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Essay Response — Score 5
Surely many of us have expressed the following sentiment, or some variation on it, during our daily commutes1 to work: "People are getting so stupid these days!" Surrounded as we are by striding and strident automatons2 with cell phones glued to their ears, PDA's gripped in their palms, and omniscient3, omnipresent CNN gleaming in their eyeballs, it's tempting4 to believe that technology has isolated5 and infantilized us, essentally transforming us into dependent, conformist morons6 best equipped to sideswip one another in our SUV's.
Furthermore, hanging around with the younger, pre-commute generation, whom tech-savviness seems to have rendered lethal7, is even less reassuring8. With "Teen People" style trends shooting through the air from tiger-striped PDA to zebra-striped PDA, and with the latest starlet gossip zipping from juicy Blackberry to teeny, turbo-charged cell phone, technology seems to support young people's worst tendencies to follow the crowd. Indeed, they have seemingly evolved into intergalactic conformity9 police. After all, today's tech-aided teens are, courtesy of authentic10, hands-on video games, literally11 trained to kill; courtesy of chat and instant text messaging, they have their own language; they even have tiny cameras to efficiently12 photodocument your fashion blunders! Is this adolescence13, or paparazzi terrorist training camp?
With all this evidence, it's easy to believe that tech trends and the incorporation14 of technological15 wizardry into our everyday lives have served mostly to enforce conformity, promote dependence16, heighten comsumerism and materialism17, and generally create a culture that values self-absorption and personal entitlement over cooperation and collaboration18. However, I argue that we are merely in the inchoate19 stages of learning to live with technology while still loving one another. After all, even given the examples provided earlier in this essay, it seems clear that technology hasn't impaired20 our thinking and problem-solving capacities. Certainly it has incapacitated our behavior and manners; certainly our values have taken a severe blow. However, we are inarguably more efficient in our badness these days. We're effective worker bees of ineffectiveness!
If T\technology has so increased our senses of self-efficacy that we can become veritable agents of the awful, virtual CEO's of selfishness, certainly it can be beneficial. Harnessed correctly, technology can improve our ability to think and act for ourselves. The first challenge is to figure out how to provide technology users with some direly-needed direction.
Reader Commentary for Essay Response — Score 5The language of this essay clearly illustrates21 both its strengths and weaknesses. The flowery and sometimes uncannily keen descriptions are often used to powerful effect, but at other times this descriptive language results in errors in syntax. See, for example, the problems of parallelism in the second-to-last sentence of paragraph 2 ("After all, today's tech-aided teens ...").
There is consistent evidence of facility with syntax and complex vocabulary ("Surrounded as we are by striding and strident automatons with cell phones glued to their ears, PDA's gripped in their palms, and omniscient, omnipresent CNN gleaming in their eyeballs, it's tempting to believe..."). However, such lucid22 prose is often countered by an over-reliance on abstractions and tangential23 reasoning. For example, what does the fact that video games "literally train [teens] to kill" have to do with the use or deterioration24 of thinking abilities??
Because this essay takes a complex approach to the issue (arguing, in effect, that technology neither enhances nor reduces our ability to think for ourselves, but can do one or the other, depending on the user) and because the author makes use of "appropriate vocabulary and sentence variety," a score of 5 is appropriate.
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1 commutes | |
上下班路程( commute的名词复数 ) | |
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2 automatons | |
n.自动机,机器人( automaton的名词复数 ) | |
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3 omniscient | |
adj.无所不知的;博识的 | |
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4 tempting | |
a.诱人的, 吸引人的 | |
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5 isolated | |
adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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6 morons | |
傻子( moron的名词复数 ); 痴愚者(指心理年龄在8至12岁的成年人) | |
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7 lethal | |
adj.致死的;毁灭性的 | |
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8 reassuring | |
a.使人消除恐惧和疑虑的,使人放心的 | |
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9 conformity | |
n.一致,遵从,顺从 | |
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10 authentic | |
a.真的,真正的;可靠的,可信的,有根据的 | |
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11 literally | |
adv.照字面意义,逐字地;确实 | |
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12 efficiently | |
adv.高效率地,有能力地 | |
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13 adolescence | |
n.青春期,青少年 | |
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14 incorporation | |
n.设立,合并,法人组织 | |
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15 technological | |
adj.技术的;工艺的 | |
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16 dependence | |
n.依靠,依赖;信任,信赖;隶属 | |
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17 materialism | |
n.[哲]唯物主义,唯物论;物质至上 | |
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18 collaboration | |
n.合作,协作;勾结 | |
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19 inchoate | |
adj.才开始的,初期的 | |
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20 impaired | |
adj.受损的;出毛病的;有(身体或智力)缺陷的v.损害,削弱( impair的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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21 illustrates | |
给…加插图( illustrate的第三人称单数 ); 说明; 表明; (用示例、图画等)说明 | |
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22 lucid | |
adj.明白易懂的,清晰的,头脑清楚的 | |
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23 tangential | |
adj.离题的,切线的 | |
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24 deterioration | |
n.退化;恶化;变坏 | |
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