Rules for Writers..Chapter 51

This week I read chapter 51, which was about managing information and avoiding plagiarism. They were talking about being a good researcher, and a good record keeper. They talked about different ways of managing information, having a working bibliography, good source of materials, taking notes and not plagiarizing (which is stealing from your sources.) They talked about making a good bibliography, which should contain more sources than you will actually use in your work cited. When looking for web sources, for example sometimes all of the information will not be on the main home page, but you shouldn’t include any information that is not on it itself. A good way of keeping track of your source materials is photocopying them or printing them out. When taking notes you really need to make sure not to unintentionally plagiarize. A good tip for that is to resist not to look at the source as you take notes, except when you are quoting. They talked about summarizing without plagiarizing, which is like reducing a whole chapter to a short paragraph , or reducing a short paragraph to a single sentence., but writing it in your own words. Paraphrasing without plagiarizing they talked about. They talked about using quotation marks, which is a very good way to avoid plagiarism. Quotation is the EXACT same words form the source, even the punctuation and capitalization.
I really feel like this is a good chapter to focus on or read on your won because a lot of students don’t know how important it is not to plagiarize. I also think that when students do they sometimes do know that they are really doing it. After reading his chapter it actually really helped me. I thought the point they made about writing some sentences summarizing key points of the source will help you out with the bibliography and remembering information.

Response to Mr. Harvey

In this story Mr. Harvey was an English teacher for Lovey and her other classmates. They were located in Hawaii where all the students speak pidgin; which is a English/Hawaiian Creole mix. Mr. Harvey teaches the 5th grade which Lovey is in. He is a very strict teacher and has very unpleasant teaching styles, most of the time in a verbally abusive way to the students. He talks to his students as if they were brought up was wrong and they can never change. He says how they talk is low class and very uneducated. This makes Lovey and guaranteed the other students very ashamed of how they grew up. Lovey is ashamed of where they live, her background, and most of all her family, because of the comments that Mr. Harvey has made to her, making her feel very small and below other students. She talks about wishing her name would be Betty Smith or Debbie Cole, because these were hoalies, which she wishes she was. Hoalie is a term Hawaiians use for white people. One day in class they all have to stand up and say their name and what they want to do when They get older in standard English in front of the class. Jerry gets up and is very nervous and talks very slow but gets through it, now its Loveys turn and Mr. Harvey is rushing her telling her to “cut the crap and stop playing these goddamn plantation games.” Lovey gets up and says “ my name is Lovey…I going be what I like be and nobody better say nothing about it or I kill um.” Mr. Harvey was furious. He tells the class all of them were terrible and they will never stop practicing till they are perfect little Americans. He says “…you need me more than I need you.” Right there he just puts the students down and makes them feel like they are nothing. But in the end Lovey deep down really does think that Mr. Harvey doesn’t try to be mean to them and really wants them to be Americans.
My responses to Mr. Harvey are very negative because I feel like I have had to deal with teachers like him in my past school years. I must say I was a very rebellious kid in high school and had to transfer to a continuation school. Being at that continuation school for 3 years really made me grow up. I had to deal with teachers that already thought we were bad and worthless kids. But dealing with that really made me a stronger person and I feel like this story really relates to me in a lot of ways.

Rules for Writers Chapter 48

Chapter 48 was talking about different argumentative tactics, which are called logical fallacies. They talked about stereotyping. And that we see what we want to see, because we notice evidence confirming our own opinions. They talked a lot about the truth. Analogies are points that are similar between two things that are different. They gave a lot of examples having to do with lawyers and different court systems. There is a reasonable and unreasonable analogy and it’s hard to tell the difference between them to. They talked about causes and effects and how they are so complex. They talked about making assumptions which it is a claim that is taken to be true without proof. All arguments are based on assumptions. But also there are problems with assumptions, like failing to spell out and prove a claim that is controversial. I really like how they gave examples of each thing and each reasoning’s, because it helped me understand it way more. They talked about legitimate and unfair emotional appeals. They have that there is no problem in appealing to readers emotions. All arguments have a lot of issues having to do with emotional issues. They talked about arguments we see in the media they try to win our sympathy rather than our intelligent agreement. After that they talked about opposing views, views of other people, and how to quote opposing views. I learned that when dealing with an argument you need to give both sides of the argument a fair and totally representation also I learned that you need to have very good support and evidence to support your topic.