Sociology Unit 2 Essay

0:00 hello sociology students tree Hall here and the purpose of this video is to go over the unit to writing project which is an essay about change this is a fairly simple essay to write although there is one kind of monkey wrench in this whole thing it's a believe it or not it's kind of a compare and contrast essay and those essays are organized a little bit different than a regular essay so if you're watching this video I promise you that that I will help you organize this essay and you will come out of this video with a solid plan of attack so also if you are looking at this in teacher notes the slide show that I'm filming right now it's a PowerPoint you can download it or even if you're on a Chromebook you can at least view it by clicking the link that's in there so

0:46 anyway let's get through this and I'm going to try to get through this as quickly as possible so first of all let's take a look at the topic what would your day be like if you got up one morning and suddenly found that you would change in a big way that's how this begins how would you react if you suddenly became physically challenged or elderly person overnight as you go about your day think about everything that would be different if you were disabled or elderly what challenges might you face write down several things that stand out to you for example if you were on a sports team would you be on that team if you were disabled perhaps you'd be playing a different sport all together use your imagination of picture a day lived as an elderly or physically challenged person you will need to come up with many differences in details in order to have enough material for a good

1:32 essay your paper should be 5 paragraphs long by the way in my class that means about 600 words because that's a decent five paragraph essay so that's a standard that I'll pretty much always use to measure you want follow standard essay format your essay must have an introduction three paragraphs in the body and one concluding paragraph that ties your paper together be sure to correct spelling grammar and punctuation before you submit your essay to your teacher okay a couple things right off first of all did you notice how many how many times they mentioned day and how many times they mentioned change this is an essay about how your day or daily routine would be different if you were suddenly disabled overnight or suddenly very radically physically changed and I

2:19 think that's the very first thing to understand when you're writing this essay it's about a day in the life of you but you a different you you have that has been suddenly disabled or changed let's move on to the next slide okay so the first thing that you're going to have to do before you write this essay is you're gonna have to decide how you have changed I had sent you out a weekly announcement about poor Gregor Samsa who woke up one morning as a six-foot long cockroach and went to bed at night as a human being woke up as a cockroach and of course that's a pretty massive change and it's a kind of an interesting funny little book if you read it but the first thing that you have to do before you go to write this essay is you're gonna have to decide how you've changed you want to be in a wheelchair do you want to be mentally disabled physically disabled or do you want to be instantaneously older or any

3:05 combination of those what you want to do if you're considering writing this essay right now is you want to take a second and write down your change I'm just gonna say wheelchair-bound for the purposes of this you know cuz I'm a I wouldn't call myself a super active guy but you know I walk around a lot I do a lot of things outdoors and things like that so this would be a pretty huge change if suddenly I was in a wheelchair all day of course I guess I could still do my job because it's not very physical anyway second thing and again these are these two elements of this essay you want to consider your normal daily routine so what is your usual routine what kind of schedule do you follow what kind of activities do you normally pursue and like how physically active are you how

3:51 dependent on others are you where do you live where do you work where do you go through the day these are the kind of things that are affected if you had a disability for example in my house I'd live in a two-story house if suddenly I was in a wheelchair that would kind of be a problem because all the bedrooms are upstairs and all that you know I'd be good on the downstairs we might have to move my bedroom to downstairs so these are things that that you want to kind of think about as far as what you're going to write about another thing these this is all stuff we're doing before we write the essay you might want to take a list or you can steal nine of the ways that a disability or physical changes would affect daily life you know one it might affect your routine two it might affect your mobility your activities your

4:37 independence where you work or how you work your entertainment your relationships health or well-being this is not an exhaustive list but I came up with this after a few minutes and this is something you can do this is going to become very important when we go to organize the essay so these are just some things to think of before you even start to write now as you begin to move towards writing an essay what is normally the first step has now become our step four and that is you turn the topic into a question with a question mark this kind of already has this so our topic is what would your day be like if you got up one morning and suddenly found you'd changed in a big way that's pretty much your essay topic I just reworded it slightly how would you react if he suddenly became

5:22 physically challenged or you found that you'd changed in a big way how would you react if he suddenly oh oh I said that as you go about your day think about everything that would be different if you were disabled or elderly what challenges might you face now do you see how day is underlined here twice the actual this is the weird part the actual topic of your essay is your daily routine and that's important because you know you think you're writing about change but you're actually writing about a daily routine or if you want to think about this more correctly how a sudden physical change slash disability would affect your daily routine and so I think that's important for clarifying your essay so your real topic question here is how would your daily routine change if you were suddenly disabled now

6:09 turning the topic into a question with a question mark is important for two reasons one it clarifies what you're going to be writing about again underline daily routine this is about a day in the life of you but it's about a day in the life of a changed you and that's important because that's going to affect everything about your essay the second reason that it's important to turn the topic into a question with a question mark is your thesis statement which comes at the end of the intro paragraph and your whole essay revolves around your thesis statement is like the hub of a wheel with spun that answers this question now if someone was to ask the question how would your daily routine change if you were suddenly disabled and the answer was donkeys live a long time no one's ever seen a dead donkey something is wrong with that answer if someone

