Question #3

Throughout this entire semester, I have read and learned about many new and diverse ideas and concepts that I think can help me when having to communicate with someone, or trying to get my point across when having an argument, and I have to make my argument stronger and more valid to win the argument. I think the concept I will apply most to my life after the class ends will probably be counter-arguments, and how to specifically raise objections to one's argument to show that it is weak or bad. A couple of things that you can accomplish by doing this would be showing that the argument is not strong or valid, or that the conclusion is false. I think this concept will help me immensely, simply because raising counter-arguments has never been my strong suit, and will help me in arguing and communicating in the future.

Question #2

My favorite thing about this class was how the homework and quizzes were set up. It allowed us to do the homework and/or quiz on our own time. this follows the example of pretty much all college classes, in that showing up and doing the work is up to you, and if you do it, you pass the class, but if you don't, then there will be consequences. I think that leaving the responsibility up to the students to do the work is smart, that way they can't blame anyone but themselves if they do poorly. I never felt like anything about the class needed to be improved, nor was anything the least favorite thing to do. It's an online class, so the responsibility is even greater for us as the students to do the work, communicate between group members, and do as well as we allow ourselves to in the class.

Question #1

I think that this class has exposed me to many new ideas, many of them having to do with how we communicate with one another, whether it be through a conversation and your trying to prove a point, or you are in an argument and you are drawing on personal experiences and clear evidence to support your opinion. I think the one thing I will remember most is how some things are able to make you argument stronger and more valid, or they can make your argument weaker and not true. Communication has been one of the weaker parts of school for me, no matter what kind of communication it had to do with. This class has also taught me how there are many different types of reasoning in an argument, and each one has a different approach of how to prove your point. Such as in criteria reasoning, you must state what the outcome will be, and then say what the best decision would be according to that outcome, which is what I do a lot with my friends.

Group Discussion

My group who I discussed my second paper with, which was about the SPCA and that entire organization, was composed of my mom and dad, my sister and my aunt. My entire family are big animal people, and get along with pretty much an animal that could be a pet in our household. Also, my family has dealt with the SPCA in the past when we were trying to adopt a dog, and we had a good experience there and found a good pet. My family actually was really interested in what my other group members had to say about the organization. They appreciated how much my group stressed on the fundamental idea of the SPCA is to protect animals from cruel owners, and that because animals do not have a voice to stand up for themselves, that is when the SPCA steps in to take care of them. It was good to be able to not have any arguments between my family members over what my group wrote.

Mission Control

To say that there was one specific thing about this website that was useful to me, then I would definitely not be able to decide because of how much this site has to offer. It was very cool to see all the information that was offered to you to learn, and to be able to follow up that learning process with exercises is a great idea because the exercises really test you about what you have just learned. I believe that this website will come in very handy when discussing this subjects in the future, and also when studying for our next test. The different categories on this website do an excellent job, in my personal opinion, of explaining the concept with a clear, concise example, and being able to add on to that example also helped me understand better some of the more difficult concepts. All in all, this was a very helpful website.

Cause and Effect

This website was very interesting to read about. I remember reading about cause and effect in the book, but this website, in my own personal opinion, did a much better job of explaining the instances in which the concept of cause and effect should be applied. What I really enjoyed reading about was the example that they gave for casual arguments, and how each event preceded another one, and how that is relevant to cause and effect. They set up the primary example very well, and were able to easily build on it to explain each following concept. I also enjoyed the exercises because they explain it to you so well, and then give you the tools to test out your knowledge about casual arguments, and how they are so relevant to cause and effect. I believe that I understand cause and effect much better now, and realize that these situations can occur at anytime, which is why knowing this is so important.

Other Interesting Concept

What I found interesting in Chapter 15 was the cause and effect section, in which a lot of particular details were discussed about how certain causes have certain, or how we can change those causes and effects into generalizations. In any cause and effect situation, there have to be normal conditions, which are obvious, and make the situation plausible. Though one can make a scenario in which a cause has a certain effect, there can also be many specifics which make the claim true and/or strong. An example of a cause and effect situation might that when I fell off my bike, I injured my knee. The effect of me falling off my bike was that I injured my knee. To make this a general situation, we could also say when one falls off their bike, they might get injured, though it may not happen all the time when someone falls off their bike.