Thesis:
… I (do/do not) believe that ______________.
Example: … I do not believe that popular culture is the strongest influence on young people’s identities.
State Reasons:
This is because (I have experienced___/ I have studied ____ / I have read about ____ / I have observed ____).
Example: This is because I have observed recent student protests in a country with a highly developed popular culture—South Korea.
Body Paragraph 1:
Develop Story:
Describe a story/example/reading that relates to part 1 of the essay prompt.
Example: Pop culture, and specifically KPop music in South Korea is well known and widely circulated. The lyrics in these songs rarely focus on anything other than relationships and love, let alone on the wider political and economic issues that may be facing South Korea. Therefore, these songs tend to encourage students to focus not on wider issues that may be facing Korea, but on their own personal lives. In a manner similar to the one described by Chomsky, students are distracted from focusing on wider social issues and therefore never think about what they can to do change these issues.
Body Paragraph 2:
Continue Story:
Continue your original story/example/reading in a way that progresses to part 2 of the essay prompt.
Example: Nonetheless, student protests in South Korea have recently been on the rise. One recent example is the “Doing All Right” protest that began when one student taped up two white sheets on a campus bulletin board at Korea University. The white sheets discussed recent layoffs in the public sector and the government’s attempts to unseat lawmakers, and within days the hallways of his school and schools across Korea were lined with similar sheets of paper discussing important political and economic issues. This eventually resulted in protests in Seoul, rallies around Korea, and even spread to Koreans living in foreign countries—none of which was created or marketed by Korean popular culture.
