It is primarily through our identification with social groups that we define ourselves.
Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the statement and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, you should consider ways in which the statement might or might not hold true and explain how these considerations shape your position.
Nature versus nurture. It has been a long-standing debate on what influences our personality more. Whether the strings of DNA that define our genetics control our behaviour. Or is it the experiences that we gain throughout our lives which mould our response to a situation. Because, while we have been inundated with discoveries everyday where a fragment of the DNA is sliced and diced and incorporated in a rat to make it glow, no one can deny that their brain still thinks and interprets stimuli in their native (or mother) tongue. Rat language.
However, when we move on to things that are less cosmetic like the mole on the skin, when we try to identify someone not simply by his / her ethnicity or colour of skin or dialect, when we are in situations where we have to decide whether or not sharing a cup of coffee with him / her in the evening would be a desirable event; we tend to identify ourselves with them. We tend to picture them in our place, handling a situation that we know how we would respond to. Like, how hard would it be to convince the person in front to allow us to pay for the coffee.
The zeitgiest today is abundant with information, both the generic ones like the How To guides, and the deepest and personal ones on Facebook and Twitter. Its a click away. And the most important thing we look at first, or rather the one that's shown to us regardless, is what friends we have in common. What things we like. What topics we follow, and what opinion we share. A guy who has lived in the west would expect a more conservative attitude from a girl born in the middle east. Friendship with an Arsenal fan is sure to be stressful to the throat of a Manchester United fan.
Nevertheless, even with all this data available on-line, accessible as never before, there are still some things you would not find out until you have spent some time with the real person. Its not uncommon for people to moderate their profile pages, blacklist their habits or just photoshop their selfies, for the sake of appeal. What if he / she is part of a dreaded cult, or has an unfathomable phobia of blondes, or (just so that he / she is ready) packs a 9mm. How many friends do we expect a genius-in-science-dorky-looking introvert to have on-line? The information on-line is only as trustworthy as the person who uploaded it. The dilemma is, we are looking at this information to assess how trustworthy the person is. It is perfectly possible that a kid born in the most crime-infested city one day becomes the leader of the nation. And that the leader of the nation has his heart blackened by greed for power.
Why I have been referring to social networks in the passage above is because today, they are the first place we chose to go if we need to know more than the name of someone we just met. We want to know what they like, or would like. What would be a grave mistake, and what could potentially make you Best-Friends-Forever. At the same time, we maintain ourselves, and our profiles to present a holistic view of ourselves to others. In a way, these technologies, have given us the chance to present our case ourselves to who might be interested, and minimized the number of bases for someone to have a prejudiced image about us.
Comments
the whole thing has been
the whole thing has been written very coherently and i personally like it. I hope that you'll get a good score - But the thing is that I find it a little deviating from the subject. I wrote this subject too (I am practicing on paper so it's a little difficult for me to share :) ) and my taking was that the question is whether we define ourselves with the characteristics of the social groups that we are a part of, or that we are individuals that do not compromise for the sake of these groups. so my answer did refer to online networks as well, and the profile manipulation, but it was more like "so people change and compromise, just to fit in the social groups that they desire, because they identify themselves through them". - what I am trying to say here is that my taking from the subject might be completely wrong but if it's true then you might want to rewrite the body of the writing to make it better.
all in all, I think you have a very good range of vocabulary and use the words in place, which makes your writing look nice and prof. :)
FINALLY!! A human comment! I
FINALLY!! A human comment!
I was beginning to wonder if only bots lived here.
Yes, you are absolutely right saying that I deviated from the topic, and perhaps being a bit too kind calling it 'slightly'. I realised that on my own while in the middle of the exercise. You can probably make it out by the blatant delineation in the last two paragraphs. In fact, I was so displeased by this essay that the 5.5 score by e-rator looked like an insult.
The thing is, I had some ulterior motives for this exercise. I was trying to find out if I could mechanise my thought process directly into the taps on my keyboard. You see, I skipped the 2 minutes of deliberation, and went straight to writing the essay after reading the problem statement. It was like a live commentary. I had a very engaging time writing this.
But I digress. It was a futile attempt.
Or was it?
Though the essay was almost completely off-topic, I learned a very important lesson regarding why everyone suggests drawing an outline before actually writing an essay. If you don't, you simply start blurting some gibberish. I was lucky that I realized it in the middle of the essay, and happy that I managed to write something relevant before my timer beeped.
That, and your encouraging comments regarding my vocabulary are probably the only things I gained from this attempt.
Thank you for taking the time to read through this essay and providing your comments, and proving that human intellect is still far superior than a computer's algorithm.
Honestly speaking, i decided
Honestly speaking, i decided to start commenting so that it would encourage others to do the same - so that maybe my own writings would get some "Human Comments" as well. :))
judging the essay, I could say that I didn't realize that you had started writing without any outline or plan. But if you are looking for better strategies, you could do as a friend of mine has suggested : leave the opening and the conclusion for the last 10 minutes. His strategy goes like this: you start outlining but not on paper, on the screen - and turn each of your phrases into a paragraph, so you'll have the body of the essay ready to go, and in the end when you know "how strong" your positioning is, you'll have your mind organized and write a better opening (more relating to your positioning) which will no-doubt make a great difference for the reader.
I have tried this strategy once or twice, but since I have to take the paper based test, it is a bit different, and furthermore I think this method doesn't fit some of the subject.... but all in all you might just give it a try. :)
ps: I am pretty sure this
ps: I am pretty sure this essay was not a failure. :)
EXACTLY!!!!! I got that idea
EXACTLY!!!!!
I got that idea a couple of days ago and yes, since I am planning for a computer based test, the strategy is
The thing is, even if I take the time to ponder over the problem statement, and scribble down some notes outlining the plan of action, writing the introduction completely muddles the thought process. Furthermore, if you get lost like I did (which is what almost always happened to me) moulding the main points in order to stay coherent with the intro often changes the whole scenario. In fact, it happened to me once where I outlined my points to strongly disagree with an issue, but by the time I reached the second paragraph, just to maintain the same rhythm, I had to mellow down to the extent that it almost felt like I was supporting it, or worst of all 'confused'.
The new strategy has been serving me great. At least now I don't forget to write the conclusion before the time runs out. There are some rough edges, however I have seen that I write longer intros and conclusions that too in less time when I write them at last, as compared to the pointless gibberish I spurt out when following grandpa style.
Anyway, hearty thanks for your comments. My day-job severely constrains my activity here. But I would strive to follow suit when possible.
Sentence: Its a click away.
Description: The tag a determiner, possessive is not usually followed by a
Suggestion: Refer to Its and a
Sentence: Its not uncommon for people to moderate their profile pages, blacklist their habits or just photoshop their selfies, for the sake of appeal.
Description: A determiner, possessive is not usually followed by a negator
Suggestion: Refer to Its and not
flaws:
No. of Words: 587 350
Attribute Value Ideal
Score: 5.5 out of 6
Category: Excellent Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 2 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 0 2
No. of Sentences: 29 15
No. of Words: 587 350
No. of Characters: 2580 1500
No. of Different Words: 294 200
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 4.922 4.7
Average Word Length: 4.395 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.614 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 156 100
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 110 80
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 72 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 50 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.241 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 14.117 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.207 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.266 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.442 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.223 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 5 5