6:54 answered if you ask someone that question they answered that way you just look at him like is something wrong with you your thesis statement should contain words from the topic questions so you would say something like my daily routine ever since my disability of blank my daily routine is suddenly very you know and then you put there you know very different you know there's a lot of different things that you can answer there but your thesis statement has to answer that topic question in a way your entire essay is going to revolve around this now once you've turned the topic into a question with a question mark the next step is to organize your essay so it says it's got to be a five paragraph long essay all essays are a stylized piece of writing just like a haiku is a

7:40 stylized piece of writing you have to follow the rules when you write an essay and all essays have three parts intro where you tell them what you're gonna tell them body where you tell them in conclusion where you tell them what you told them if you can write a big long piece of writing but if you don't have an intro body conclusion it's not really an essay and again in this essay this entire essay is going to answer the question how is your daily routine different once you've had this huge change now in a typical essay the body is the longest part of the essay and the typical essay a body is 60 to 75% of the total length of the essay a good five paragraph essay is about 600 words in 600 words if 75% of that is about 450 you cannot write that out as one paragraph it would look like a 1:1 whole

8:27 page paragraph which kills your reader so what typically happens in a longer essay of 500 or more words is you're gonna break that body up into pieces which in here we have three main points in a five paragraph essay what your first paragraph is always the intro that also tells us what the last paragraph is because the conclusion is is a restatement of the intro so it's about the same length so within a five paragraph essay you always have three body paragraphs and that kind of answers the question if your paper is a standard five paragraph format how many body pairs you have you have three this becomes important because if you can just figure out what to put in your three body paragraphs you're 90 percent whole when you write in your essay which speaking of let's move on to that so um one thing I need to mention before we

9:13 need to move any further is this is a special type of essay this is actually compare and contrast essay in other words you're gonna be talking about before and after your change now what happens when you write up a compare contrast essay as everybody faces this big temptation to start the essay you give their first body paragraph like before and then then they go to an after in their middle body paragraph and then in their final body paragraph they kind of talk about both before and after if you do that know that two of your body paragraphs are going to be off topic what you actually have to do in the compare and contrast essays you have to talk about both items in each of the body paragraphs now remember what you're actually talking about in this essay is

9:59 how your daily routine has changed which means that in each body paragraph you need to talk about the old daily routine and the new daily routine now that you've changed as a human being and so that's something that's important to remember and you actually have to do that in all three of these so another way to look at this is that in each of your body paragraphs or main points however whichever words you want to use you're going to be discussing before change and after change this is actually a good thing because this will help us when we write our body paragraphs it'll make them easier okay let's move on to the next slide okay once you've started to think about organization the next thing that you have to do is create an essay map this is where you actually have to fill in words like this is what

10:45 I'm gonna talk about in my body paragraph now we already gave a list of the things the the ways that a disability would affect somebody in their daily routine and and one way might be mobility and other might be activities you know obviously if I am in a wheelchair snowboarding is going to be more challenging for me than if I'm not in a wheelchair if I'm blind reading is gonna be a little more challenging for me so you have to actually come up with with that list which we already did and then what you have to do when you make an essay map is you have to pick three of these now why three because we have three main points in the essay so what I did on this and you can pick any three one but what you want to do before you move any further is pick three ways that

11:32 your daily life would change if you had a disability so what I did for mine is I picked the mobility cuz you know obviously if I was in a wheelchair I'm getting around differently I'm not really cruising up those stairs and I'm probably not going out for a jog so I pick activities and independence I may need help if I'm in a wheelchair verse the way I am now so these are these are three things that I would do and then you you put them what an essay map does is it gives a word or two for each body or for each paragraph that you do so in your first paragraph you're gonna be that's your intro parry you're gonna introduce the topic and your second paragraph you're gonna talk about how your daily mobility has changed or how your daily routine the mobility side of

12:19 your daily routine has changed as a result of your disability in your second paragraph you're going to talk about how your disability has changed your daily activities in your third body paragraph you're going to talk about how your disability has changed your daily independence you know how has this changed for you and then you're going to come up with the conclusion okay now once we have our essay map now we're actually kind of ready to write the essay we kind of know what we need to do now intro conclusion detail a good intro is about five or six sentences it's not quite as long as a body and inside the intro you have to do two things you need to introduce your readers to the topic who what where and when and then at the end of the intro you have to provide the

13:05 thesis statement to answer the topic question now first of all the thesis statement is usually one sentence sometimes you can elaborate and make a second sentence on there but generally a thesis statement is one sentence which means in five sentences what you have to do is you have to introduce the readers to the now because this essay is about how a massive massive physical and/or mental change disability would affect your daily routine a good way to begin is to describe your physical change maybe you want to talk about what happened to you you need to do that over about five sentences so if you need to include some information about the old you that's fine too but basically what you need to do in that introduction is you need to explain to the readers how you change so that or what has changed

