Further

The concept that I felt we should have spent a lot more time on was evidence. I feel like this concept is what will win over your audience. With a very weak one, we will not be able to accomplish our goals. We can apply it to everyday situations which is why I believe that this is so important to go in depth on. We learned that there are ways to identify valid and invalid evidence. But we should have gone over which type of evidence should have priority over another type so that we have tactics. Or we also should have gone over how to know if the source of the evidence is reliable. I just feel like its important to have that knowledge of knowing what is the truth or not because we don't want to be living in false facts. Our verbal arguments and even argumentative papers would be much stronger.  

Throughout the Sem

By taking this class I can say I have learned enough when it comes to all the different aspects of arguments and critical thinking. Now when I make an argument, I can create a strong statement if I do it right with the right evidence. Also, to avoid weak arguments I look for fallacies and false evidence. Through these types of knowledge about arguments I am able to write a better argumentaive paper and in general speak out my arguments without someone accusing me of stating false or weak informtation and or opinions. I have also learned a different way to approach the way I think. For example, I am more skilled in critical thinking just because I am now able to approach certain subjects differently with the validity and rationalization techniques. For example, being able to recognize emotions of an argument and decision can alter your perspective of the whole situation. All in all, I have acquired skills that I can use in my everyday life.  

Most and Least Fave

My favorite thing about this communications class has got to be that I get to voice my opinion on most of the questions for each weekly assignment. Every question asked about a certain part of the reading required some personal information that I had fun sharing to fellow classmates. For example, in the earlier assignment that involved advertisements I was able to talk about how the work experience part of my own life pertains to this particular subject. I felt that it was a good way to learn the many concepts. The least favorite thing about this class, in my opinion, was the group assignments in general. Because of my experience, I can say that it is very difficult to meet or even get in contact via email or phone with members of the group. Because of this obstacle, assignments were not done to the group's full capacity which has hurt not only mines, but everyone else's scores as well. Because my group could not get in contact with other group members most of the time, it was hard to unify our assignment so that it sounded like one piece instead of several authors. This difficulty lead to bad grades. To improve this class, I would cancel out all group assignments in general and or require the option of working alone. We would not have to count on availabilities of everyone and how they're performance will affect our assignments.  

Two Websites

Throughout the semester we have been learning all of what to learn about critical thinking and arguments. The two websites called Mission Critical and the Casual Argument are both other alternatives to what we have been learning all this time. I feel that they are very helpful for this type of class if you don't have the actuall Boss text. Mission Critical is all about analyzing arguments very thoroughly from the types to the different ways they can be used. It provides a lot of info about the basics of arguments, its fallacies, and its analyzation. Casual Argument on the other hand talks about how arguments are the most important in many different ways and how we can use it to our most advantage and to its highest potential. If we want to succeed in the class we should look over these websites as references for a quick review for a class similar to communications 41.

Predictions

Your perception of someone or something may or may not be true.There have been many incidents in which I mistakenly thought something of a person or situation. For example, when I came into work one day, my boss did not really seem outgoing that day. Normally she's outgoing every single second. However, that day she spoke only a few words to me and to me she didn't put on a single smile for everyone. I predicted she was not looking forward for her day and was just dissapointed in not only my performance at selling but me in general. I even thought she was so mad at me. But the realy case was that I had nothing to do with her abnormal behavior. On fact, she simple just needed to use the restroom but didn't want to use public ones. You have to thoroughly think about a situation until you know for sure what the real deal is. You can't just assume automatically.

Horoscope

From my.horoscope.com for Virgo:

"Just as a watched pot never boils, so, too, do anxiously awaited checks or letters refuse to arrive in the mail, Virgo. Beyond double-checking that the person or company has your correct address, there isn't much you can do but continue to wait. Trust that it will arrive shortly, and then your financial difficulties will be behind you."


