Concept

A useful concept from the semester was appeal to emotion. There is appeal to fear, pity, spite and vanity.  I learned that in my arguments I have to tailor them towards the people I am talking to if I want it to go my way. I am more likely to use fear and pity. I use appeal to fear to try to get my siblings to teach me to drive a stick. I tell them that if I were stuck in the middle of nowhere and the only thing around was a car with a manual transmission I would be screwed, hoping it’ll scare them into teaching me. Then they pull the truck has no power steering excuse making harder to drive excuse and I’ll crash the other car excuse. Appeal to pity came in handy when I would convince my parents to buy me something. I’d tell them I looked like the poor kid at school when I had an old iPod or wanted more clothes. Now I have a job so I just get it myself.

Favorites

My favorite thing about the class was something that I sometimes dreaded, comments. Whenever I would check my email I got excited when there was a message about getting a comment on a post. I loved reading what people had to say about my posts. I also did not like them because I could not always find three posts to write 100 words back to. I hate word requirements and believe that if I can get my point across in less than the requirement, it should be acceptable. I hated blabbing on about some posts when I only had ten words to go. My least favorite thing about the class was only knowing people by an alias name. One of you could be my BFF! A way to improve the class could be not having to meet in person for the last group project. People take online classes so they do not have to leave home or because they are antisocial. Others do not have time to go to campus. Scheduling my groups facilitation took a while because everyone’s schedule was so different. I had to miss a class and another had to stick around campus for three hours after class. I am glad I took the class though.

Learning

I learned a ton of new concepts throughout the semester but probably the one that will stick in my head is the tests for an argument to be good. The premise has to be plausible, more plausible than the conclusion, and the argument should be valid or strong to be considered good. They are all simple things to check for. It is not as complex as fallacies were. With those, there were different types and then those had subcategories.  If you look at content fallacies, there are ten sub points. I don’t think I even know what half of them are. One thing I learned during the first couple of weeks are how bad some of my arguments can be. Since then I watch what I say and try to be as detailed as possible to avoid vagueness. I look at arguments on TV shows that I watch and analyze them to see if they are valid or rubbish teenage drama. This class is the one where I have put more newly acquired information to use in life, besides reading writing and math.