English

Hello all.  I have your next writing assignment ready to go, and this one will be worth 25% of your overall grade--your second long paper of three. The chapters we read that led up to this assignment both had to do with the ways in which we communicate with people, how difficult it is at times to understand the proper way to go about it, the ways we listen to others as a way to make sense of what we ourselves have to say, and the point of all of these things within the larger concept of forming relationships.  So, with that in mind, I want you to really think about this prompt.  It might appear easy at first, but I promise you it is more complicated than you might initially think.  Think about it deeply, think about the consequences of some of your assumptions, some of the notions you might think are obvious within the question I will be asking, and take a few days to let it sit in your mind.  Think about what Klosterman wrote about in the two essays I had you read leading up to this.  And cite Klosterman, let his argument(s) help you make your own argument(s).  The more detail you use the better, the more specific you are the better.  Write about your own life, your own feelings behind this, and allow Klosterman to help you along.  So, the prompt.  In a two page (double-spaced, Times New Roman, 12 pt. font, 1" margins all around), discuss the following:

Why do we talk?

That's it.  That's the prompt.  See what I mean, easy, right?  But think about it.  I don't want you to write something like "We talk to communicate," or "We talk to get to know other people," or "We talk to learn," etc.  If you do write things like that, I want you to continue along with that argument.  We talk to communicate, but why do we need other people to communicate?  Why do we need to communicate at all?  If we communicate to learn about ourselves, why is it that we need other people to learn about ourselves?  And why not just write things to other people; why talk?  If we talk to learn, why is it that spoken language is a good way to learn?  Why not just books?  If we talk to form relationships with others, why do we need relationships?  Ask yourselves these questions.  I want to know all of the whys to all of your assumptions as they stem from the necessity of talking.  Be very, very, very specific.