more well-rounded argument, and is a great technique. However, I'm not sure anyone in their right mind would be talking about Net Neutrality in relation to Manifest Destiny, so I'm a bit lost in that argument. It might be a good idea to look at some actual quotes from people defending the alternative.

Lastly, I would suggest putting the word "President" before Trump's name and before Obama's at the end, because it's more of a formal essay, so that would be appropriate and shows respect for them so that people who like either one, might be more receptive to your argument.

Hopefully some of this was helpful! Let me know if you have any questions about my review.

alliyah

This Review Has Been Brought to You by:
Image




zaminami says...


thanks



User avatar
559 Reviews

Points: 1028
Reviews: 559

Donate
Sun Jan 28, 2018 1:48 am
View Likes
erilea says...



I'm sorry this isn't a review, but I love this essay.
Just thought you should know.




zaminami says...


thankssssss



Random avatar

Points: 325
Reviews: 1

Donate
Sun Jan 28, 2018 1:45 am
View Likes
sidneebeavers wrote a review...



First and foremost, I really appreciated this essay because it was strong and thought provoking. However, there are a view concerns about this essay that i wanted to bring to your attention.

1. Statistics
- I enjoyed the statistics that you have through out, but you should add more facts to your claim about the "Economic Balance". Your claim is good but you should really bring it home with statistics and facts to prove that net neutrality will widen the gap between the upper and lower class. Continue to add more facts to truly pack a punch with your claims.

2. Tone
- Your paper is more of a speech than a essay. If this were to be read aloud, you could inspire people to support Net Neutrality. Because this is a written essay, your paper has an informal tone to it. When you say, "Freedom of speech: The ability to say what we want to say. That is a basic right in our country. ", it tends to have Star Trek vibe to it. "Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise." This speech is one of the most inspiring things I have ever heard, however, not many people would agree with the style of writing the speech has. Your speech is powerful, continue working to make it more focused on being communicated through reading instead of speech.

3. Conclusion
I keep mentioning how powerful your speech is, that is because it is truly powerful. However, at your conclusion you lost all momentum whatsoever. Your body paragraphs basically pack a punch, while your conclusion is basically nonexistent. YOU SHOULD TALK ABOUT WHY NET NEUTRALITY IS REALLY IMPORTANT: Because Net neutrality protects the freedom of speech of people like Kara. Keep working on leaving your readers awestruck at the end of your paper instead of slightly disappointed.

I'm so glad I was able to review this because it was powerful, moving, and exciting.




zaminami says...


thanks!



User avatar


Points: 33
Reviews: 3

Donate
Fri Jan 26, 2018 6:41 pm
View Likes
deleted22 says...



Very well-written argumentative paper. I support Net Neutrality and your paper gave me a different and deeper perspective on this issues. Nice hook and main points used as evidence for your claims. If I were your teacher, A+ for acknowledging this very important issue, and A+ for the structure.




zaminami says...


thankssss




Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.
— Abraham Lincoln