right chapter at the right time

I found chapter 9 to be very helpful. It was a nice refresher about some topics that we had already covered earlier such forming a thesis and arguing with ethos, pathos, and logos. The chapter summarizes these again, but also goes into more detail in this chapter and is helpful in allowing you to integrate these concepts back to your research paper now that you have hopefully started work on it. I really liked the example talking about arguing that Muhammad Ali was the greatest fighter of all time. It is interesting how you make the argument three entirely different ways and still arrive at the same argument. The Muhammad Ali example is also very nice in giving you specific examples about how to make your arguments according to pathos, logos, and ethos. I also like the example that talks about using statistics in your argument and being careful not rely to much of your argument on facts that may be hard to prove or that you can’t be certain that they aren’t biased. I also liked the point made on page 187 where it talks about using different kinds of evidence to support a claim and also making sure that you provide adequate evidence for every reason and not just some of them. This is a problem have encountered because some issues I am researching have several sources that I can use for evidence and some may have only one or two sources that support a claim. After reading this I may have to go back and try to find more evidence for these claims or might have to consider not using these claims. The part about warrants is a little confusing. I understand the general idea, but am unsure how you are actually supposed to express these in your argument. I think the logic of warrants makes sense, but I am skeptical about whether they are actually applicable to the types of research papers we are writing. It makes sense that you should think about the idea of warrants, however I see their use probably only pertaining to identifying controversial assumptions that you make, but may have to consider defending in your rebuttal. Chapter 10 makes a good point about making sure to think about whether your material is current and is still relevant, and that you understand the historical signifigance of a piece of information such as the time period it was written when evaluating it. Just because it is old doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t use it, but it may be outdated and their may be new research that is more appropriate.