Both of the essays are filled with evidence and citations which helps to make what they are saying stronger. The second essay is set up very nice and uses good transitions from paragraph to paragraph. I feel as though the first essay should not have used headers and instead used transition sentences so the essay is not as cut up and so that the whole paper just flows better. It seems that there are transition sentences, but then headers were put in but they were not neccessary. One of the sources in the first essay was the Writing Space articles which we have read in class. The source Text, Role and Context was also used and lastly, they used Facebook. The sources used in the second essay were Writing Space, Text, Role and Context, The Constitution of Puerto Rican Student Association, The Concept of Discourse Community, and this student also had their essay checked with the writing center which really helps when perfecting your essays.
Reading journal: Discourse Communities
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Open in new tab Critical Thinking writing
The author in this writing talks about how all writing should be thoughtful and that is what teachers and professors are looking for. Critical thinking is not or should not just be used in writing, but it can also be used in everyday life.” To be a critical thinker you have to have an informed opinion about the text but also a thoughtful response to it.” “Critical thinking is also a process that is fundamental to all disciplines.”
Discourse Communities
This writing is describing the different discourse communities. It describes some of the different types of communities and it also lists out the expectations for something to be considered one of the different types of communities. Along with that it tells you why some people join social and professional communities, what the relationships are like and if there are different levels to the communities. People can be born or taken involuntarily into these communities due to their families. Some of the communities I am apart of is the Athletics community, team sport community, and softball community. I am also apart of the academics community, the social sciences, the sciences and the biology communities.
Exercise #1 freewriting
Before I decided which exercise to do I read through all of the exercises and after reading Exercise 3 what is something that you write about outside of assigned writing and that one stuck in my brain. I like to write about all of my dreams. I do not always remember my dreams or always write them down, but I try to. I feel like writing down dreams and keeping track of them and trying to remember every detail about them really opens up your brain and makes you think more. I also feel like it is a good way to get things off your chest because maybe something in your dream was something that you wish would happen in real life or something that has happened or maybe it was even scary. I just love thinking about my dreams and I like to be able to go back and look at my dreams because sometimes they are just so odd. Sometimes I wish I could know the exact reason for a dream because I feel that most dreams mean something even if it was just one little detail of the dream theres always some sort of meaning. Ive noticed though that when i am overly exhausted I will not remember my dreams or if I do a lot of times they are bad dreams. Now all of the dream stuff is off my mind and I really cannot think of anything else besides I got quite behind in school the first week because I was just not prepared to start again so now I am trying to catch myself up and get all caught up to take the stress off and I want to try and get ahead in my classes because all of mine are online and I get very stresssed out with online classes because soemtimes I forget to check a subject to see whats due or sometimes I dont know where to go to find certain information.
Critical thinking assessment review
This assessment helped me to think about what I really need to still work on and what I am doing better at. One thing I need to work on is my placement of evidence and incorporating the evidence in my writing. Another thing I need to work on is my bias in my writing and becoming more open to newer ideas. Something that I do pretty well is finding good detailed evidence for my writing.
Final Reflective Project
Reflective writing
Some things that I learned from the reflective writing video is that it is not just about looking at the past. You can look at how you will progress to make your writing better in the future and what you can change about your writing to make it better. Also when you are looking at the past don’t just look at one small event or one writing piece, look at many different pieces that all add up to where you are.
Reflection is important in becoming a better writer and student because you can learn from your mistakes and figure out what you need to do to make yourself better. It will also help to build your self confidence in the end when you start growing.
Reflection is a good thing outside of the class because you need to learn how to reflect on your past actions to better yourself and challenge yourself, but ultimatley to find out what you need to work on in your life or what you are doing well.
Argument Reflection
I have learned to check the research that I do with multiple sources because my topic can be very biased on multiple sources.
I have learned much more and been more focused on what the president has done for the country and how he has helped, focusing on the good and how we have grown.
I am facing a problem in finding a good counterargument and making it strong. Since my beliefs are what my argument is about finding research that goes against it is very hard.
“For Arguments Sake” Response
Cohens main claim is that arguers are better at losing and you learn from losing.
He says that arguing mostly comes out in a war like way. This war metaphor makes it seem like the other won and you lost, but really you gained from it because you were asking questions about their point of view and you learn their position in the argument even if you do not agree with it you still learn from what they are saying.
His idea that arguing is like war was new to me because I had never thought about it like that before even though it is very true.
My question is how do we learn from others when in an argument because most of the time people are so set with their opinion they do not take in anything what the other is saying.
A new idea that could be useful in writing this essay is to put yourself in the audience position to see how well your argument is and that it does well and uses strong evidence.