Category: Writing

TRANSCRIPT:
Today we acknowledge a really terrible loss. Cedric Diggory was, as you all know, exceptionally hard-working, intricately fair-minded, and, most importantly, a fierce, fierce friend. I think, therefore, you have the right to know exactly how he died. You see, Cedric Diggory was murdered by Lord Voldemort. The ministry of magic does not wish me to tell you this. But not to do so, I think, would be an insult to his memory. Now, the pain we all feel at this dreadful loss reminds me, reminds us, that while we may come from different places and speak in different tongues, our hearts beat as one. In light of recent events, the bonds of friendship we made this year will be more important than ever. Remember that Cedric Diggory will not have died in vain. Remember that and we’ll celebrate a boy who was kind and honest and brave and true right to the very end.
Identify all ethos, pathos, and logos in the text.

Step 1: Read these two additional articles, Point and Counterpoint, that present opposing views on the subject of teaching coding to kids. They come from the same source as your original article, the Canadian Points of View Reference Centre.
Step 2: Do some pre-writing to help you figure out what side of the argument you agree with and the reasons why. You may want to use a t-chart like you’ve done in previous activities in this unit, or you might want to use a mind map. You should choose the method that works the best for you. As you do your pre-writing, consider the following: What are the strengths and weaknesses of the perspectives presented in each article?
Then decide what your opinion is by answering the following question: Is coding an essential skill that should be taught to all students? Come up with at least three strong reasons that support your opinion. (Don’t forget your methods of proof).
Step 3: Write your first draft. Use the following template to help you organize your ideas: Writing a Series of Paragraphs Expressing an Opinion Organizer You should notice that the structure for the series of paragraphs is very similar to the structure of the opinion paragraph you wrote in the previous activity. Submit your organizer to your teacher for feedback.
article1-Point: Learning to Code Is an Invaluable Tool for a Future Based in Technology
According to a 2010 Research Council of Canada report, women make up only 22 per cent of the natural sciences and engineering workforce, and women are similarly under-represented in STEM fields in North American universities. Heather Payne, the founder of Ladies Learning Code and its offshoot, Girls Learning Code, believes that teaching girls and women to code in ways tailored to their learning needs will encourage more of them to pursue computer science later in life. She told the Toronto Star that teaching girls to code will expand the pool of people with the skills to build the technology used every day by a huge number of people, leading to new technology that more accurately reflects the needs of its users.
Jeanette M. Wing, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, believes that the skills imparted by a basic education in computer science are relevant across a wide range of disciplines. In her department’s magazine, the Link, she writes that an education in computer science teaches computational thinking — a form of problem solving that uses abstraction, or the ability to create general principles from specific circumstances — that can be applied to a broad range of disciplines, including biology, chemistry, linguistics, neuroscience, and photography.
Coding education is also becoming more and more accessible. In 2014, England implemented a nationwide set of computer science curricula at the K — 12 level, requiring all schoolchildren to learn the basics of coding. In order to support teachers all over the world who want to bring coding into their classrooms, organizations such as Code.org and the Raspberry Pi Foundation provide free resources on their websites to help improve the quality of the coding education children receive, which could enable even schools with budgetary constraints to provide their students with access to computer science courses.
article 2-  Counterpoint: Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic Remain the Most Critical Tools for Future Success
William Zhou, Canadian businessman and founder of Chalk.com, has argued that while children should receive an education in coding, mandatory elementary and high school classes are not the way to go about it. He maintained that the resources needed to offer the classes in the first place and then ensure that the teachers in charge are properly trained in the subject just are not there yet. He fears that if authorities push for mandatory classes, offerings will be rudimentary and dull and end up turning off potential coding enthusiasts rather than encouraging them. According to Wendy Powley, a research associate in computing at Queen’s University, only one-third of Ontario high schools currently offer even one computer science class.
A study conducted in several California schools in 2008 illustrated the potential for coding classes at the elementary level to increase racial, gender, and economic divides between students instead of improving it. In the book Stuck in the Shallow End, researchers show that quality of computer science programming varied considerably across their area of study. At more affluent schools, there was greater access to quality instruction, and even in the school with better programming, minority students were underrepresented in those classes and received less encouragement from teachers to pursue computer science. Mark Guzdial, a computing professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology and an expert in computer science education, believes more resources should be allocated to improving the teaching of basics subjects that are accessible to all students such as reading, writing, and math.
Powley told CBC News that she has seen a rise in the number of students entering computer science at Queen’s University, but most of those students are responding to a growing market for computer-based skills rather than computer science classes they took previously, undermining the basis for mandatory coding classes in public schools nationwide.
Writing a Series of Paragraphs Expressing an Opinion
Introduction: State your opinion. Introduce 3 supporting reasons.
Statement of Opinion: “I believe that…”
Body Paragraph 1
Statement of Reason #1: “One reason…” or “Firstly,…”
Provide evidence to support your reason:
Explain how that evidence supports your opinion:
Body Paragraph 2
Statement of Reason #2: “Another reason…” or “Secondly,…”
Provide evidence to support your reason:
Explain how that evidence supports your opinion:
Body Paragraph 3
Statement of Reason #3: “A final reason…” or “Finally,…” or “Thirdly”
Provide evidence to support your reason:
Explain how that evidence supports your opinion:
Conclusion Summarize 3 points discussed
Concluding restatement of opinion: “In conclusion,…”

