Once again another great chapter that correlates well with
our assignments, woo! Arguable Assertions gave great (and funny) examples of
how important it is to be able to back up your argument, before stating it. I
liked how they discussed that a good argument is like a good conversation, as
it is useful to state more than one side. This was a good reminder for me as I
feel I tend to get caught in the heat of the moment, and forget there are at
least two sides to every argument! Listeners (and readers) often are more
inclined to read something that is not solely one sided. Addressing the other
side of the argument shows that you have done you research and understand there
is another point of view besides your own. With this being said, evidence is
extremely important. Arguments are essentially meaningless without any form of
evidence to back them up. In our final paper, evidence will come mostly from
our interview and artifacts we gained from research. This will help immensely
in creating a beautiful final draft.
So what? Who cares? Was a very helpful read. Even just the
name itself was helpful as it made me think back to my own writing and ask
those questions. I loved that they gave templates and examples on how we can
change our words around to answer the so what, who cares. By paying attention
to this, especially when arguing for something, statements become more valid
and readers will find more incentive to keep reading. Also, by doing this, it
is clear proper research has been done and is being backed up.
When thinking of my thesis statements, this last reading
helped me a lot. Thesis statements are the selling point of an introduction and
I do not want readers to think so what? And who cares? I am still in the works
of developing an impactful and concise thesis statement, and will post here
when I am done!
Sweet, sounds like you got all the good stuff out of the reading and I couldn't agree more that these reading from Zack (this one in particular) are very motivational in that we all can become good writers. These few tools keep us on our toes and have us thinking about why we are writing what we are writing and why would anyone care to be reading what we have written. When we build credibility through our writing then we will be trusted with our statements, but until then it's an awesome idea to link it out to another source for the readers to reference. I've found writing to be fun even though in the past I use to dread it, I give Antioch credit for that.
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