So I decided to write about my unit one/chapter two reading. I choose this because I feel like I have come along way in this course. Chapter two for me was like reading a foreign language, just explaining to co-workers about a “rhetorical argument or paper,” left them with a glazed looked in their eye. For example, page 32 of our reading, “To help you reconstruct a reading’s rhetorical context, you need to understand the genres of the argument as well as the cultural and professional contexts that cause people to write arguments.” So rewind 4 units and you can imagine the first words out of my mouth were WTF, but now I can read this and understand what that means. I now know that if I want to write a letter to an newspaper editor, giving him 4 papers of how much I hate pot holes, will never be published and not a proper use of writing; but maybe I can change the tone, add some details, use that same 4 page structure and maybe send it to my district representative.
Another area that was a struggle to understand was the “thinking dialectically” on page 45. I mean, I still struggle at times to create a strong thesis in my writing, and now I am leaning about an anti-thesis. Why…why do people do this to me, so after a days worth of exploring different ways of learning this; i.e drinking (didn’t work), sleeping on the book (didn’t work), watching the Yankees (totally didn’t work, plus they lost); I knew applying this to a paper was going to be a challenge. However, after our first paper and my fifth revision on it, I figured out how to apply both sides of an argument without showing favoritism to either side.
Now I know I still have a lot of work to do. My grammar is still behind where it should be, I will always ask how to spell words that have more then five letters (just to make sure), and I will still need someone else to proof read what I wrote because I can’t see my own mistakes. I will also have to try to write more formally and with less imagination. However, looking at the quality of my writing from my first paper to my last one, I think I have improved atleast 10 fold. Any investor would be satisfied with their return, if I was dividends from stock, and it all started with chapter two.
Works Cited
John D. Ramage, John C. Bean, and June Johnson. Writing Arguments: A Rhetoric with Readings. Pearson Education , Inc, 2010.
I would have to completely agree with you about chapter two and the confused state to which it left me. I felt as though the book was written in a different language and I was just not fluent in the language. I like the sentences you pulled out of the reading, those still get me when I read them, but like you, I at least have a better understanding of what that means. I still have problems understanding “thinking dialectically”, but hopefully a light bulb will come on for me one day so I can be better in this area. I think you write very well! I always enjoy reading your blogs. If you are anything like me though, I have NO trouble writing the blogs, but I have a lot of problems when it comes to writing a formal essay. I laughed at the paragraph where you say, “i.e drinking (didn’t work), sleeping on the book (didn’t work), watching the Yankees (totally didn’t work, plus they lost); work), sleeping on the book (didn’t work), watching the Yankees (totally didn’t work, plus they lost)”. All of your blogs make me laugh and are very fun to read!
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