Chapter 4
This chapter elaborates on the struggle that students transitioning from high school to college have when writing argument based assignments. The struggle that many students exhibit is being unable to clearly state their stance on a point of discussion because of an inability to respond to other people’s arguments properly. When referencing scholarly articles, these students often do not build a solid statement on their stance in their assignment because they are not able to find the author’s stance on the issue and are reluctant to take their position in the argument. Students often are not confident with themselves when they are either agreeing or disagreeing when writing an argument based essay. The students struggle with making their agreement or disagreement their own and not the exact same or opposite argument seen in a scholarly article.
What I learned: While reading this chapter I realized that I am an example of a student that has problems with taking a stance on an issue in a n assignment. I learned that a lot of research is required to take an educated stance and present a new idea regarding the topic.
Chapter 5
An issue that many students writing arguments in essays is that their analysis of an issue often sounds exactly like that of their sources. Students struggle in finding a new way of looking at an issue because their intention having to do with the assignment is to finish it and not to create a definitive argument. Students’ minds often blend information that they research into an assortment of arguments and present it as their own. This tactic of taking numerous sources and condensing the information into a seemingly new argument is often seen through by those grading the assignment and often result in heavy deductions because of unoriginal analysis.
What I learned: Students being unable to create their own argument often comes from the intention of completing an assignment as quickly and easily as possible and is very common. I have learned that to create your own personal argument that you must take information of multiple sources into account and then make an informed stance on the issue after researching the topic.
Chapter 6
Students often write argumentative essays with the intention to silence the opposite side and not receive criticism of their stance. This common habit that students have makes their essay seem very one-sided and against intellectual discussion. Students grow up doing everything that they can to avoid criticism like in school where criticism almost always also entails grade reductions. Because of this, when students are writing essays they have the same mindset of avoiding all criticism at all costs. Argumentative essays are intended to start a discussion between its students and the mindset of silencing critics is in opposition to that.
What I learned: Throughout my academic career, I have done everything I could to avoid criticisms of my work. After reading this chapter that this idea of avoiding criticism is anti-intellectual as it goes against discussion.
Chapter 7
When writing essays, students often do not relate the topic that they are writing about to the real world. They see it as an assignment and not an opportunity to lengthen their intellectual horizons and learn more. Modern day students act like robots in the sense that they do not do anything that is more than required by an assignment. This idea that the subject only exists within the limits of the assignment is against the student’s academic growth. Without relating their topic to the world and everyday people, they essentially learned nothing while completing the assignment.
What I learned: In this chapter I learned how I have stopped my intellectual growth my not furthering my knowledge of a topic beyond the assignment. Without drawing the assignment topic to the real world makes the assignment useless as I don’t learn anything by doing the bare minimum of the assignment.
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