I don't read horoscopes often just because I don't believe them at all. In magazines and websites I'd be a bit bored and simply read for fun, that's it. Reading other people's horoscopes seems like I could relate to everyone's. My horoscope today talks about financial issues. Doesn't almost everyone have financial issues? The only thing I can count on my money problems is myself, not what a long fortune cookie-like statement. In the text, they mentioned that all statements may actually seem true altogether. I believe that that is true because different people can have the same hope for what a horoscope says. In a way it can also make you feel special because there's an outlook just for you. But in the end I always disregard it. 
I have to admit though, if my financial issues will be behind me if I have trust and am impatient, I might turn the other cheek. I can assure you, however, as a college student my financial situation won't be behind me anytime soon. 

Plagiarism

  "The Wrongs of Internet Plagiarism: The Quick Arguments" by Brook Sadler, talks about how plagiarism not a good thing for students no matter if they earned a better grade or not.  Russel Hunt, on the article, "Four Reasons to Be Happy about Internet Plagiarism," believes plagiarism is okay because some students just need that extra boost to pass and it helps the awareness of the subject. In my opinion, I believe that Sadly made a better argument because her reasons all point to the righteousness of what we are stating about the subject. It's only fair to gice credit when needed and to get the grade by what you deserve on your original work. I would not want someone using my ideas and getting praised for it. Sadler also pointed out that it just go against acedemic rules. Some student worked hard for their grade, they shouldn't be doing all that work for nothing. Those who slack and get the good grade because of cheating should be punished.

Misrepresentation of Scientific Findings

One concept I found interesting in chapter 11 was the one that went on about how some scientific findings are reported false. Usually when on the television news, my family automatically believes it is 100% true. But as a current college student, I know to check sources first before believing something since we're always taught to have legitimate sources provided in our essay assignments. In this section, there are many great examples of how reporters can just add a statement whether if it's true or not just so they can grab some attention. I personally think this is not the right way to gain followers or fans. It's like they're playing with other's emotions. This sections also talked about how assumptions from other sources are turned into facts for the reporters which is not fair. We go to the media for what's really happening in the world it shouldn't be playing mind games.

Media Experience

Still living with my parents I get unlimited access to the television and internet. It is like the first things turn on when I get home and the last thing I turn off. I would say that a lot of people around my age do the samething because every one of friends relax like this too from a long day of school. Because a majority of the people I know, including old family members, have facebook, I get a majority of news about how they're doing, what's going on with their lives and even what goes on with the world. For example, through Facebook I was able to be notified by shootings at school and what places to avoid. All of my friends were posting how astonished they are and praying for everyone. The media is powerful. Sometimes it can be so powerful false accusations may seem real which is why I always look up the internet for more research for accuracy. The media is like a needed social network of connections for various ways.

Advertisements

An interesting topic I found most fascinating was the part about advertisements. Working in retail, I only knew the advertising of television and my retail jobs. I am consistently advertise for my store by showing the new arrivals of shoes and the awesome promotions going on. For television shows, they show the sponsers and how or what the products works or does. I did not know that advertisements can give wrong information to get people to be aware of it or buy it. For example, I looked up this weight loss supplement that I was going to buy. But reading reviews, the results were the same as if you were to workout without it. We have to be able to realize that finding out on our own the true product or promotion is the best way to go about advertisements. By doing this, we can eliminate the fallacies and weal arguments for our benefit.

Food Argument

Wootan and Liodice both try to back up their claims about the government regulation of advertising about food and young children. They both do a great job with their supporting arguments. Wootan is taking a stance on how particular advertising will just make kids even more fat. So by advertising only healthy foods unlike Mcdonals commercials, for example, kids will start wanting the healthy foods all the time. On the other hand, Liodice believes this concept is crazy. She wants advertisements to have a freedom of whatver they want to advertise. These companies worked to get their marketing strategy within television and other popular ways to get noticed. I believe that kids are getting obese with the junk food commercials but it's the parents we have to regulate. They're the ones that provide for their children, not the kids going out on their own. They wouldn't even have transportation access or money to get the junk food. So I firmly believe liodice's position is valid and strong.

