internet and alienation how internet alienate people in daily life

This is an English intensive reading class, the topic is internet and alienation. How internet alienate people in daily life.

1. Unit 2 Alienation and the Internet

2. Outline Learning objectives Background knowledge Global reading Detailed reading Stylistic analysis Exercise

3. Learning objectives Background knowledge To understand the structure of the text To comprehend the whole text To appreciate the style and rhetoric of the passage To understand the influence of internet on people’s life

4. 3. Global reading 3.1 Structure of the text Paragraphs Main idea Para 1-2 The writer presents his thesis in the opening part: the Internet may be responsible for furthering the fragmentation of society by alienating its individual users. Para 3-6 The author supports his point with evidence and reasons in the body of argumentation. Para 7 The writer reiterates his main idea in the conclusion of the text.

5. 3.2 The thesis statement of the text “... the Internet may be responsible for furthering the fragmentation of society by alienating its individual users.” (the 2 nd paragraph)

6. 3.3 The concluding statement This appears at the beginning of the last paragraph: “All this being said, I believe that the key to realizing the potential of the Internet is in achieving balance in our lives.”

7. 4. Detailed Analysis 4.1 Part 1 （ Paragraph 1-2 ） 1 . what is the author’s viewpoint about the benefit of the internet? 2. How does the author start his argument? （ provide buffer) 3. What kinds of rhetoric devices are used in this part? globalization/alienation; real / not real; reality / virtual existence; outside playing with his friends / play his games against his friends in the cyberspace

8. 4. Detailed Analysis 4.2 Part 2 （ Paragraph 3-6 ） 1 . what does the author see about the negative side of the internet? 2. What is the author’s purpose of citing an example of his friend in Paragraph 3? (in order to prove the topic sentence of para 3 ： people’s sense of reality might be distorted) How is the example related to his argument? 3. What alienated society members before the internet gained popularity? (para 4)

9. The landscape of American cities: American cities are 70 percent suburban by area

10. Para 4-6 questions What is the “cruel irony” concerning the use of the Internet mentioned at the end of para 4? How do children nowadays play for games (Para 5) When you were a kid, what were your favorite games?

11. The games

12. Para 6 Question: Why did the author discuss whether the internet is a real place? What is the main idea of Paragraph 6?

13. Part 3: para 7 Question: How, according to the author, can the potential of the Internet be realized?

14. Paraphrase: where the cyber-world is your cyber –oyster. Where cyber-space is the very thing that gives you immediate gratification. Oyster ： a type of shellfish that can be eaten cooked or uncooked, and that produces a jewel called a pearl. The sentence here is a variation of the saying: “The world is your oyster”. Which means “You can achieve whatever you want.”

15. Post-reading Activities? What can you learn form the author in terms of writing style and use of words? How did the author develop his argument? Group discussion: Supposed you have a younger sister , who is 7 years old and addicted to internet, how can you help her back to normal life?

16. 1. what is the author’s viewpoint about the benefit of the internet? What dose he see about its negative side? As the author sees it, the internet is most likely to make our global village a better place to live in. it provides a miraculous forum for the globalization of ideas, which contributes to the realization of human potential. Furthermore, it is a powerful tool for the acquisition and application of knowledge. The benefits of the internet, however, may be darkened by the negative consequences. It may deprive the use of his time for necessary interaction with other society members so that the whole world may be further fragmented. In addition, there is a reasonable likelihood that the internet presents too much information, which gives the user a skewed sense of reality by making him cognitively overloaded.

17. 2. what happened to the author’s friend as regards the internet? What negative consequences did he see about it? His friend was addicted to the internet. He would spend even over 24 hours non-stop on the internet so that he had to force himself to go off line. As he spent so much time in cyberspace, his sense of reality might have been crooked. Moreover, without any face-to-face verbal communication with other people, he felt lonely and depressed.

18. what alienated society members before the internet gained popularity? What alienates them in the information age? The alienation of society members had begun long before the internet started to be used worldwide. After World War 2,when the soldiers returned from the battlefields, they devoted themselves to “progress” 。 Large quantities of cars were manufactured, which fed the creation of suburbs, and consequently people lived far apart from each. The Internet, however, has added to the problem and Internet addicts are far from rare. As illustrated by the example of the author’s nephew, it seems to be an irreversible trend that more and more people, old and young, are becoming addicted to the Internet. They will spend many hours non-stop in cyberspace rather than with their families or friends. For lace of communication, they are becoming strangers to other people. Therefore, there is a good reason to believe that society is being further alienated by the Internet.

19. what is meant by the “cruel irony” that appears in p4? It means that the Internet provides the user with a convenient means of communicating and making friends with people far apart on the one hand, but on the other, it estranges the user from the people around him by canceling his availability for face-to-face communication even with his families and close friends and for involvement in community activities.

20. How, according to the author, can the potential of the internet be realized? The potential of the Internet as a powerful tool for globalizing ideas and for acquiring and applying knowledge can only be realized when user strikes a balance between reality and the Internet. Although the Internet makes it possible for the user to debate, shop, travel and have romance in cyberspace without leaving home, the overuse of this tool probably results in a distorted sense of reality.