What I have learned in this class over the summer

What I have learned many things in this class. I learned how important it was to stay focused when it came to doing your work. As you know it is our summer vacation and I really did not feel the need to take this class. But as the weeks pass by, I learned that it was not so bad because it kept me busy and still focused for the coming semester.

I also learned that it is very important to turn in your work on time. Before I took this class, I was very lazy and I would either work on homework last minute or the night before. And now, with the 12 hour apart rule, I have to make sure I stay on top of things and get them done as soon as possible. And with me in Japan for the summer, my time schedule is somewhat different from everyone else. So I really had to make sure that I was focused and get everything turned in on time.

Group Discussion

For this group discussion, I had my whole family read my paper on the second assignment. I also told them my opinions on how advertisements affect our outlook on life and others.

Both my parents and my brother believed in what I said and what I wrote. They also agreed on my opinions. They believed that since we watched television and used the computer almost everyday of the week, commercials can be found everywhere. And by that, they said it can have a major impact in our lives through what we say and what we believe in as well.

As for my friend, he agreed me when it came to advertisements, but he believed that the company or association that we chose was not correct when it came to their argument towards poor and sick people. He believed that even though they may gain food from this organization, they would be able to manage. By believing that, he argued that the foundation isn't really helping the people but actually spoiling them to not get a job.

Mission Critical website

What I found useful in this website was the concepts of supporting you conclusions with premises and arguments. This helped me a lot because it showed me how important it was to have good support and evidence of a claim or argument. Without this strong support, your argument can be countered easily or even ignored.

This also helped me in a writing stand point. My whole life I was never a good writer. I would always make claims and assume the readers of my essays would understand what I was writing about. Since I learned from this website, I am able to make better decisions when writing an essay and making better arguments that can support my main topic or claim.

Another thing that I learned from these concepts and support were the types of support. I learned that by using a well known authority or even a well known fact, can help my claim or arguments even more.

Cause and Effect website reading and exercises Website

What I found useful in the website was the idea of being: ambiguous and vague.

In the website, they are both specified with these descriptions:

-A word or phrase is said to be ambiguous if it has at least two specific meanings that make sense in context.

-A word or phrase is said to be vague if its meaning is not clear in context.

This helped me realize when I am talking to a person, I can tell now whether or not they are being ambiguous or vague. People today always speak as if they know everything. And people that listen to them with little knowledge believe them.

But since I learned these concepts from the website, I am able to tell whether or not the person knows what he or she is talking about. And by doing so, I can tell what kind of person they are; if they are liars or they like to pretend they know everything etc.

Graphs in Chapter 13

Graphs are described to be very useful in Chapter 13. Graphs to me personally are easy. They give me a visual on what I am trying to solve or relate to. It also helps me be able to understand what I'm trying to learn.

Throughout my life, when it came to math, graphs were easy to me. Every time I took a test, I would hope that there would be an example of a graph to help me solve the question.

Graphs can also harm us when it comes to math and concluding facts. Graphs may have information that is easy to access, but depending on the reader, sometimes people can get confused or perceive different type of graphs in different ways.

No matter the reason, graphs are always there to help us in many ways. It is up to us to learn and use them the right and correct way. When it comes to graphs, we need to make sure that we understand them and that we can use them to help us rather than not helping us and making us have the wrong idea of what is to be learned.

Second Major Course Assignment

In our currently/ Second Major course assignment, I learned a lot about emotions and it's effect towards our choices and beliefs.

I learned that emotions can effect our choices in a bad and good level. Emotions affect our lives everyday. The way we feel towards other people helps us treat them by our feelings. I also learned that emotions can affect how we make decisions in life.

It was also useful to learn how people in the advertising business uses pictures and other factors in their advertisements to affect how others feel towards their feelings. By learning this, I think twice every time I see an advertisement that makes me feel guilty, sad, etc.

Through our emotions, we can make good decisions.

When making a decision, I learned that I must have a set of factors that support my claim. So that whenever my claim is questioned, I can back it up with evidence and support to help make my claim seem correct.

Importance of Numbers

Numbers today are very important in our today's society in communications. What we all need to remember is that number never lie. Also, Numbers can be both good and bad. Some may misleading and others may be help to others.

Misleading: Sometimes numbers can be misleading. For example: If I was to state a claim by saying "Over 90% of people in the U.S. uses cell phones. And the other 10% uses pay phones." I then ask "Which one is clearly better?" What is misleading is what did the question mean by "better?" Some questions and claims can be vague or confusing. This is one aspect of numbers that we must know about.

Helpful: Numbers are helpful because it gives us an idea of what we are thinking about. For example: Let's say that my friend said "Many people bought my candy." He could have been more specific by saying "85% of the students bought my candy." By saying those figures of how many people bought his candy, it helped us have a clear picture of how many people really bought his candy.