Final Question 3

This semester the one concept that I found interesting was the one about advertising. It was interesting how advertising techniques can persuade consumers to buy what they offer. I think that I could have learned more from the concept though which is why this is the concept that I would choose to have further discussion about. I know that there are companies that want people who have experience and knowledge about advertising so there must be more to learn about the concept. There were plenty of examples in the book about the advertising techniques that companies used, but I would like to have gone more in depth about the techniques that they use and how it helps them and whatnot. Also about the ways the companies advertise like online on billboards and like which ones do better in persuading the consumers the best. Overall though the concept was well put in the book.  

Final Question 2

 I enjoyed a lot of things about this online class. It was my first, but because of that if there are any other online classes I could take then I would take it because of the experience I had with this online class. For me though I think my favorite part of the class was the weekly discussions. I liked the weekly discussions because I was able to see my peer's outlook on the discussions compared to mines which was interesting and kept the class entertaining. My least favorite thing about the class was the 12 hour mark we had to wait for before every post we had to do, but I understand why it is done. Other than that everything else was good I really had no problems with the class. If I had to choose one thing to improve about this class it would be to just have maybe one more question in the discussions just to have people do more thinking, but hey the class is good enough.  

Final Question 1

Over the course of the semester I have learned many new concepts in this online class that I have not ever thought about before. Like how emotion plays a part when reasoning and how it is an important tool in critical thinking. Also I did not even know that there were different types of arguments like deductive and inductive. I like the way the thinking process goes for each argument on how they each get to the conclusion. Then I learned about the marketing strategies that companies use just like the SWOT model to help the companies survive in the competing market. The list goes on and on about all the different concepts and also about the group facilitation project I was able to experience the concepts I learned about firsthand in one group session. I was not aware of how you could analyze people's arguments and how group communication worked like who kind of took the leadership role when everyone had the same level of power.  

Chapter 11 Question 1

After reading chapter eleven about the media I have learned a few things. I already knew that the media was usually biased and there were always thing out there trying to get us to buy their things. Reading the chapter taught me about the extent of everything of like how there is bias in the news. Like how the news can reinforce my view on something of like a city when it shows a lot of violence of the city. So if I viewed a city as violent and the next day the news shows a report of violence in the city then it helps reinforce my view. An opposite example of that would be when the news challenges my views like if I think that the doing something is bad like drinking any alcohol is bad is not true. Like I found out back then that drinking a little bit of wine every day is good for you. That was an example that challenged my view since I always had the impression that alcohol was not good for you.

Chapter 10 Question 3

Chapter ten had quite a few concepts that I found interesting. One in particular that stood out to me would be the one about the SWOT model. According to the text, the acronym SWOT stands for “strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats”. It is used to analyze a certain company's strengths and weaknesses, also for external things too. I found it interesting because I did not know that companies used such a method to analyze their own business. I thought it was smart for the companies to use the method to their advantage. Well the first two components of the SWOT model are the part of the method that makes the company look at itself internally. The second two parts are for the company to see external things like for opportunities looking for new partners or for threats checking out the new competitors. Overall everything in chapter ten was interesting, but I liked this one the best.  

Chapter 10 Question 2

 Wootan and Liodice both make very good arguments. Wootan does a good job explaing why there should be strict food regulation and Liodice does a good job explaining why there should not be strict food regulation. For me though I like Liodice's argumentation better. I like it because Liodice goes to the very basics and starts his way up from there. Starting with the basic human rights of freedom of speech and how there should be no regulation that hinders anyone's freedom of speech just to solve a problem. Then from there he talks about people will not be intimidated especially the ones who recognize personal and parental responsibility and other values. Which I think is true since it is the parents who buys the food for their children so it is the parents responsibility and not the companys who promote their food. Overall I agree with Liodice's argumentation about protecting freedom of speech.  