Being a Consumer

I have only worked in retail so I know all the tactics for bringing customers in and persuading them to buy something. The way that my managers have always taught me was to build a relationship with the customer so that they will come back and buy something all the time. Most of the time when I shop I don't fall for the deals that are not really good deals and the posters and signs that say the deals. I tend to ignore them and just find whatever looks nice and if it's in my price range I'll get it whether it's on sale or not. But I have found that I can fall for the worker's trap when they approach me with a deal that will last only for a while and when they actually show me what they think I would wear. For example, "Hello, just to let you know our buy one get one free promo is for only today. Let me show you some great tops I think you would like." This is an effective tactic to say the promotions in a comfortable manner and being like a personal shopper to them. A bad tactic would be to constantly hover over the consumer. I have done this before and the resuts were that the consumer walked away from the store instead of staying and buying something. You don't want to scare the consumer away.

False memories &Direct experiences

The section in this chapter that interested me the most was direct experience and false memories. We do remember the major events occurred during our lifetime. I do remember them as if they happened just recenty even though it might have really happened more than 10 years ago. However, they can be pretty vague and I can say that there have been a few times where I might have changed in my mind what really happened. It's almost like I wanted to change it because it was a better memory. This can throw off the truth when it is really needed. I believe that the police is always going through these kind of discrepencies just because witnesses can be in trauma. The example in the book of people giving inaccurate with the answer of the question was a great example for people experiencing a memory that was not wanted. The false memory syndrome was astonighing to me just because I never knew a case like this was ever named. I'm pretty fortunate to have this considering I would want to actually have lived the memory that I have came up with.

UFOs

To this day people are so curious that they conduct their own experiments dedicated to UFOs or claim they have actually experienced its sighting. Condon, Hynek, and Paynter all have their own opinions on UFOs as well. To Condon, UFO should not even be a subject of any experiements because it's a waste of time. Hynek believes we should focus more attention on them with out current knowledge and technology. In Paynter's opnion, aliens do exist and that abductions have and can happen anytime. But he also beliees that we all need physical prrof that this is true. When it comes to Paynter, he thinks that all we need is reasoning for the truth. Both of their arguments are strong due to their tactic of finding out the truth. I am all for Paynter's argument because he believes that physical evidence is th most important. The public is consistently surrounded by media. By showing that there is physical evidence of UFOs and extraterrestrial life, more people will believe it compared to just a mere reported sighting.

Wisdom and Knowledge

In the beginning, to me wisdom was like word from the wise. We can apply what we have aquired to our everyday lives. As for knowledge, we gain it for the sole purpose of our studies for our life-long careers. I thought they were pretty similar but in fact, far from the same. Because we gain knowledge from our studies, it's where we get it. We learn knowledge from the teachers of education. With wisdom, we gain it from the lifestyle of ourself and others. I actually believe we mostly gain knowledge form college because of the large amount of studying and assignments we have to learn and memorize. But we can gain a bit wisdom through how to live on your own with paying for your dorms, how to socialize with the right kind of people, and how you can manage time to help you in your future. Because we are all curious at the young ages of life, the information age is very helpful.

Communication Styles

A concept I found interesting was called “Communication Style, Sex, and Race. In this section, it is explained that men and women tend to “clash” in conversations. Females tend to conversate to keep relationships. I feel like that if any of my friends stopped talking to me for a while, I won't feel as close to them in a relationship. As for my boyfriend and his friends, they don't make it as big of a deal to communicate with each other as much as me and my girlfriends. According to this section, scientists say that this is all due to genetics while others blame it on our social skills. There's also differences in ethnic groups and races because of our different lifestyles and our racial equalities. For example, I actually do have a lot of African Americans who are all pretty assertive when they talk. Our world is full of various communication styles that are all equally unique.

Sally Ride

I believe Sally Ride is a critical thinker. According to her collegues, not only does she feel like communication skills are very important in life, she's very analytical. Ride can solve a problem quickly. She also is very attentive and will actually listen to you. This might be some of the reasons why she achieved success through graduating and getting her PH.D from Stanford University and was the first woman to go to space in 1983. Taking English classes, she was able to handle the job where she had presented NASA reports and all communications. In order to do this job, you would have to be a deep critical thinker to thoroughly report everything that happened in space. Also, she actually wrote books which I believe is an addition quality to being a critical thinker because you have to analyze how the plot will be perfect. She is a great example of why we should use critical thinking often: to be successful in what we do.