3:40 .nl LTE C} Take Quiz Exit if the premises are true then the conclusion must be false they are shorter than invalid arguments Question 2 0 / 2 pts Which of the following is the mark of an educated mind? For the same reason as was suggested by Aristotle, namely being educated is not the same as being able __________ . to force others to comply with one’s orders to deceive others with clever rhetoric Q to remember vast amounts of information to entertain a thought without accepting it Question 3 2 / 2 Pts Which famous detective said the following statement about valid inferences: “Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must’l?E’El’l’E’El’UEl’I’E—
3:40 . LTE Take Quiz Exit O Batman O Nancy Drew t Question 4 0 / 2 pts An argument is if we find an argument such that it is not possible for all of its premises to be true and its conclusion to be false. O fallacious O fascinating valid O warranted Question 5 2 / 2 pts The grammatical structure “If B then not A” (If you tell me to do it I won’t do it) is a logically equivalent to O “If A then B” If you tell me to do it, I will do it “not A unless B” (I won’t do it unless you tell me to
3:40 . LTE Take Quiz Exit the fallacy of denying the antecedent O the fallacy of affirming the consequent O a valid argument by denying the consequent t Question 7 0 / 2 pts “Silicon Valley has the highest gross salaries, the highest cost of living, and most expensive housing in the Unites States. Arielle lives in Silicon Valley. Therefore, she must be rich.” That argument is an example of O the fallacy of false classification O a valid argument O the fallacy of false reference the fallacy of division Question 8 2 / 2 pts “A tech college was saved from financial and academic disaster by its college president, who later went on to become a director. Fenimore Peabody became a director after having served as a college
3:40 . LTE Take Quiz Exit Fenimore Peabody was a college president. t Question 9 0 / 2 pts Consider the reasoning expressed by the speaker in this passage: “I was diagnosed with cancer. I overcame it by changing to a vegan diet and praying and meditating. Therefore, if you have cancer, becoming a vegan and praying and meditating will cure you, too.” We can reasonably evaluate the speaker’s inference as O valid because of disjunctive syllogism a fallacy of composition O a fallacy of false classification a fallacy of false reference t Question 10 0 / 2 pts Consider this passage: “If you do all the assignments in this class then you will pass the class.” We can reasonably characterize this passage as
3:40 .ul LTE C} Take Quiz Exit a fallacy of false classi?cation 9 a fallacy of false reference Question 10 0 / 2 pts Consider this passage: “If you do all the assignments in this class then you will pass the class.” We can reasonably characterize this passage as an invalid argument created by an irrational person affirming the antecedent a fallacy of false dilemma denying the consequent Q a fallacy of division Quiz Score: 10 out of 20 4 Previous Next >

Page 132: Primarily girls are told by advertisers that what is most important about them is their perfume. their clothing. their bodies. their beauty. Their “essence” is their underwear. “He says the first thing he noticed about you is your great personality.” says an ad featuring a very young woman in tight jeans. The copy continues. “He lies.” “if this is your idea of a great catch.” says an ad for a cosmetic kit from a teen magazine featuring a cute boy. “this is your tackle box.” Even very little girls are offered makeup and toys like Special Night Barbie. which shows them how to dress up for a night out. Girls of all ages get the message that they must be ?awlessly beautiful and. above all these days. they must be thin. – Even more destructively. they get the message that this is possible. that. with enough effort and self-sacri?ce. they can achieve this ideal. Thus many girls spend enormous amounts of time and energy attempting to achieve something that is not oniy trivial but also completely unattainable. The glossy images of ?awlessly beautiful and extremely thin women that surround us would not have the impact they do if we did not live in a culture that encourages us to believe we can and should remake our bodies into perfect commodities. These images play into the American belief of transformation and ever-new possibilities. no longer via hard work but via purchase of the right products. Kilbourne. Jean. {1999). ‘The more you subtract. the more you add’: Cutting girls down to size. In Can’t buy my love: How advertising changes the way we think and feel (pp. 128-154}. New York. NY: Simon 8; Schuster.