Chapter 10 Question 1

As a consumer I have encountered many different marketing strategies throughout the week. One marketing strategy that I have come across from would be brand recognition. I have passed many billboards with the brand's name along with some picture or phrase that would catch my eyes. I thought that it was a good way to catch my eyes and make me think about the brand. Another one would be while going to the store having items being placed in the very end of the aisle so that it would catch my eye. I liked it too, but not really also because of the fact that it made me want to get something that I really did not need. That is a good marketing strategy though to get me get something from the brand. One that also caught my eye too was product placement while watching a movie. I think it was the least effective for me only because I do not buy something from a company just because it is in a cool movie or some actor uses it too. It may work for some fans though that love the actors or movies so it works for some and doesn't work for some. 

Chapter 7 Question 3

Of course as with all of the other chapters in the book we have read so far there are many concepts that were interesting to me. One that I have chosen to go more in depth with would be about casual arguments. In the book it says that "A cause is an event that brings about a change or effect"(220). That means that if there is a cause then there will be an effect or change. That brings us to casual arguments. An example would be if you do not get enough sleep at night then you will not have enough energy for the day. The cause will be the not getting enough sleep part. The effect would be that because you do not get enough sleep then you will not have energy the next day. What makes this an inductive argument is that the effect is not necessarily true. You can drink an energy drink the next day or your body happens to be strong enough where you do not need lots of sleep to have energy the next day. Some people are used to having little sleep and some need a lot of it.

Chapter 7 Question 2

Dr. Novello is a really great person. When things were tough for her she did not do what other people did, but she embraced the most of life and followed her dream to become a doctor. In seeking a solution to finding the problem of smoking among children and teens the cause that she found was that the Joe Camel ads in 1988 for the camel cigarettes pretty much started it all. That inevitably caused many children and teens to want to smoke cigarettes more. So as an effect she strived for there to be more education in schools. Also to ban cigarette and alcohol ads that were targeted toward the youth. In using inductive reasoning she is hoping that the ban on cigarettes and alcohol ads targeted toward the youth and for more education in schools would have an effect on the number of teens and children to decrease.

Chapter 7 Question 1

An inductive argument that I believed I have used this week was when I was driving home from school. I was going to exit the highway onto normal street roads when a car was entering a freeway. I knew that usually if you enter a freeway then you change lanes so you don't automatically exit the freeway. So in my head I was thinking if that if the person was entering the freeway, then they should change lanes so they do not exit the freeway. Sadly I was wrong though since the person who just entered the freeway stayed in the exit lane and exited the freeway. I guess they wanted a faster way to go somewhere that did not require many street lights. That's my story though. It is an inductive argument because when you use the premises like usually people who enter the highway change lanes to stay in the highway is not always true. Then when we go to the conclusion we can use the indicator “we can expect that” the person who is entering the freeway will change lanes, but it is not always necessarily true.

Chapter 8 Question 3

I liked all the different types of concepts that chapter eight has offered. I never really thought about the different ways of arguing. One concept that caught my eye would be arguments by elimination. It caught my eye because how they mentioned Sherlock Holmes and I knew he was a really good detective so I wanted to know more about this type of argumentation. So I learned that you have to rule out any possibility when doing your argument and when you have the last possibility then it must be the answer. We use this everyday too like when we want to find something like lets say your keys. If you retrace your steps and check each place you were until you have your last place it could be then that is when you find your keys. Another way of elimination would be a disjunctive syllogism. Which is when you only use two different possibilities. Such as my keys are either in my jeans or on the table because those were the only places you would put your keys. If you checked your table then it must be in your jeans. I like this type of argumentation because whatever is last is always the answer.  

Chapter 8 Question 2

All people are different. So all people have different perspectives. It just depends on how you look at things like how sister Helen Prejean interprets the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, “who taught us to not to return hate for hate and evil for evil”. She see's Jesus' teachings in a way that she thinks the death penalty contradicts it. In my perspective I believe that the scriptural passage does not prohibit the usage of the death penalty. I think that is so because in the justice system when a person has done a heinous crime that everyone hears about then the doer of the crime is usually sent to another county or part of the state. That is so there is no feelings of anything from the jury so everything is neutral. It is not like someone did a crime and the whole family of the victim is the jury and they decide the death penalty because they hate the person and want to be evil to them. Hate is when you strongly dislike someone or something. Courts use the death penalty not because they hate someone, but because they deserve it. Therefore, the scriptural passage does not prohibit the usage of the death penalty because courts do not use the death penalty because of hate, but because they deserve it.

