Chapter 16 talks about what counts as evidence. Evidence is probably one of the most important parts of supporting a claim. Outside evidence can only help your argument. The more evidence you have, the easier it is for someone to believe your claim. To make your evidence more persuasive, try and relate it to the right time and place of your argument. There is first hand evidence that you as the individual can conduct. You can make your own observations and come up with your hypothesis about a certain claim. Another great way to get first hand evidence is to conduct an interview. If you ask an expert about a certain topic, you will make your claim stronger by going to an expert in the field. A third way is to do surveys and questionnaires. It gives you a good mindset for what other individuals believe about the topic you are trying to make a claim for.
The chapter also touches on second hand evidence and research. This would be searching your library databases for information from reliable sources. A subject directory would be also under second hand evidence. This would be search engines on the internet like Google and Yahoo.
The last part of the chapter talks about considering audiences and using your evidence effectively. Before presenting your information, you should look into the type of audience you are presenting to so you do not throw in too many big words that the audience may not understand.
This chapter can relate to real world things by relating it to the upcoming election. People go around house to house asking who you are going to vote for to get a gauge of who might win that state or district. This would fall under the surveying category.
I like how you get right into discussing what evidence is and how important it can be when supporting a claim. It would have been nice to see a picture example of what you are talking about, or even some video/song related to your post. Also, more detail in the sentences would help prove that you know what you are telling the readers. The section about evidence is strong, with your examples of how evidence can actually help. I found this part helpful when thinking about the project three coming up and how my evidence will help the reader believe my claim. Like you said, it is definitely important for the information to be relevant and persuasive. Going on to discuss the interview aspect also was beneficial for the upcoming project.
ReplyDeleteThe next paragraph was great because we have been using the library resources. I related it a lot to the evidence that I am finding for the current project as well as the past projects. Making an argument relevant for the appropriate argument is a huge part of evidence and research. It would be pointless to talk about things that do not help your argument. I like how you went into detail about this, and even used an example of big words.
The last few sentences are completely relevant. With the election coming, people are being surveyed as evidence for the candidates. This was a great example of how the techniques from the book are being used even today.
Dylan, I really enjoyed reading this blog post. It is very helpful when talking about evidence. What I really like is how you are saying that everything almost revolves around ones evidence in a paper. I completely agree with that statement. I have written several papers with and without a lot of evidence and my grades have reflected that. The papers I wrote that contained a lot of evidence received higher grades than those without much evidence. I also really liked how you used several examples of how to gather evidence. Many people struggle with finding the right evidence to use in a paper. Like you said in your post, to solve this problem, one would have to research his intended audience and use the appropriate evidence that would satisfy the target audience. One thing I would suggest you add to this post is how to relate or analyze evidence in a paper. Everyone knows that you can not just throw random facts and information without explaining its relevance to the paper. This gives your evidence greater value to your paper. Another possible thing you could have added even though it was not in the chapter was how to cite evidence. I know we have gone over this in class, but it would have been a great plus to your blog post. Overall, I think this blog post is a perfect example of how the class blogs are supposed to be written. It tells the reader what the post is about and gives examples to support it. Very good job!
ReplyDeleteDylan, I believe in what you said in this post. Evidence is very important in making claims. During court cases, they strongly base the outcome through the presented evidence towards the case. Evidence can make or break the court case. For instance, the O,J. Simpson case or Casey Anthony case. They were both trialed for murder but were found guilty because of the evidence that was showed to the jury. People were outraged by both trials because everyone believed that they were guilty. Evidence has a lot to do with persuading people's opinions.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I like the ways of research you listed. An interview is very good because you are getting someones first hand responses to questions. Our writing project has that part because we need to get faculty members information. And obviously the library is a great place to look up information on anything. You can use search engines, books, encyclopedias, and much more all at the library to give you information on basically anything. Surveys can be either good or bad. It is hard to use the information you get because it just shows a generalization of a group of people, which wouldn't be exact information. It is somewhat hard to use the surveys to convince people on something they might not fall under.