1-14-2010 Notes

Comp II Notes: Day One

Reflection on Comp I: challenges, accomplishments

Expectations for Comp II:

Ch. 1

Writing:

-Is critical thinking

-Helps develop questioning, analyzing, and arguing skills, which are transferable to vast areas of life

-Exercises your curiosity, creativity, and problem solving ability

-Connects you to others and helps you discover and express ideas you may otherwise never think or say

-Gives you time to think deep and long about an idea

-Isn’t just a way to express a thought but a way to do the thinking itself

-Stimulates, challenges, and strengthens your mental powers, and when done well, is extremely satisfying

Good writers are question askers and problem posers rather than followers of rigidly prescribed rules and must work out answers to two sorts of questions: questions about their subject matter and questions about their audience and purpose.

Closed vs. Open Form

Ch. 2

Rhetoric: the art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing

“Wallow in Complexity”

-wrestle with problems by applying concepts, data, and thought processes

-Critical Thinking Skills Needed for “Wallowing in Complexity”

-The ability to pose problematic questions

-The ability to analyze a problem in all its dimensions—to define its key terms, determine its causes, understand its history, appreciate its human dimension and its connection to one’s own personal experience, and appreciate what makes it problematic or complex.

-The ability (and determination) to find, gather, and interpret facts, data, and other information relevant to the problem (often involving library, Internet, or field research)

-The ability to imagine alternative solutions to the problem, to see different ways in which the question might be answered and different perspectives for viewing it

-The ability to analyze competing approaches and answers, to construct arguments for and against alternatives, and to choose the best solution in light of values, objectives, and other criteria that you determine and articulate.

-The ability to write an effective argument justifying your choice while acknowledging counterarguments

Critical thinkers are actively engaged with life…They appreciate creativity, they are innovators, and they exude a sense that life is full of possibilities.”

Good writers use exploratory strategies to think critically about subject-matter questions

-Freewriting

-Focused Freewriting

-Idea Mapping

-Dialectic Talk

-Playing the Believing and Doubting Game (Ch. 2 p. 37)

What is a good argument?

What is a good thesis?

A strong thesis statement surprises readers with something new or challenging

You're trying to change your readers view of your subject

New: Don’t tell us something we already know: if it’s common knowledge, why are you writing about it?

True: Can you prove it?

Important: Why is this topic worth writing about?

One Sentence

Clear

Concise

“So What?”

Use because clauses to help revise your thesis (p. 383)

Thesis Statements:

This article really brought out some good facts for both sides of the argument and was very informative. Both sides of the article make you really think because they both are very persuasive in the different ways that they present their information. The credibility is questionable for the author and James Carafano and Brian Katulis but the way the author got two sides and two different people to clearly answer a question and back up their arguments makes this article very good and intriguing.

People have been debating this topic for a long time on whether the right to vote should be taken away from felons.

In the article written by the New York Times, they use many different statistics to support their argument about how mechanisms need to be improved in restoring voting rights in felons.

In the article written by Reynolds Holding, he uses a specific situation that occurred in Mississippi and backed his information up with statistics.

The authors of this article show great points to either side of the issue.

I feel that in this article he is more for cloning because he persuades me on examples of why cloning should be done and he really doesn’t say too much on why cloning shouldn’t be done.

The article…reflects current thinking on what needs to be done to improve the child support system, if federalized then the taxpayers wouldn’t have to pay more taxes, single parents would depend more on government assistance, and due to the amount not collected child support is an issue critical to the well-being of our nation’s children.

Bureaucracy? Or Opinion? "Obama and the Bureaucratization of health care" Posted on September 8, 2009, In a Wall street journal opinion section, Former Republican vice presidential candidate, and former Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin asserts that President Obama's proposals at health care reform will create an enormous, inefficient, and ethically questionable bureaucracy. Does her opinion have evidence? Or is it strictly argument?

As a writer, she does use good research with some of her arguments, however, there is a possibility that not all of what she states is entirely accurate.

While both of these qualified men write very compelling arguments, they fall short in areas of using methodical logic in their appeals to the American people.