I want to know how would I start the "Intro" of the paper to catch the reader's interest?
Banned words: no, not, n'ts (contractions of not), actually, but, however, just, & only
Part 1: Directions for "Banned Word Listening Day"
Your observation assignment is to go one entire day (24 hours) and listen for people using the forbidden words listed above. One of the hardest parts of the assignment is to remember to do it all day.
Focus on family and friends and work because this is an interpersonal communication class.
(I predict that you will observe people in destroyed relationships and careers, in the process of destroying their relationships or careers, or people in wonderful relationships. In other words they are moving together or pulling apart. Many of those engaging in negative conversation have will have no idea that they are doing so.)
Part 2: The fun part-writing up what you observed. Here are the guidelines for a well written assessment of what you observed:
A. The paper must be three pages long using a 12 point Times New Roman (suggested) font, double-spaced, with 1 or 1.25 inch margins. Other fonts are tolerated. If they are fonts like Courier New that stretch out the length of the paper to reduce the amount of writing, you will receive the grade of "F" and draw additional scrutiny to everything you turn in for the duration of the course.
B. What strategy or strategies did you develop to remind yourself to listen to the banned words being said by others and yourself? Was the assignment easy to remember? If so, why? Did you have to take additional measures to remind yourself of the assignment? Why was this necessary?
C. Which three banned words were used the most. Give specific examples for each.
D. Discuss specific and most interesting situations that resulted or caused people to use the banned words. Give the specifics: who was involved, what was the nature of the conversation (i.e., best that you can tell if you are eavesdropping), how did things turn out, and some quotations of what was said (i.e., as close as you can remember). You may need to take "field notes" to make your write up easier.
E. What did you learn about the average communication skills of the people you involved and yourself? What did you learn about their vocabulary? Are people generally open-minded? What is your evidence? How did the use of banned words contribute to the effectiveness of the conversation or the ability of a sure to get their point across? What advice would you give people in relationships on use of the forbidden words?
F. Avoid monitoring situation where you are part of the conversation. This is a listening experiment. Focus your energies on listening to how others speak.
G. Also, avoid using the banned words in the write-up of this experiment. Each use of a banned word will result in the loss of five points per word. You could get a negative score because the number of times you could use these words in your paper is unlimited.
Banned words: no, not, n'ts (contractions of not), actually, but, however, just, & only...
Hey, you should not worry about starting in an interesting way until you have written the body paragraphs. Always write the intro last. How can you introduce something that does not exist yet?
When you have written some body paragraphs (and each paragraph gives an interesting idea about those "banned words.") Then, when you finish several body paragraphs you will KNOW what is interesting about your message to the reader. Enjoy finding an artful way to express the insight you gain from this eavesdropping exercise. :-)
But why are the words banned? No, I don't mind when teachers tell us we should not use certain words, or that they aren't effective, but actually I am just interested in learning why the teacher is biased only against these particular words. ;^)
