Tuesday, September 11, 2018

ACT Writing Practice

*Overall Prompt:  At this moment in time, there is more information more readily available to more people than ever before. Smartphones can instantly provide directions to your destination when even 10 years ago you had to look up directions before you left and/or bring along a map. Researchers from all over the world are able to pool their knowledge to advance their fields more quickly. Many libraries have broadened their collections to include subscriptions to online/electronic databases as well as printed works. Greater access to information is generally seen as a positive advance, but what are the consequences of making so much knowledge available to so many people? Based upon the ever-increasing amount of information in the world and the ever-broader access to it, it is worth examining the implications and meaning of easy access to information in our lives.

*Read and carefully consider these perspectives.  Each suggests a particular way of thinking about the prompt:

Perspective One: With increased ease of access to information, we lose the incentive to gain knowledge ourselves. By outsourcing our memories of facts and other information, we are becoming less intelligent.

Perspective Two: Greater access to information allows us to avoid memorizing facts and, instead, use our brains for higher-level thinking. This efficiency leads to a more prosperous and progressive world for everyone.

Perspective Three: The more people who have access to more information, the greater the chances of collaboration and thus further advances in human knowledge. This is good because it pushes us toward new, unimagined possibilities.
*Write a unified, coherent essay about the effects of the increasing accessibility of information.  In your essay, be sure to:
*Clearly state your own perspective on the issue and analyze the relationship between your perspective and at least one other perspective
*Develop and support your ideas with reasoning and examples
*Organize your ideas clearly and logically
*Communicate your ideas effectively in standard written English
*
*Your perspective may be in full agreement with any of those given, in partial agreement, or completely different.

You have 40 minutes to write this essay.  Make sure to take time to read through and fix issues at the end (most likely during the last 5 minutes)

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