Helping Students Use Textual Sources Persuasively

Margaret Kantz

(pg.85)

Before You Read

1. The other day, my roommate and I had an argument about whether or not Michael Clarke Duncan died or not.  I told her, and she did not believe me.  To resolve this the dispute, we went on the internet to several different websites to see whether or not I was correct.  She finally agreed with me after going to several sites that said Michael Clarke Duncan had passed. 

Summary

In Kantz article "Helping Students Use Textual Sources Persuasively", she attempts to explain how writing and reading are not just about transmitting and receiving information. She explains how to write new text from old existing text. She also helps us recognize that facts are not always true statements as they are claims.  She uses Shirley's experience to help us understand these concepts.  The audience of this article would be us, the students.

Synthesis 

Margaret Kantz's article is most like Kleine's article. They both attempt to explain ways to become better at writing and research and how to take exisiting information and turn it into something new.

Questions for Discussion

1. Kantz contends that facts and opinions are both claims.  The only essential difference between a fact and an opinion is how they are received by the audience.  An argument consists of claims, that are debatable.

2. Many students misunderstand sources because they read them as stories.  They expect their sources to tell the truth, so they use persuasive writing in this context with making things up.  Students also do not understand are a kind of claim and often used persuasively.  Students should be reading texts as arguments rather than as facts to be learned.  I do agree with everything I just stated.  I now have a better understanding of how texts work after reading her article.

Applying and Exploring Ideas

I think my and Kantz's idea of creativity and research are completely different.  I thought to do research was to find facts and make them into a paper.  I didn't have very much creativity.  Kantz's idea of research are that to be able to come up with new concepts and ideas from old concepts and ideas you need to have creative thinking.  After reading her article I understand why you should use creative thinking and how they overlap each other.  

Meta Moment

Kantz is trying to analysis that fact and opinions are claims, and that it is how the audiences receives them to make them true or false.  This is useful for me to understand this because this will make my writing more creative and make me better viewpoints.

Thoughts

This article was very informative.  I thought it was a lot like Kleine's article.  It gave me a lot of information on facts and opinions that I did not know before.  I will most likely think about this article and Kleine's when I go to write any research paper.