Reading Response # 3

Summary:

In her article, “Helping Students Use Textual Sources Persuasively” Margret Kantz attempts to explain to the audience why we shouldn’t read texts as stories and how we need to come up with strategies for writing an original argument. She argues that by expecting factual texts to tell you the truth, you could get the wrong idea about the writing.

Connection:

This reading is similar to the reading on argument as conversation because they both have to do with gathering research and making an argument. In any persuasive argument you need to gather facts to make your point clear. There isn’t an article that we have read that has significantly differed in the major ideas of this article. All of the articles that we have read have had to do with structure or putting together a good argument.

Before you read:

1.     An argument that I have had recently would be a debate that I had between my friends over the topic of the death penalty. We resolved the factual dispute by looking up the information online. My friends failed to understand a lot of the facts about the death penalty such as how one goes about receiving it and the procedure. The argument did finally get resolved when my friends came to understand the sad reality of the situation.

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Questions for discussion:

1.     Kantz contends that facts are things learned statically with no opinion or bias to them, they just are what they are. Opinions are what you think about certain things but have no precedence over what other people think about things. Finally, arguments are things that are petty and have no real value when arguing about things that don’t have hard core facts to back it up.

2.     Kantz says that students misunderstand how to read articles. She also says that they can misunderstand how to strategically plan a paper, or organize ones thoughts to make an original argument. Judging from my own personal experience, I think she’s correct because people do misinterpret what they are reading. I think that it varies from person to person. People are different when it comes to understanding or perceiving things even if they are reading the exact same material. I feel like I understand all of the things that she lists because she goes into such detail about why people can get the wrong idea about things and how they can look at it differently to improve their writing immensely.

Applying and Exploring Ideas:

3.     I feel that the relationship between creativity and research are somewhat different and somewhat the same. In that they are different, I believe that when doing research you are looking at factual information, such as historical. On the other hand, when one is reading research I feel as though the author has written the paper with their own spin on the information. My ideas and Kantz’s ideas overlap when she believes that creativity and research are intertwined because in order to compose an original argument you have to be creative, but at the same time back up your points with research. Her thinking influences mine when it comes to the creativity part because I agree, that you do have to be creative to get the message to the readers the way you want them to receive it.

Opinion:

I thought that the reading was interesting because it made me think of a research paper in a different way. Before reading this article, I thought that a research essay was more cold cut and dry because it was just filled with random facts to get your point across. Now I am able to understand that research papers are more about getting the audience to understand your argument so that they agree with you. I think this paper will be helpful to me because in the past I have just read the articles for my research papers as a story instead of an argument. Now I am able to see the difference between the two which will help me strategically to plan out my paper.