Topic #3

There are several more topics I feel we need to discuss further. One of them is appeal to emotion. I feel if we learn more about this and do more practices on them we would all become so much better in persuading or conveying our feelings toward others. For example, if you trying to persuade a judge in an appeal then you should most definitely know how to appeal to pity or to his sense of justice if you felt you were wronged. Being able to know how to use these appeals to emotion not only helps you in persuading others but it can also be used to protect yourself from being targeted by them as well. For instance, a lot of advertisements campaign for politics use appeal to fear to getting you to do what they want. Being able to recognize it would help you to make the right choice in voting instead of being manipulated by them.

Topic #2

My most favorite part about the class is the blogging. In a way, it is good practice in improving your writing and your ability to express your understanding of the topic discussed in that week. Being able to explain it in writing would also improve your understanding of the topic. It is also fun to read others blogs and clarity might sometimes come from your classmates’ explanation rather than the book. The least favorite part about the class is the quizzes. The thing I don’t like about the quizzes is that they are kind of hard and I could not get to see what I got wrong so that I could study what I missed. From what I saw from the 1st exam and 2nd exam, there were some questions that I know I could have gotten right if I knew if I answered it right the first time, because I answered them the same the 2nd time around. If we could see what we got wrong after the quizzes ended it would help us improve our score on them a lot.

Topic #1

What I learned from Comm41 this semester is to be able to critically analyze and decide if the claims on the topic I’m reading about have validity to them. I learned to be able be less ambiguous and more ambiguous in my own statements depending on how I want my claims to be perceived by the audience. I learned how to use reasoning and its multiple forms such as causal reasoning, sign reasoning, reasoning by example, and inductive or deductive reasoning. Another thing I learned how to make my statement or claims to be stronger is appealing to the emotion of my readers. Appeal to fear is using the readers’ fear to compel them to take or not take action toward whatever you wanted with your claim. Appeal to vanity is a huge tool used by marketing towards their audience to manipulate the audience to buying their advertised products in order to look as good as the image they used in their advertisement.