Katt Blackwell

ENG. 1023.17

30 April 2007

Final Exam

            A blog is defined as an online diary. It is someone’s personal thoughts published on a web page. This semester for Composition II we were able to bring the blog into a classroom setting. At the beginning of school one of our requirements for the course was to obtain a blog. We would use our blog for brainstorming, doing homework, writing our opinions, or asking questions. Every class period we were given directions that pertained to our homework. We were to complete the requirements of our homework and post it on our blog. From what we posted you would then grade it. There were a few aspects about having a blog that I did not like, but as a whole I considered the blog to be a good experience. Having a blog gave learning and teaching a different twist.

            There were many aspects of the blog that I personally liked (Grammar 5: Pronoun Agreement). The first was your personal homepage. It was a way to always keep us posted and up to date on what assignments or lessons we had each week. It was like our own personal agenda for the class. The other portion of the blog that I liked was that my classmates were able to read and respond to my postings. It was a good way to view my classmates’ perspective on the matter. Having links to other informational sources, like Purdue Owl, was very beneficial to me. It was an easy access to have; especially when it came to completing my work cited page for my researched essay. By having other students’ thoughts and opinions on certain entries I was able to pin point my faults and achievements on the topic. For me personally, I loved the fact that your home page was decorated in fun colors and how it was appealing to the eye.

            Every thing that I listed above has helped me within the classroom setting. Knowing what I am suppose to have done each week keeps me up to date, prepared and focused on what I need to be working on. Keeping up with one class is hard enough, having four others is even harder. Being able to have a dependable resource such as the home page blog is wonderful. I do not have as much stress as I would normally have. The other half of blogging is writing your entries. I believe that having to write and respond to other student’s blog was helpful. When we had to respond to our classmate’s blog it took a good deal of thinking. I really like that we referred back to our blogs in class, and that we were given examples for certain lessons; it was extremely helpful. Having a blog is not just about posting homework, or the required criteria. For me it is the process of analyzing each topic. For example, our researched essay was a very long, tedious process. Every blog that we completed took time. I had to sit and think about each aspect of the blog and how it was going to pertain to my essay. By doing a portion of our essay on our blog help get my paper started which made it a lot easier. Most of our blogs that we completed this year involved critical thinking, which is always a good thing, I think.

            One aspect that did not work for me was that every homework assignment was blog based. I also did not like the fact that other people outside of the class could comment on my entries. Yes, some comments were good and helpful, but it made me very self conscious about what I was writing in each of my entries. I was afraid that someone was going to post something harsh regarding my entries. Some harsh comments can be good but I do not like the whole world reading them. It took me longer to write an entry because I was trying to be extra careful. I would always worry about what someone would say or if I offended someone with what I wrote.

            I do not think I would change that much of the blog. If I could, I would change the amount of access that others outside of class have to my blog. Everyone who has a blog can read my entries and I do not like that. I would want to choose the entries that people could have access to. Some of my entries that I wrote I would have rather that they were not open to the public. I do not mind my classmates’ reading my blog because they know what the expectations and criteria are from each blog, but others do no (Grammar 6: Pronoun Reference). For the most part I liked a lot of the characteristics of having a blog.

            I do not believe that I will continue to blog in the future. If it was required for a class, yes of course, but for my own personally pleasure I do not believe so. Having a blog is too much work and I do not feel that I would get any enjoyment or pleasure from writing entries everyday. Do not get me wrong, having a blog was beneficial for educational purposes but I do not see how it would help me otherwise.

For Composition II having a blog was a fun experience. At the beginning of school learning to work a blog was difficult. I did not know what I was doing, but after a while it got easier. I liked having a blog better than discussion board. I felt like that having a blog was more creative and up to date than discussion board. Creating a blog was more fun and it had a lot more perks to it, but I do not think that I will continue to blog in the future. I am not a computer kind of person and keeping up with a blog would be too much for me to handle.

People that are pro-choice do not view a fetus as being a child; in their words, it is a human. Some say that the fetus is not a child so it is humane to get an abortion. From a pro-choice website one person states “It’s certainly human, the fetus, but it’s not a child. It has the potential to become a child and over the years, gain personhood, but as a fetus, it’s just that, a fetus” (Reasons for Irony). “When a woman has an abortion the doctors will often refer to her baby as ‘the contents of the womb’ or a ‘blob of jelly’ etc. A woman who chooses abortion is not given the facts about the development of her child in the womb.” (SPUC
Scotland, Society for the). Doctors refer to the women’s pregnancy using words such as baby, unborn child, and fetus when not in the presence of their pregnant patients. That counteracts the argument that a woman is not carrying a developing human.