Devices

Sarcasm is a rhetorical that I always use. It is a rhetorical device that insults people by saying something they don't really mean. The way I used it was when I was actually making fun of my friend at our party. She was karaoking and I just thought she was terrible. I sarcastically said, “You sing so well you should try out for American Idol.” I also use hyperbole almost every day. It is a device in which you exaggerate your statement. Yesterday my Mom and I went to the dentist. She likes to strike up a lot of conversations and can talk all day. Sometimes she tends to embarrass me by telling others embarassing stories of me. This time, she had told the cute receptionist I ate most of the chocolate cake before coming to the dentist. I said, “Why did you tell her? That's so embarassing I'm going to jump off a bridge now.”

Reasoning and God

Personally, I believe in God and that he created our world. Whenever evolution is brought up in education, I am willing to learn about it but disregard it as well. My religious beliefs is definitely seperate than that of what I learn in science classes. According to the section on Perspectives on Reason Proofs for the existence of God, Dawkin states that our world today was not created by God and that this idea was made by people convinging other people that this statement is true. If Aquinas was alive right now, on the other hand, he absolutely believes that Dawkin has no proof to back up his claims. Dawkin says there is no proof on the argumenting side as well. I think Dawkin has to reason out all those miracles that have been experience and or documented. I believe that Aquinas will consistently show proof in the bible and how the stories are kind of difficult to just ignore.

Reasoning and Career Choice

When pursuing a career, people think about either what they love doing, how much the job pays or perhaps both. They can also think about what their greatest strength is in order to best utilize it and get paid along the way as well. One of my great strengths is following orders precisely and benefiting another person other than myself. This is why I am studying to become a nurse as a career. I found that while working in retail, I took my boss’ tasks, followed them correctly and was able to help customers in that way which made me feel good about myself. Reasoning is why I am able to find what is best for the people I am supposed to help. This is also why strongest type of reasoning I am best at is deductive because I believe in analyzing the premises for the best decision to carry out a task.

Positive/Negative

One concept that I found interesting is positive and negative correlation. This type of correlation is a simple tactic you can use to show your point. It shows how two or more variables increase or decrease in number together. There is a relationship between the variables that can help cause and effect arguments. An example of a positive coerraltion is the relationship between the number of hours worked and your paycheck. Obviously the more hourse you work, the higher amount of money you will earn in your paycheck. In an opposite and positive correlation, you would get a higher grade if you attend all class meetings. An example of a negative correlation would be the less days I go to school, the lower my final grade will be. These types of relationships can truly help you figure out the reasons for you situation or argument so I would recommend using this type of tactic.

Dr. Novello

Dr. Novello is a respected first Hispanic surgeon. She is against a lot of things that affect a person's health such as smoking and drinking. She was especially concerned with young children and teens choosing not to be above the influence. Being against smoking industries I can kind of see why she attacked their commercial ad compaigns. When statistics showed that young people smoke a lot more, I believe she used cause and effect reasoning to come to her conclusions. Novello believed that because after a smoking commercial first aired the youth smoker rate went up and that the producer for the advertisement was actually targeting young children, the number of children who smoke soared. She used the positive correlations of those premises. This is an inductive arguent because this whole situation is not based on facts but her assumptions. If I had the same beliefs I would attack the commercials as wekk because a majority of people just not kids watch television.

Inductive Argument

An inductive argument is when the premises support the conclusion. However, in an inductive argument, the conclusion sometimes won't always be true when you think about the premises. An example of an inductive argument I had experienced was a couple days ago when I couldn't find my favorite piece of clothing. I had came to the conclusion that my sister had stolen it. My premises are that one, she consistently uses my clothes without asking, and two she always, always lies when I ask if she's taken something and then I catch her putting it back the same day. However, after a couple of days I can now say that she didn't take it because she hasn't returned it. Also, I found the jacket in the trunk of my car a week later. Both of my premises were although true, my conclusion was definitely not true. So as you can see, an inductive argument was rather weak in my situation.

