Assignment 15: Final Reflection

              In my first blog, I mentioned I wanted to improve my understanding on how to improve my writing skills. I said I needed help putting my ideas together and making a well supported essay because I left important information out of my essays. My Seventh blog, I said I felt that I had learned the necessary components of an essay, even though we have only discussed two types of essays. I also felt that I have improved my thinking because most of the assignments that were given to me required me to think outside the box and to look at my essay topics in a different perspective. I also learned to improve my peer review process and mentioned how helpful they were to me because I actually took the time to correct my own essay and improve many of my content. Throughout the course I tried improving my vocabulary because I tried to use extensive/college level vocabulary in most of my essays and blog posts.

              I think that I fulfilled all the goals I had set for myself in this class. However, my writing skills need so much more and I still have a lot more to work on to make my writing better. To grow as a writer, I need to keep practicing by writing essays and developing my thesis statements. I have to continue using the same writing process because it was very effective; however, I need to keep on writing and push myself to become a better writer.

Assignment Fourteen: Planning for Revisions

For my writing portfolio, I want to revise my analyzing an argument essay. The strengths of my analyzing an argument essay were that I had some good points and fairly stated thesis. Although I had some good points, they were not very clear; I needed to clarify many of my ideas because they seem as if they are irrelevant and redundant.

To perfect my essay, I am going to explain/clarify many of my ideas so they are better understood, or more detailed, by a skeptical reader. I need to go back, and revise my essay more than just three times so I can improve all of the content and clarify. Also, I need to make sure that my supporting details match up with my thesis.

I also need to organize my essay because I seem to go back and forth with some of my supporting details. I need to add more transitions and make my essay be easy for a person to read, so that my content flows thoroughly.

Assignment 13: Analyzing and Writing Arguments

I analyzed the essay "Vegetarian or Non-vegetarian." In this essay, I noticed that this writer used an inappropriate tone to relate to its readers by telling her audience that it is wrong to kill animals. That type of tone alienates her readers because it doesn't allow people to try to connect with her argument because there might be people that don't really care about animals. By reading her essay I get an understanding of how not to write my argument because I don't want to use that type of tone with my readers, so I won't make them feel like I'm ignorant or something like that.

I noticed that in my peer reviewers paper she used a lot of "I" and her own personal opinions. I think it is okay to include personal opinions but not when a person is trying to make an argument. If a person uses the word "I" it may make people think that she only cares about what she/he has to say and ignoring other peoples viewpoints. I get the understanding that I should not try to use the word "I" because it can weaken my argument.

Last but not least, I noticed my peer reviewer committed a lot of fallacies within her argument, which violates the criterion for a good argument. I think that she needs to stay relevant throughout her argument and provide plausible evidence for a skeptical person. From her paper I learn that I should stay relevant to my topic and provide good evidence to support all my claims in order to make a good paper.

Assignment Twelve: Thinking Critically About Evidence

Thesis: Having easy access to technology devices is a positive thing because people are much more informed of the things that happen around the community and country and for most people it is not making other people lazy.

Logos
-Technology of today has made accessing a lot of information with a click of a button.
-Mostly everywhere we go we encounter technology.
-It is growing and becoming very advanced.

Pathos
- People are becoming so addicted to technology
- People are not always missing out on everything because others might think that all they want to do is be on their phones or any other device.

Ethos
- Technology has not made all the people lazy

My most convincing evidence is that technology has not made the minds of people lazier nor dumber. I can say that technology has made it easier to access tons of information from the news to a particular topic. With applications and new technology being created it has created more jobs to people (in both the process of creating the products itself and by accessing information on jobs). This is my strongest support of evidence because it is something that my audience will think about and they don't always look at the positive sides of having technology. There is more I can expand on this particular claim such as, technology devices such as phones can be very helpful because people can easily be reminded of their duties and even teach them new things. It makes it easier for people to find places to go to and quickly be informed about anything that may interest them.

My weakest evidence is that I state that technology makes people lazier.  From this I can tell that many people would argue that it has made people lazier and that is why we have so many health problems. I can argue that it depends on people's choice and how it is not technology the cause to destroy humans. This point can weaken my argument and make it difficult for people to agree with me. I can argue that technology itself have been trying to improve the health of people by creating video games that allow them to move/exercise and also informing people of diseases and illnesses. I think that I am going to need to really focus on the weaknesses of my argument so that it can be more appealing to others.