1. Why does Rosemary want to take the girl from the street home with her? Is it really just to offer her a cup of tea? Cite evidence from the text to support your answer.
2. Why does Rosemary like the enamel box she discovers at the antique shop? Cite evidence from the text to support your answer.
3. How does Rosemary react when Philip comments that the girl Rosemary brought home is “astonishingly pretty”? Why does she react this way? Cite evidence from the text to support your answer.
4. Which context clues helped you determine the meaning of the word discreet as it is used in the text? Write your definition of discreet here, and indicate which clues helped you figure out the meaning of the word.
5. The Latin word crudus means “raw or rough.” With this in mind, write your best definition of the word crude as it is used in the text. Indicate which context clues helped you determine the word’s meaning.

A Streetcar Named Desire Scenes 7 – 8
1. When Stanley says, “Soaking in a hot tub,” (scene 7) his tone is MOST LIKELY
Select one:
a.sincere   b.  sulking    c.   sarcastic   d.  sympathetic
2.The line “Some canary-bird, huh!” (Stanley:scene 7) is an example of
Select one:
a.simile   b.  metaphor  c.imagery  d.allusion
3.The many exclamation marks used in this play tell the reader that the characters
Select one:
a.are always yelling to be heard over city noise  b.  can only show their true emotion when they are yelling
c.feel that the only way to be noticed is to be dramatic   d. are passionate about whatever the current topic is
4.Blanche’s FINAL downfall in Laurel was when she
Select one:
a.became “out-of-bounds” at the army camp  b. had a relationship with one of her students
c.lost all of the family money and Belle Reve  d. had to return her room key at the Flamingo Hotel
5.Mitch is not going to come to Blanche’s birthday because
Select one:
a.Stanley told him about her reputation in Laurel
b.his mother is too sick and he has to look after her
c.he was given the opportunity to work a double shift
d.he feels too much pressure from Blanche to get married
6.The character that is MOST symbolized by the parrot (scene 8) is
Select one:
a.Blanche
b.Mitch
c.Stanley
d.Stella
7.In scene 8, Stanley is angry with Stella because
Select one:
a.she is working too hard while being pregnant
b.Blanche has overstayed her welcome and Stella has done nothing about it
c.she waits hand and foot on Blanche rather than on him
d.ever since Blanche arrived, she has become more disrespectful to him
8.The words HOITY-TOITY in “Hoity-toity, describing me as an ape” (Stanley: scene 8) means
Select one:
a.snobbishly
b.friendly
c.impolitely
d.rudely
9.Of the following, the sentence that BEST describes Stanley in scene 8 is that he is
Select one:
a.loyal to his friends
b.passionate towards his wife
c.down-to-earth and realistic
d.forceful in his opinion of Blanche
10.Stanley BEST shows that he is the man of the house by
Select one:
a.demonstrating how he completes kitchen chores
b.telling Mac that he is the bowling captain
c.buying a bus ticket behind Stella’s back
d.taking his wife to the hospital

PART A:
Write a paragraph of 200-250 words describing the mistakes discovered in the letter below. The description should focus on the attributes of good values and attitudes which are not displayed in the letter.
CableNet Berhad
No 1, Persiaran Kenanga
50050 Kuala Lumpur
Malaysia
30/11/2019
Ms. Reena Kaur,
Financial Controller Officer
Perdana Indah Sdn. Bhd.
20 Jalan Pandan,
Desa Square.
47100 Cyberjaya
Dear Mrs. Kaur,
The purpose of this is to convey to you my utmost sincere apologies for any inconvenience you may have experienced last month with respect to the installation of your Internet high speed service.
I just returned from vacation this week and found your file in my in-basket. As soon as I reviewed your case, it was clear that your May 20th request for a change in service might have somehow slipped through the cracks. The only possible explanation I can give is that we have recently had a number of key staff changes which might have resulted in your letter being overlooked. Consequently, I have directed our Installation Group to contact you by the end of this week to set up a time convenient to you when they could go to your house and install your new router and make the necessary adjustments to your software.
Because of this serious oversight, and as a testament to our appreciation of you being our customer, we are going to provide you with your first three months of high speed service free of charge. Therefore, your account will not be billed until October of this year.
Your case is definitely not typical of CableNet’s level of customer service. We continue to be committed to providing you and all of our valuable customers with the highest standards of service in the industry. We look forward in time to having your problem fixed.
If you have any concerns please don’t hesitate to contact me at 012-3456789.
Yours,
Meeza
Meeza Othman
Manager, Customer Service
PART B:
Rewrite the letter to display the attributes of good values and attitudes required in business correspondence. Use an appropriate format for your letter.

