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How does Gould attempt to shake our belief
in the credibility of what we see or remember
seeing?
To what extent does his essay convince you
to doubt what people perceive or remember?
To develop your essay, discuss specific
examples from your own experience, your
observation of others, or your reading –
including “Some Close Encounters of a
Mental Kind” itself.
Looking at how the question helps you to organize your essay
How does
Gould attempt
to shake our
belief in the
credibility of
what we see
or remember
seeing?
• Review: Use the first
question to determine
what you will be
writing your directed
summary
(introduction) about.
Look for the parts of
the prompt essay that
help you answer this
question.
To what
extent does
his essay
convince you
to doubt
what people
perceive or
remember?
• Use the second question
to help you write your
thesis statement.
• In this case, think about
how much you agree with
Gould.
• Completely agree?
• Disagree?
• Agree with some things
and disagree with
others?
I was very convinced by Gould that
people should doubt what they see and
remember.
 Although Gould’s essay shows that
people should doubt the memories of
what they’ve seen, I am not convinced
that people should doubt what they
actually see.

To develop your
essay, discuss
specific examples
from your own
experience, your
observation of
others, or your
reading – including
“Some Close
Encounters of a
Mental Kind” itself.
• Use the third part of the
question to understand the
kinds of evidence that you
could use to help you prove
your thesis.
• Your own experience
• Things you have observed
• Things you have read
• You can even mention
Gould’s ideas to help your
back up other examples you
use.
Controlling idea sentence (the topic sentence)
Corroborating Details (examples you will use to
explain and prove the point)
Careful description of the details’ relevance
(explain how each example proves the point you
are making in the paragraph)
Connection to the thesis statement (tell your
reader what the paragraph’s point and examples
have to do with your argument)
Idea/Topic
Sentence; it includes:
C#1
 Controlling
› Transition
› Connection to thesis
› Clear indication of the upcoming
paragraph’s focus
 YOUR
Example(s)
C#2
› Your experience
› Your observation of the world
› OTHER readings
› Popular culture
› NOT Gould(or your original source)
 Connection
/ Relevance
C#3
› Explain why your example is important
 Compare and contrast to Gould
(what you are responding to)
 Compare and contrast to a “larger”
example
 Relate to a theory/statistics about the
controlling idea
 Discuss how the controlling idea
applies to society at large
C#4
 Connect
to the thesis
› If you did your job with the other C’s, you
already did this!
One convincing aspect of Gould’s argument
relates to problems with retrieving memories. I
too have had difficulties with mixing up two
memories. Just last month, I was having a talk
with my girlfriend, and she asked me what my
favorite memory was. Of course, I wanted to try
to make her feel good, so I told her that it was of
our first date when I drove her to the Santa
Monica pier and we spent the day (and had our
first kiss) on the beach. Immediately, she got
really mad at me, but I didn’t know why at first. It
turned out that we hadn’t gone to the beach for
our first date. We’d gone to the movies. The
beach memory was actually with my girlfriend
before her. Sadly, once my girlfriend realized that
I had mixed her up with someone else and that
my memory wasn’t with her, she got jealous. The
whole thing embarrassed me a lot, and my
girlfriend and I eventually broke up. This situation
demonstrates the same point Gould was talking
about when he told readers about his Devils Tower
experience. In his mind, his memories of Devils
Tower and Scotts Bluff must have mixed over time,
and a new memory—a false one—was created when
he tried to retrieve what Devils Tower looked like.
He too got embarrassed when his memories got
confused. At least, however, he didn’t lose a
girlfriend over it! Both of our examples
demonstrate that the memories of two separate
events can become twisted together in the retrieval
stage and can cause people to make mistakes.
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Now think of controlling ideas that you might
use for body paragraphs (reasons you found
Gould convincing or not)
Then think of examples that could support
those
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