Hello all, I'm a student at a University Germany. At the end of the semester we were given the assignement to write an essay using the "5 paragraph structure". Paragraph#1 serves as an introduction and should contain the thesis statement, the following three paragraphs are the body paragraphs and need to have a topic sentence (not necessarily at the top of the paragraph) and the fifth paragraph, of course contains the conclusion (with a reworded thesis statement)
I would really appreciateand be thankful if someone took a look at my essay maybe with regard to whether I managed to implement the given structure.
Best regards
Talk is cheap
Eleven minutes! That is the estimated average time given at everyday work to devote
oneself to a task, before an incoming phone call, email or short message will break
your concentration, according to a research of scientists at the University of Florida.
For unfathomable reasons, people seem to enjoy this, since they go to great lengths
to be likewise reachable in their private lives. The world's in your pocket, at least if
you have a smart phone. We never seem to be offline anymore: tweeting, liking,
blogging, posting, and sharing seem to become to some extent compulsive. Therefore
one could assume that people are nowadays communicating almost all the time, and
yet, paradoxically, a lack of communication between people has become a significant
issue in modern societies. How does this go together? In the course of the last twenty
to thirty years, mankind has undoubtedly witnessed a rapid development of
technology, especially in the branch of communication technologies. This
transformation has undeniably altered communication between individuals and
because of the recently emerged communication innovations, we may in fact
communicate more, however, we tend to say less.
With the inception of telecommunication, to communicate has become so easy,
affordable and convenient, that we do seem to put less effort into it. Since we have
the opportunity to get in touch with our casual acquaintances, friends and family in
even the remotest corners of the world at virtually any time we want (which beyond
doubt is exceptionally pleasant), we care less about sentence structure, choice of
words and maybe even content. Back in the days, the predominant form of
communication to bridge distances was correspondence. To sit down with a piece of
paper and a pen and write in longhand, was a comparatively time consuming
endeavour. Thus, one inevitably spends more time contemplating content and
wording. Today in our frantic life full of rush, appointments and meetings, efficiency
and productivity seem to matter more than quality. As desirable this may be in
economic processes, those two concepts find their way into our private time as well.
They start to become a determining factor for our decisions in life. We rarely take
our time to slow down to elaborate our thoughts and feelings, which is why we may
write a lot more, but the quality and profundity of conversations deteriorates.
One might even go as far as saying that society is taking a step back when it comes
to processing and spreading thoughts and ideas. Mankind has indeed come a long
way from the primitive first writing systems, dating back to the 4th millennium BC,
which were used to communicate. The written word and the spreading of information
is one of the greatest accomplishments in history: we did not have to rely on pictures
or oral tradition any more. With the upcoming of modern telecommunication, it is
common to try to compress ever more information into shorter and shorter messages.
Thus, writing often becomes cryptic and encoded and may even need deciphering.
This tendency makes communication more implicit and superficial. We also tend to
let pictures or symbols do all the talking for us. Yes, a picture paints a thousand
words, but it still would be pleasant to be able to cum up with the words as well. It is
a development, at least on the level of communication via text messages, facebook or
twitter, which goes into the wrong direction.
As it has been stated, communication through modern text is easy and efficient,
although simultaneously impersonal. It is also highly addictive and thus potentially
dangerous. How else can it be explained that the average teenager sends more than
3000 text messages a month? How else would you explain that people at a party or
social event in general, will often prefer to busy themselves with their phone instead
of engaging in face-to-face conversations? Ironically, it is probably the fear of being
excluded, the fear to miss something and not be part of it. Furthermore, it is often
argued, that if you're being deluged by constant communication, the pressure to
answer immediately is then quite high. Being offline means to be cut out. Living
online, and consequently talking to people online, has replaced conversations in
reality. This is not necessarily something new, but the fact that it is happening on
such a broad scale is a disturbing development. The modern innovations have created
an unquenchable thirst for people to communicate with each other. We are being so
much used to communicate online, that we have even stopped cherishing
conversation in everyday life; meeting and seeing people becomes less desirable. We
keep conversations to a minimum; we even eradicate the possibility of being spoken
to, by wearing earplugs and listening to music. When people, at least at some scale,
exclude themselves from public communication and the conventional method of
communication is losing its importance is something potentially dangerous.
Especially, since approximately sixty percent of all human communication is non
verbal and another thirty percent of what we say is shaped by tone. Subsequently,
about ninety percent of what we are saying is not coming out of our mouths.
Communication via text messages, posts, or so much as hitting a "like"- button is but
a tiny fraction of what we would communicate in an actual face-to-face
communication.
We should never forget that face-to-face conversation means to communicate on
very broad scale and appreciate its value. We can neither convey tone by sending
thousands of messages, nor can we look into the eyes of a speaker. We cannot
observe the physical reaction of our counterpart to our utterances in order to
incorporate them in the further course of the conversation. At lot of problems of our
lives or maybe in the world in general probably could be solved, if people talked
more to one another. Communication should always be off limits when it comes to
efficiency and briefness. Modern communication replaces beauty with efficiency and
emotions with symbols The Internet and mobile communication are extraordinary
achievements. However, people are as of now utterly overcharged and in danger to
be washed away by the flood of information that is befalling them. It is time that we
rethink and learn how to utilize those inventions properly.
I like the theme here... we communicate more but say less. I'll correct the run on thesis sentence at the end of the first paragraph:
This transformation has undeniably altered communication between individuals, and because of the recently emerged communication innovations; we may in fact communicate more, however but we tend to say less.
I see that each paragraph 2 to 4 begins with a topic sentence that expresses the paragraph's main idea. That's great, but I want to fix up this one in the 3rd paragraph:
As it has been stated, Communication through modern text is easy and efficient, although simultaneously impersonal.
And I like the way the last paragraph gives a reflection and expansion on the main idea. That is the way to do it.
When you look at the 3 body paragraphs, can you give ONE word that sums up the main idea of each? The main idea is expressed in the PARAGRAPH TOPIC SENTENCE so look at the first sentence of each paragraph and you can decide if you think the meaning is succinct and clear.
