The Electoral College Collaborative Final

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Inventing arguments

Chapter three of Envision talks about creating your own arguments through the use of the canons of rhetoric. It then talks about how all of the canons can be used to invent an argument. This made me think of all the times that I have created debate cases to present at tournaments. I begin with a simple idea relating to the provided topic. Then I expound on the topic by creating a plan to act on the ideas I had come up with. When thinking about how to go about the writing of the case I think explicitly about the audience I will be speaking to and how they will react to the ideas to present. Sometimes it takes me a few tries to figure out how to create a case that everyone can agree with. The other parts of the chapter that I can’t use in debate include things like the visuals. Although in my speech I did use visuals to convey a more powerful message to my audience. On the other hand when writing a persuasive paper I have to include both sides of the issue to the reader. The reason I would do this is to bring up new arguments. Within an argumentative paper one can use the other side of the issue to create new arguments of their own. The author can point out how the arguments presented are flawed. This is what I learned from chapter three of Envision and I learned some of these things from debate to.

Persuasion

Chapter two of Envision is all about elements of persuasion. I decided to write about this chapter, because I’m on the debate team and use persuasion constantly and know enough about it to write a little bit down. The beginning of the chapter looks specifically at adds and media and the different ways that they can get a consumer to buy a product of their choosing. The book shows how every ad is an argument that is trying to persuade you into doing a certain action. This was a neat concept to read about, because it applies directly to what we see everyday which is ads, ads, and more ads. Not only do we see ads a lot we see all of the different types of persuasion through ad companies and their clever tricks to make us think we need something. The next part of the chapter is what I use and identify with more often which are ethos, pathos, and logos. In my speech and debate career I have explicitly used two of these concepts very often. In debate I will find myself using logos over and over to explain to a judge why my train of thought makes more sense than that of the other team. On the other hand in speech I will find myself using pathos most of the time to allude to the judges emotions and tug at their heartstrings for a vote. Overall it is very interesting to see how often I see and use persuasion in and out of school.

A Really Good Day

Last week I went to a debate meet at Anderson University and had a blast. The morning started rough mostly, because it was at six thirty in the morning and I was really tired. At the beginning of the day I felt very unprepared, but later in the day things turned around for me. As the day went on I felt more and more confident about how well we were doing and the research we had done. I also felt more awake after the people running the tournament handed out a free breakfast of Panera bread, coffee, and tea, it was all really good. In a normal debate tournament there are four debate rounds and then a final round, which is exactly how this tournament was ran. After our rounds we found out that me and my partner didn’t make it to the finals, but we came in third and I got fourth place speaker. After the final round we left in the same three cars the whole team came in. After we got back I went back to my dorm and hung out with my friends. I was pretty tired but, I still wanted to stay up and hang out with my friends and I felt really good with how well I did at the tournament. All in all it was actually a really good day.

The Bucket Speech

This week I participated in an event on campus called the Bucket Speech. The Bucket Speech is a contest put on by the class COMM 210. It’s a contest where everyone entered gives speeches about a charity in which they think is reputable enough to donate to. The winner’s charity is then given all of the money that was collected over the semester in a bright red bucket. When I first heard about the contest I was a little skeptical about entering, because we also had to give the speech in class for our final speech and it could have an affect on our grade depending on how well we do. On the other hand we also got extra credit for entering the contest so I figured it all evened out in the end. I ended up giving my speech on an organization called Teacher’s Treasures. Teacher’s Treasures is an organization that supplies teachers with underprivileged students the school supplies needed to teach the class. I was competing with kids from other sections of the class who I had never met before so rather than watching to see if they were any good I decided to go first. The other people speaking were also pretty good and I was worried about the results. In the end I failed to make it to the final round and the three judges rated me first, second, and third in the round, which is actually pretty good, but other people must have done even better. Afterwards I feel like it was all worth it I did have some fun and even earned some extra credit.

The electoral college Informational website

We created this website in order to inform the class about the electoral college and how it has been effective in electing our president ever since the creation of the United States of America.

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It is the beginning of the end for energy as we know it.

We are running out of fossil fuels everyday, and the time for action is now. This is why the American government needs to begin programs to spur the building of an alternative energy infrastructure before it is to late. Our society is not prepared for a comprehensive energy switch at least not right now, but I would like to argue that it is a positive thing for us to change over at least a little of our spent energy into alternative energies. There are many reasons why the switch would be a positive thing. The first is that alternative energies are good for the environment. This is comparatively the opposite of fossil fuels because they are our single biggest polluter that exists today. Another reason is to be closer to energy independence here in the United States. This would make it so that we can control our own energy prices and not let other countries have a hold on our energy cost. The last reason is simply a boost in the economy through job creation. This occurs because it takes people to build and run a new energy infrastructure especially since it is in America and not another country. These are my three simple arguments to why America’s government should move towards alternative energy use.

Chapter 9 Envision

Chapter nine in the Envision book is about presenting your research in front of people. I have been doing this for along time but I found the part about using visual aids the most important. Right now I’m in COMM 210 and that is helping me learn different styles of presentation. The kind I’m used to is taking information I’ve found and turning it into a case for change, but through the beginning of my college experience I’ve been learning all kinds of new ways to be an effective speaker. The organization of my speeches has also begun to change as I have learned new ways to organize my information in more effective ways.

The only way I have every used visual aids is through power point for informative purposes and with a persuasive paper I’m going to learn new tactics on visual aids and their use in persuasion. These are most of the reasons why I thought this part of the chapter was the most important.