Article to be used, “The False Promise of Meritocracy,” by Marianne Cooper, The Atlantic, Dec. 2015,
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/12/meritocracy/418074/
Please help me with a summary of the following and questions.
Managers who believe themselves to be fair and objective judges of ability often overlook women and minorities who are deserving of job offers and pay increases.
Summary:
Americans are, compared with populations of other countries, particularly enthusiastic about the idea of meritocracy, a system that rewards merit (ability + effort) with success. Americans are more likely to believe that people are rewarded for their intelligence and skills and are less likely to believe that family wealth plays a key role in getting ahead. And Americans’ support for meritocratic principles has remained stable over the last two decades despite growing economic inequality, recessions, and the fact that there is less mobility in the United States than in most other industrialized countries.
Summary:
This strong commitment to meritocratic ideals can lead to suspicion of efforts that aim to support particular demographic groups. For example, initiatives designed to recruit or provide development opportunities to under-represented groups often come under attack as “reverse discrimination.” Some companies even justify not having diversity policies by highlighting their commitment to meritocracy. If a company evaluates people on their skills, abilities, and merit, without consideration of their gender, race, sexuality etc., and managers are objective in their assessments then there is no need for diversity policies, the thinking goes.
Summary:
But is this true? Do commitments to meritocracy and objectivity lead to more fair workplaces?
Summary:
Emilio J. Castilla, a professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, has explored how meritocratic ideals and HR practices like pay-for-performance play out in organizations, and he’s come to some unexpected conclusions.
Summary:
In one company study, Castilla examined almost 9,000 employees who worked as support-staff at a large service-sector company. The company was committed to diversity and had implemented a merit-driven compensation system intended to reward high-level performance and to reward all employees equitably.
Summary:
But Castilla’s analysis revealed some very non-meritocratic outcomes. Women, ethnic minorities, and non-U.S.-born employees received a smaller increase in compensation compared with white men, despite holding the same jobs, working in the same units, having the same supervisors, the same human capital, and importantly, receiving the same performance score. Despite stating that “performance is the primary bases for all salary increases,” the reality was that women, minorities, and those born outside the U.S. needed “to work harder and obtain higher performance scores in order to receive similar salary increases to white men.”
Summary:
These findings led Castilla to wonder if organizational cultures and practices designed to promote meritocracy actually accomplished the opposite. Could it be that the pursuit of meritocracy somehow triggered bias? Along with his colleague, the Indiana University sociology professor Stephen Bernard, they designed a series of lab experiments to find out. Each experiment had the same outcome. When a company’s core values emphasized meritocratic values, those in managerial positions awarded a larger monetary reward to the male employee than to an equally performing female employee. Castilla and Bernard termed their counter intuitive result “the paradox of meritocracy.”
Summary:
The paradox of meritocracy builds on other research showing that those who think they are the most objective can actually exhibit the most bias in their evaluations. When people think they are objective and unbiased then they don’t monitor and scrutinize their own behavior. They just assume that they are right and that their assessments are accurate. Yet, studies repeatedly show that stereotypes of all kinds (gender, ethnicity, age, disability etc.) are filters through which we evaluate others, often in ways that advantage dominant groups and disadvantage lower-status groups. For example, studies repeatedly find that the resumes of whites and men are evaluated more positively than are the identical resumes of minorities and women.
Summary:
This dynamic is precisely why meritocracy can exacerbate inequality—because being committed to meritocratic principles makes people think that they actually are making correct evaluations and behaving fairly. Organizations that emphasize meritocratic ideals serve to reinforce an employee’s belief that they are impartial, which creates the exact conditions under which implicit and explicit biases are unleashed.
Summary:
“The pursuit of meritocracy is more difficult than it appears,” Castilla said at a recent conference hosted by the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford, “but that doesn’t mean the pursuit is futile. My research provides a cautionary lesson that practices implemented to increase fairness and equity need to be carefully thought through so that potential opportunities for bias are addressed.” While companies may want to hire and promote the best and brightest, it’s easier said than done.
Summary:
GapJumpers, a Silicon Valley start-up, is focused on making meritocracy a reality by taking a skills-first approach to identifying the highest-performing talent. Modeled after research showing that blind auditions block biased evaluations, GapJumpers developed an online technology platform that enables hiring managers to hold blind audition challenges. In the challenges, job applicants are given mini assignments that are designed to assess the applicant for the specific skills required for the open position. All submissions are evaluated and ranked, and the top-performing submissions (minus any applicant identifiers) are then reviewed by the hiring manager who selects candidates to bring in to interview. The result: About 60 percent of the top talent identified through GapJumpers’ blind audition process come from underrepresented backgrounds.
Summary:
Hiring managers do not expect this outcome. “The high percentage of underrepresented applicants that make it through the skills-first screening process is often met with suspicion,” says Sharon Jank, a social psychologist and Ph.D. candidate at Stanford University, who is conducting her doctoral research with GapJumpers.  In her work, Jank has observed that “hiring managers tend to be surprised that the top performing submissions they pick to advance very often come from applicants without an elite education, training, or experience.  This suggests blind performance auditions are a powerful tool to manage bias and address the pervasive and incorrect assumption that elite pedigree best predicts performance of on the job skills.”
Summary:
“Our biases lead to sub-optimal talent selection decisions when evaluating resumes,” says GapJumpers cofounder Kédar Iyer. “By scaling the successful and proven method of blind performance auditions, GapJumpers’ results show that real work performance trumps labels on a resume.”
Summary:
In addition to blind auditions, transparency and accountability also support more meritocratic outcomes. Recently, Castilla published the results from a longitudinal study he conducted with the same large service-sector company that he had studied years earlier. After learning from Castilla’s analysis that there were pay disparities in their organization (white men received more compensation than equally performing women, minorities, and non-U.S.-born individuals) the company asked Castilla to recommend practices to close the pay gap.
Summary:
Drawing on research showing that transparency and accountability reduce bias because, among other things, transparency provides the information needed to track inequity and accountability puts people on notice that their decisions will be monitored, Castilla counseled the company on actions they could take.
Summary:
The company then made many changes such as creating a performance-reward committee to monitor compensation increases and sharing information with top management about pay broken down by gender, race, and foreign nationality. When Castilla analyzed the data five years after these changes were introduced he found that the demographic pay gap had disappeared.
Summary:
American beliefs about the rightness of meritocratic ideals often leads to the belief that those ideals are what guides society. But research shows that a real commitment to meritocracy requires understanding that America hasn’t gotten there—at least not yet. It is this insight that leads to the adoption of practices that will ultimately result in a society where merit truly does equal ability + effort.
Summary:
MARIANNE COOPER is a contributing writer at The Atlantic, a sociologist at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University, and an affiliate of the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality. She is the author of Cut Adrift: Families in Insecure Times and was the lead researcher for Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg.
Summary:
1.Cooper claims at the start that Americans are “particularly enthusiastic about the idea of meritocracy.” Do you believe this claim is true? Why or why not? Explain.
2.In your own words, explain what Cooper means by the phrase the “paradox of meritocracy” and then explain why she believes that “meritocracy can exacerbate inequality.”
3.According to the author, what are the benefits of using “blind auditions” and other transparency and accountability measures in hiring employees?
4.What is your response to this reading? What did the article add to your knowledge or understanding of this topic?