Chapter 8 Question 1

Everybody knows how much of a good reasoner Sherlock Holmes was. He knew that to be a good reasoner you would have to take away all opinions and assumptions out of reasoning and base everything on fact. Which is in fact what most people do not do. When he said that, “when it comes to the art of reasoning, many people rely on opinion and unsupported assumptions” he meant what I said earlier that you cannot bring in opinions and assumptions when you are trying to reason with someone. Take in all the facts and distinguish them from the opinions. One example in my life that I have had was when I was at my work with a coworker working together on a project. While I was working hard on the project my worker disappeared and left me. I did not know that my coworker left and I assumed that he had left me for me to do the project on my own. I tried to reason with myself, but could only think of how mad I was that my coworker left me and I thought he was lazy for doing that. Little did I know though that my coworker left to bring support and had actually helped me do the project without my knowledge. So I learned that until I get my facts straight I need not to use opinions or assumptions when reasoning.  

Chapter 6 Question 3

There was a lot of information given in chapter six. I learned a lot about premises, conclusions, deductive arguments, inductive arguments and so much more. I think the most interesting piece of information that I have learned though would be about breaking down and diagramming arguments. I have never really thought about diagramming an argument and didn't know how technical it could get. I like how there were three steps to breaking the argument. Like the first step would be to bracket the propositions, identify the conclusion, and identify the premises. Then to diagram the argument you would put the premises in circles with numbers in them on the top whether they are independent or dependent premises and then put the conclusion in the bottom. After that it would even get more technical with subconclusions, unstated conclusions and the usage of lines to connect premises. All of this information intrigued me.   

Chapter 6 Question 2

There is not much that comes to mind with me when I think of any situation where I had to stand my ground because I am the type that does not like to argue. If I had to choose one particular event though I would have to choose the time where my friends wanted to go out to eat with me before they went out to move down south near San Diego, but I had to be with my mom because she was really sick. My mom also had my sister and brother to take care of her too, but I wanted to be with my mom. My friends got mad because it could be the last time they could see me probably and they told me that my sister and brother could just take care of my mom, but in my head I knew that back then when I was younger that whenever my mom wanted to have fun she couldn’t sometimes because she had to take care of me. I had to explain to my friends the situation and eventually they sympathized with me. My critical thinking skills led me to decide who to go with and it led me to not just think of what I wanted, but what was best. I had to think on a higher level to decide who to go with. 

Chapter 6 Question 1

I believe that Obama's position on same-sex marriage is not on par with his beliefs in equal rights and opportunities for all people. Obama knows that if same-sex marriage was legalized on a federal level then the homosexual married couples would get the same benefits as the heterosexual married couples. So that means if he does not support the legalization of same-sex marriage on a federal basis then he does not believe in the support of equal rights and opportunities for all people since the same-sex marriage couples would not be getting the same benefits as the heterosexual ones. I do not know how Obama thinks, but I think that his way of responding to Nava and Dawidoff's argument would be that he is trying to keep the system in balance as in if homosexual couples got the same rights as heterosexual ones then many companies like insurance companies who give discounts to married couples would have to change their policies. So he would probably be looking at the situation on a higher level.  

About Me

Hey there fellow classmates. This is Romel Johnson, I am a sophomore who is majoring in Psychology and currently live in Sunnyvale. I am currently a full time student at SJSU who works part time. Currently I am taking another communications class which is public speaking which I am not too excited for, but will see how it turns out. So that right there is all the experience with communication studies that I have. This course will be the first online class that I have ever taken so I am interested in seeing how this will all turn out. My goal though would be to become a better critical decision maker and to end the semester with a smile knowing that I did my best. Well hope all of us enjoy this class and we will see where all these blogs will take us.