Pro-lifers believe that abortion is killing a child; they refer to the developing human as a child. The same terminology as those that are pro-choice. An attorney, Ann Marshall, argued that “if unborn children can be crime victims … prosecution of pregnant women who drink and give birth to babies with fetal alcohol syndrome” found guilty of destroying a human life. (Christy Hoppe, Anti-abortion leader). Those babies that are born with fetal alcohol syndrome can not…..I believe that a fetus is a child and that when you get an abortion it is a child that you are aborting not just cells. Calling a child a fetus does not eliminate the fact that the fetus is developing human; a living breathing human.

I wouldn’t use this because… 1.      Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc (After this, therefore because of this)(Also called Confusing Chronology with Causality)

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  • Assuming that because one thing preceded another the for former caused the latter

·        I could  confuse my audience as to what really caused the event.2.      Hasty Generalization

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  • offering only weak or limited evidence to support a conclusion

·        I wouldn’t use this because it wouldn’t give my readers a strong base to go off of and my audience wouldn’t know what specific thing I was talking about. 3.      False Analogy

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  • assuming that because one thing resembles another; conclusions drawn from one also apply to the other

·        I would be misleading my audience and give them information that isn’t right which can hurt my credibility as a writer.4.      Either-or Reasoning

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  • Assuming that there are only two sides to a question and representing yours as the only correct one.

·        This would make me, the writer portrayed as close-minded, leaving nothing open for discussion. It is also bias and your “patting” the side that I would want.  5.      Ad Hominem (Against the Person)

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  • Attacking the arguer and using irrelevant assertions about the person’s character when no fault can be found regarding the argument itself.

·        This would effect my ethos as a writer and in any paper you don’t attack a persons especially using irrelevant notions about them.6.   Appeals to False Authority and Bandwagon Appeals

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  • Justifying an argument based upon the opinion of a group or a famous person.

·        People can not always rely on what a person says just because their famous. They maybe famous but can have false information and it you re-state that you lose credibility as a writer.7.   Non Sequitur (”It does not follow”)

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  • There is no connection (apparent) between the argument and the reasoning

·        My paper wouldn’t have any flow to it, and it wouldn’t make any sense.8.   Circular Reasoning

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  • stating the claim and then restating the claim to make your argument sound more logical

·        my reader would get confused as to why I was re-stating the same statement. There is no reason for it. 9.   Red Herring

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  • raising unrelated or irrelevant points to deliberately throw an audience off track.

·        This can be bad for my audience as well as me, the writer. This could could come across that I don’t know what I’m talking about and confuse my audience as to what the point of my paper is.     10.   Slippery Slope

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  • arguing that taking the first step in a direction will inevitably lead to chaos

·        It’s a risky way to present your paper. If all you know and provide is one side then there’s no argument.     11.   Equivocating

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  • misleading or hedging with ambiguous word choices

·        That would mean that I was unsure about what I was talking about. My audience would be unclear as to what my point was.     12.   Failing to accept the burden of proof

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  • asserting a claim without presenting a reasoned argument to support it

·        I could lose your credibility. I can not say Latinas are the highest group of women that are pron to getting abortions. I have to present the background information and other information that studies have shown.   13.   Overreliance on authority

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  • assuming that something is true simply because an expert says so and ignoring evidence to the contrary.

·        I would be providing my readers with false information based on an “experts” findings. You lose your ethos when you provide your audience with that kind of information.    14.   Oversimplification

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  • giving easy answers to complicated questions, often by appealing to emotions rather than logic.

·        I could  end up not providing  my audience with a detailed answer. It would be  too broad.

I might use this author’s opinion in my paper, but I would not use him as a credible source. It seems like, (and I only know this from reading the Ashley X story), that he doesn’t know if what he saying is all that factual. Throughout the article he asks the audience questions, like he doesn’t know. The only two sources he mentions are the ones who came up with the idea of stunting the disabled child’s growth, the endocrinologist and bioethicist. You would think that he use them, the endocrinologist and bioethicist, to share some viewpoints or explain the aftermath of the procedure. For me I think I would use the author to argue their points but I don’t think they are all that credible.

                                 Teenagers that abort Pregnancy:

Who are these young women?

·        Victims of rape or abuse

·        Girls that thought they were in love

How are they effected?

·        Mentally

1.      depression

2.      stress

·        Physically

1.      breast cancer

2.      bedridden

Long and short term consequences

·        regret

·        had to lie about what happened to friends and family members