1. *I talk with American students every day. Many of them come to college poorly prepared and without focus. They will be asked to take on large debt for degrees they no little or nothing about.

They have high ambitions but few goals or strategies for achieving the goals they have. They pursue social interests over academic interests in a culture that diminishes academic achievement.

It is not surprising. Students can achieve good grades with relatively little effort. In their book Academically Adrift, Richard Arum and Josipa Roska point out that, compared with a generation ago, students read less, write less, perform worse on critical thinking and engagement measures, and spend very little time studying. It is pretty clear to me that we have reached a crisis point when we are preparing our students worse today than yesterday. Our educational system has failed us.

Cultural Arguments. above is a passage. Each uses one of the four methods for stating a point of view described in Box 3.2. These ways of organizing speech are deductive, inductive, abductive, and narrative. For each passage, identify the pattern used and justify your selection. What is the stated or implied viewpoint of the writer or speaker? How does he or she support it?