Reading Response No. 3

Getting Ready to Read:
Write down, in a few quick sentances, how you define the terms fact, claim, opinion, and argument.
A fact is a true statement, or describing something in a truthful manner. A claim is suggesting something that may be true or not. An opinion is someone's view about an issue or topic that does not have to be correct in the eyes of others. An argurment is when one presents an opinion or claim to others to make a point.

Reading Response No. 3
In her article, "Helping Students Use Textual Sources Persyasively," Kantz attempts to expose to college students the correct way to take in research and read rhetorically. She argues that students often do not research and write in the correct way because they read texts as stories or assume that the truth is always expressed in factual texts; due to the fact that they have not been trained to see texts as arguments.

Questions for Discussion and Journaling
1. Kantz argues that facts, opinions and arguments are claims. When one thinks rhetorically, one sees that the real difference bewteen a fact and an opinion is the way they are recieved by the audience.
2. A few things that Kantz says that students do not know or misunderstand about how texts work is how students assume that "factual texts" are one-hundred percent truthful, read texts as stories, and failing to read texts as arguments. Based on my own experience, I believe that Kantz is correct about these things. I also feel that I understand them after reading her article.

Applying and Exploring Ideas
2. Before this class, the relationship between creativity and research in my opinion was almost non existant. I thought that research had little importance when it comes to being creative. However, after reading Kantz's article, I have found that writing creatively and research go hand in hand. My previous ideas do not really overlap with Kantz's ideas at all, but her thinking does influence mine. Her views about research being an important-if not the most important-part of being creative.

Meta Moment
One of the constructs that Kantz analyzes in this article is argument (in which one does not simply report facts in an essay but constructs an argument). It would be useful to me to understand her findings for future papers I write.

I thought that this artcile was imformitive and important because it brings to light the meaning of facts, opinions and claims, which are all things that academic writers need to know. It also reveals mistakes that students make when researching and writing.