After reading, “How Smartphones Hijack our Minds,” complete the following four activities in one document. Please label each part in your document.
1. Write a 5-7 sentence summary of “How Smartphones Hijack our Minds,” that effectively captures the spirit of the argument. What does the author say? What is his point? What is he trying to persuade you of? You are trying to summarize this piece in a way that the writer would recognize the summary and not take offense to it.
2. Free write for 5-7 minutes on your reactions to this piece (or anything else we have read up until now). Just . . . write. Seriously. Write anything. The only rule . . . DON’T STOP! Allow your mind to wander wherever it wants to go. Don’t stop for 5-7 minutes. Set a timer and keep typing until it goes off. Try to get to the point where your fingers are moving and you’re not even conscious of what they’re saying until you re-read what you wrote. This is a fantastic way to tap into your unconscious and to really explore how you feel about a topic at hand. When you get good at this, you might be surprised by where you end up at the end of a freewriting session. Don’t get tripped up on a word count here. The task here is to free write
3. Write your response to this piece in a clear, one sentence statement by either agreeing with the argument, disagreeing with the argument, or some combination of the two.
4. Find three passages (likely a sentence or two in length) that are relevant to your argument you wrote in #3 above and practice building a frame (a “quotation sandwich”) around them. This is how you will always incorporate the words of others into your paper when you quote from them directly.
