Last Week: Question 3

The one concept that I feel can use further discussion is the chapter on mass media. Although the discussion questions for this chapter were really good, I think that it would have been more fun to get more creative with them. We could have talked more about how legitimate popular websites are such as Yahoo where I always find “articles” with a lot of grammatical or spelling errors. Where do they get their news? Why don’t they proofread their work? It’s just interesting to see if such websites are trustworthy because they have definitely taken over as major sources of news. It would have been kind of cool to have “reviewed” like a website or an article to see if it had any fallacies or lack of credibility. I think this topic of mass media is very relatable to us, being in the information age and always exposed to the media wherever we are.

Last Week: Question 2

My favorite thing about the class was the use of blog and discussions. I enjoyed hearing other students’ views on the topics we discussed. It opened my mind to how similar and different we can be, and also to the different ways we think and argue. I like that we were able to communicate through the comments. We were also anonymous (at least most of us!) therefore totally disregarding age, ethnicity, etc. and that just allowed for a more inviting and liberating writing environment. My least favorite thing about the class was the group papers. It was just difficult to keep track of our schedules and fit them to each other’s. I did gain something from it like learning how to communicate with different people and allocating time. However, in the end, that wasn’t what taught me how to think critically. It was more of the individual reflections and the interactive blogs that really taught me the gist of this class. I guess this class can be more fun if we could incorporate other types of posts like videos or pictures. But overall, this class was really helpful and I’m glad I took it! 

Last Week: Question 1

Over the course of the semester, I have learned a lot about the different ways of arguing, reasoning, and communicating effectively. I found the concept deductive and inductive arguments really helpful because they are part of the basics of our decision-making. They also help a lot with writing papers and essays.  I have also learned a lot about different fallacies and this is especially interesting because I realized that I’ve definitely committed some fallacies before. What we think may be a small thing like being slightly ambiguous for instance is already considered a fallacy. Even making some grammatical errors in arguments is also a fallacy. I’ve learned that we really have to be careful when we’re arguing whether it’d be on a paper or with someone. Overall, thinking logically before we act was the most applicable concept I learned this semester. I’m sure I will be able to use those guidelines for reasoning and logic in the future, whether it’d be at work or school or just daily life choices.