Monday, March 22, 2010
Learning from Assignment #1
The first assignment that was done by our class was useful in many ways. For my group we examined an opinion article found in the San Jose Mercury News that discussed the problem of high school athletes and how head injuries were dealt pertaining to the athletes. The article discussed in detail the problems that were with the current system on head injuries and made a point of highlighting the flaws of it. The flaws of the system discussed made the current protocol in dealing with head injuries a weak system that was flawed. The author supported their idea that a change needed to be made within the system by stating facts and statistics. The article was a good display of how to argue against a current rule in place by using facts and statistics to support the argument. The assignment not only showed me how to argue correctly, but the article also displayed a well rounded non bias article that showed both sides of the argument. The article also discussed how hard it is for a coach to determine whether or not an athlete was ready to be back on the field. The assignment displayed the correct way to write an unbiased paper that also provided relevant information on how to argue against a current protocol.
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I agree that this assignment taught us to argue correctly. I also agree that this assignment opened us up to new articles and issues that we previously wouldn't have known about. In your case, it seemed your article was a good choice because of how it gave practice to argue for changing rules of something, which is a very common argument to have. It is a skill that is necessary to have for future confrontations in life, such as family issues, work conflicts, and politics. For example, one should know how to go about arguing to change policies at the workplace in an educated and effective manner.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, it was nice to read that you covered the article dealing with sports injuries. That means that you were probably in my group. I agree that the article was really helpful in the sense that we got to take what we have learned about arguments and apply them to a real life issue. We have learned about fallacies, argument structure, ect and to actually put these analyzing skills to use was an amazing experience. Our group had a great editorial, and I was able to find fallacies in it while other members analyzed argument structure issues. I think the second assuagement then took what we have learned and made us work harder to analyze the organization more in depth than the first assignment.
ReplyDeleteFor my pick I ended up choosing the second assignment but I also agree with you fully in saying that the first class group assignment was definitely useful. I like that fact that you pointed out how this helped you to argue correctly as well as argument structure and how to point out fallacies that are hidden in the text. I also liked how out professor allowed us as a group to choose our own editorial and it could be something that interested us, thus making the assignment a little but more interesting. It was nice to hear about the article that you and your group picked, this is a very serious problem that is injuring our youth and going out on the fields before they are ready can be a very dangerous thing.
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