IPA #2 Translation At O Mark as done Due Jan 23 by 11:59pm Points 10 Submitting a text entry box or a file upload Available until Jan 23 at 11:59pm Take you time digesting this short unit. It can take up a lot of time grasping this if you are new to Fromkin. In this translation, you will translate the sentence below into the Fromkin System IPA. This is best submitted as a file upload. Most students find it easier to write their translation by hand, take a picture of it, and then upload it as a file. Be careful of the difference between the following; . a carrot (stressed) and a schwa ( unstressed any vowel sound) a vowel usually does not go before bird r the consonant blend of str has a -ch sound in it -WH sounds vs W sounds Note- When you translate into the IPA, do not isolate words and pronounce them individually because you will wind up writing them differently than they are actually pronounced in a sentence. It’s best to repeat the string or utterance several times aloud to listen to what you are really saying. Remember, that you probably have a California accent and we are focusing on getting away from words like “fur” instead of “for” and “prolly” instead of “probably.” Here is what you must translate: (THIS IS HAND-WRITTEN- not typed on a keyboard.) SOME PEOPLE SPEND THEIR SUNDAYS IN THE USA GOING TO CHURCH OR DOING AN ASSORTMENT OF OUTDOOR ACTIVITIES AS A WAY TO DESTRESS. ( That last word means to get rid of stress; It is not distress, which means to be stressed)

– Evaluate how the debugging process can be used to help develop more secure, robust applications. e. Discuss how you can use the
debugging process to develop a more secure and robust application.