Leadership

Leadership is always needed in any group for whatever task. If there wasn't any at all, then the group will not perform their absolute best as a whole. Most of the time, the project will end up being a failure due the lack of communication and unity. If there was a presentation that the group had to have done, it would fall into pieces showing their audience that they didn't work together at all. There are four different kinds of leadership. The one that I feel that deserves more credit than others is participative leadership. This is when everyone is contributing their own ideas and helping to take their project to a whole new level to achieve the best grade or award they can earn. Without participation, a group won't be all be on the same page. In the end, all the participants of the group will feel that they have done their part and won't have any negativity towards each other since they know not one person lagged and received a good grade for doing nothing.

Penalty

Personally I am a Catholic who believes that God is the only one who can choose to have someone leave our world physicially. The statement in the bible is like that saying about how you should treat others how you want them to treat you. If you changed places, what would you want your sentence to be: imprisonment or death? I feel that most people would choose imprisonment. Sure the actions of the person accused may have been drastic and unbearable, but how can they feel the punishment if they're not alive to. They need the time in a locked cell to feel the guilt and sorrow of those who were the loved ones of the vistim or victims. I know that when I hear on the news of someone getting the death penalty I feel almost sad for both the victim and the person who killed him or her. It's not our choice whether someone should live or die because their accused actions may be false.

Holmes

Sherlock Holmes, in my opinion, is trying to tell Watson that solving a case requires your emotions to play a part when it comes to reasoning. You can't be always listening to other people's opinions until you can form your own opinion or accusation about something. Your conclusion can also be seen more right if it's not compiled of theories from different, irrelevant people. Also, he is trying to say that not only is it important to think for yourself with your own reasoning but also to be unbiased at the same time. This can be difficult. However, it's for the best when you come to resolution without anyone pointing out some of your sources are not correct.

A personal experience of mine that related to his explanation was when I found out that my high school friend was stabbing me in the back. I wasn't thinking with my own mindset and filling my head with other people's rumors. My mistake was that I came to solving the problem by never finding out for myself if it was true and just ignoring her. I should found my own evidence to see for myself if she was a true friend or not. Turns out, I find her years later and she never did any of the accusations said by all these different classmates.

Same Sex Marriage

I am all for equal rights and opportunities for every citizen. Most likely, even if I wasn't Catholic I'd stay with my opinion that everyone should have equal opportunity in everything including marriage. To Nava and Dawidoff, Obama would say that he is trying to do his job as a president and do the best he can for all citizens, trying not to choose just one side of the issue. Some people may say this is just plain hypocritical. I say he is trying to please all sides with no intention disregarding any opinions on same sex marriage. All in all, he is definitely consistent on his decisions considering he bases his acts on both sides of the issue 50/50.

Standing Ground

Working in retail, I had learned to be both professional and myself at the appropriate times. And I can describe myself as a very silly person. I have been working at shopping malls for over 3 years and have never once experienced a store manager who was inappropriate most of the time until my last job at Foreign Exchange. Standing my ground wasn't easy in this type of situation in which I had to choose between keeping the job that is benefitting me financially or leaving so I don't have to be apart of the corrupt store.

My ex-manager would make my co-workers, who have been my friends longer than we've been working together, feel uncomfortable. He would call or text them hours after our store closed, make inappropriate comments about the female customers, and would only talk to the employees to scold them and never once greeted or conversate with. The fact that he even had a sexual relationship with one of the employees shocked me. After hearing that I had to think about my morals and my environment. Did I really want to be around that just to keep the high-paying job?

I stood my ground and had enough with the company. Sure it the most earnings I have ever gotten and my position as assistant manager was as high of a position I will ever get, but to me this part of my life wasn't right and I just had to get out of it. I'm glad I had made a decision to leave because now I am working in a friendly children's where I am just there to help customers and not be bombarded with rumors, nasty comments, and everything else that's definitely not needed in a working environment.

(:

My name is Stefanie Lopez. I love baking and decorating. I could play with my creativity for days upon days. Other things I love to do is hang out with my loved ones including my boyfriend<3 Very excited to start a fresh semester, I hope to do well in all of my classes!