13:51 with you so that your readers are going to understand how that's gonna affect your daily routine so they'll have a background for when you answer this question so in conclusion once I transition to the wheelchair my daily routine was was greatly affected in my mobility and the activities that I chose and in my independence that gives everything the readers need to do now don't forget when you get to the end of the essay a conclusion is a restatement of that intro it has to remind readers what the topic was and then it restates or remind readers what the thesis was now again this becomes important if you start to shove facts in your conclusion you're actually making your inclusion into another body paragraph there's no real facts that go in this the conclusion is

14:38 a restatement of the intro so we get to the very end of that essay go back to that intro and then again the conclusion is tell them what you what you just told them you're just reminding them of the points that you made in the intro okay now let's go to body paragraph detail now this is important a good body paragraph is about seven or eight sentences each and basically what your body paragraphs do is they answer the topic question just like your whole essay does now remember your entire essay and you start in the intro paragraph is going to answer the question how would your daily routine change if you were suddenly disabled what your body paragraphs have to do is they have to answer that question in a topic specific way so remember how we

15:23 chose mobility activities and independence so how would your mobility be affected if you were suddenly disabled notice how we've got most of the words of the top question but we've also got mobility here in my second body paragraph and I would answer that in six to eight sentences how would my daily activities be affected if I was suddenly disabled I have to answer that question in six to eight sentences it's a stretch down answer not a one-sentence answer a six to eight sentence answer how would my independence be affected if I was suddenly disabled again I answer that six or eight sentences now what you're doing when you're answering the topic question in a very body specific way is you're giving your entire essay kind of

16:09 a unity that is how your essay revolves around the thesis and that is how your main points directly support your thesis statement hopefully as I'm going over this this makes this easier for you now let's talk a little bit more detail remember the body paragraphs have to be six to eight sentences long and all of them are essentially going to answer that question how would your daily routine change if you were suddenly disabled now again because this is a compare and contrast essay you need to think of this a little bit differently remember you're going to address the topic question but because this involves change and its compare and contrast each of your body paragraphs needs to address two items life before and life after the

16:56 disability so you know going back to the mobility what I would do is when I get to that body paragraph I begin when my topic sentence before my wheelchair disability I ran around all the time and I was very physically active and did things that involved running and jumping around bla bla bla but after my disability then I had to get used to a more sedentary lifestyle sitting around that's a one sentence answer to that question now what I do I've got six more sentences left in that body paragraph I spend the first three sentences talking about what my mobility was like before the accident before the disability so I would say you know I was a type of

17:41 person that walked around blah blah blah you know I I didn't need anybody I didn't need a special car to get around I didn't I do that for about three sentences that's not too hard to do next I take the next three sentences and I now describe my new level of mobility so now I find that I can't can no longer get up the stairs you know that's that's not an option in my house so we have to do something different I have to live downstairs my car has got to be a special car for a while I do that for two or three sentences when you think about writing an essay it can be kind of daunting you know you're looking at 600 words oh my gosh when you break it down into these little pieces then it becomes much much easier can you talk about can you can you talk about mobility without

18:26 a wheelchair for three sentences can you talk about what it's like to get around without a wheelchair for three sentences I think that's pretty easy to do you can go up and down stairs you don't need a special car you can walk around it is amazing if you think about this you know like it if you thought about what if I was in a wheelchair and you start walking around to all the different places you go you will discover and I and I learned this by taking the class and I was talking to a guy who was in a wheelchair and he said look around you and see a lot of places are not handicapped accessible they're not wheelchair accessible they haven't you know there's a lot of places do have ramps but a lot more do not and then when you get into people's homes and cars I mean you know if if you were had a wheelchair you have to have a special car you know and there are all these different things then you talk about

19:13 three different you use three sentences to talk about mobility let's talk about activities we do the same thing you would talk about all the activities that you did before your disability and then how that might change on a daily basis after the disabilities again you're always talking about what you do in a normal day but you're doing in before or after here now this is important doesn't matter which order you put these in as long as you address the before or after in each paragraph remember this is an essay about change about how your life would change if you had this disability now hopefully this has given you the tools you need to write your essay and again you've got this PowerPoint I am more than happy to work with you one on

19:59 one if you need more help but I hope that this is I hope at this point you are feeling like yeah I think I could do this so don't forget as you go to write this essay that remember your entire essay all five paragraphs of of it are going to answer the question how your daily routine would change if you were suddenly disabled you do not have to use my main points but you could remember that that in your essay you're coming up with three main ways that a daily routine would change if you had if you were physically disabled there so mobility would change activities independence I mean there's you don't have to choose mine but that there you are and they're you and and once you finish talking about those three different ways you restate your thesis and an intro in the conclusion and there you have it you turn in an essay that's

20:45 a pleasure for me to read so I hope that this little video has helped you again I am happy to come back and give you any additional help with that if you need it and feel free to reach out to me via email or give me a call at five five nine two five three three and I would be happy to help you thanks for watching my show bye-bye