Writing Homework Help

We will not begin Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death (AOTD). In this book (it is NOT a novel–what is a novel?) author Neil Postman is writing about the social effects of Television (notice the publication year), in MANY aspects of American/global society. One of his central ideas is that the medium affects the message. In this sense, a medium is anything that transmits information/communication. A medium is singular, the plural is media; AND these terms are NOT the same as what is commonly referred to as “The Media”. Language, itself, is a Medium, as is of course writing, or even a snowball flying through the air about to transmit pain to the receiver, paint is a medium, as is photography… ie.NOT just the standard technologies that we might think of: television, radio, internet, etc. Postman would like us to consider, at great depth and breadth, how various media affect the messages that they are sending. Keep this general idea in your mind as you read this book.

ALSO, be sure to take on the challenge of this text and be an ACTIVE READER, looking up words you don’t know, re-reading for clarity, making plenty of notations in the text. THIS is collegiate-level reading, and hopefully your previous English classes have imported these necessary reading strategies. You WILL NOT be expected to understand every single idea and point in this rather complex book; however, you must read assiduously. Our activities and HW questions will to help understand and target the most important points so that you don’t miss out on them, as they will figure centrally in the paper to be written on this topic.

The HW Study Questions are not simply a test of whether or not you are keeping up with the reading (though, certainly, that will also be revealed); rather, the HW questions are directly designed to assist your understanding of the text AND begin compiling materials, ideas, and quotes that will help with the paper writing assignment.

You should already have this book in your possession [Cardinal Rule for College: get all your required materials at the beginning of the semester] but it is also still available at the CoA bookstore. Note: if you are going to order it online, be sure to get expedited shipping–we will be proceeding at pace, starting now, and any delay in having acquired the necessary text WILL NOT be an acceptable justification for extensions on work assignments. CH1 is included in Modules (no further readings from AOTD will be uploaded_

The first assignment associated with AOTD is to think a bit more about the title of Ch1. To do this you will select 2 quotes from chapter one that you connect to the title, by EXPLAINING each in depth. [300 words, total–QUOTES NOT INCLUDED] Be sure to indicate YOUR EXACT wordcount on your submission (required–see Announcement on Wordcounts)

Be sure to review the “IMPORTANT” Notes on Study Questions at the beginning of the Class Schedule section fo the Syllabus.

ONLY copy&paste submissions will be accepted–NO uploads of documents. This is a general rule–docs ONLY when specified