English literacy is one of the essentials that I enjoyed and felt enthusiastic this second round. Every round for English literacy, we always have different themes. The theme for this round is about social and environmental injustice. For the first week of this essential, we discussed the African American community in Connecticut that was discriminated by many people and most of them lived in poverty, and they lived in the place that was affected by air pollution. After the discussion, we were researched about different countries and waste management in the country. That time, I was selected to research about Kenya. What I research was about the country’s relationship with trash, waste management, the government action and the affection of people that live near the dumpsites. Then, we all shared and I got to know many more country about their waste management. The next week came, and it was Halloween week!
We researched the history and facts about Halloween and did some fun activities, too. Then, I learned something very interesting. It was about argumentative. My teammates and I were discussed about philosophical chairs. Philosophical Chairs is similar to debate but we can change from agreeing to disagree and it had to be very respectful. The statement was “Schools should stop the practice of giving letter grades to students. Instead, they should only give written feedback.” I was on the agree side and it was really enthusiastic. Talking about that, we were learning about devil’s advocate. Basically, devil’s advocate is a person who expresses a contentious opinion in order to provoke debate or test the strength of the opposing argument. I picked a few statements and brainstormed questions that the devil’s advocate might ask. We were also planning our essay for our thesis statement. My statement was “Single used plastic should be eliminated because it’s very harmful and effective, especially to marine lives, lives on Earth, our planet and people should use other things rather than single used plastic.” Then I started to learn how to choose evidence for our essay. I got to learn about primary, secondary and tertiary Sources. After that, I learned how to evaluate sources by using OPVL strategy. OPVL stands for origin, purpose, value, and limitation.
-
- Origin: Where did this source come from? (website, book?) Is this a primary source or a secondary source? Who is the author? When was it created?
- Purpose: Why does this source exist? What is the authors’ goal by publishing this? Who is the target audience? (is it for university students, teachers, scientists?) Why did the author choose this format? (why use a video, website, poem etc) What is the source supposed to do? (persuade the reader, provide general knowledge)
- Value: Why is this source valuable? (what makes this source useful?) How relevant is this source? (example: first-hand account, analysis of..)
- Limitation: What are the limitations or problems with this source? (example: the limited perspective on a topic, doesn’t show long-term consequences) Is it biased? Does the source provide a limited perspective? (opinion pieces vs factual articles)
Those are the meaning of OPVL. Then, I started to begin my body paragraph. The second round was ended and the argumentative essay will be finished at the beginning of round 3. I promise that the third round post will be published before 2019.
Thank you for reading!