Journal 50: Speech Next Week

            Giving a speech is probably one of the most frightening things I have experienced. Indeed, speaking in second language is difficult, yet using first language does not down grade the difficulty. In fact, I already felt very terrifying when I got pick up during a class discussion. The reason is that when you speak out your answer, others might mock you because you gave a silly or wrong answer. Personally, I do not enjoy giving a speech, because I usually alter or forgot what I wanted to say originally because of nervousness. I believe that giving a presentation and put forth a persuasive argument is different. First, giving a presentation can be a grammar presentation that we do in CREW class. You can say that it is a speech, but there is a slightly difference. Presentation is more like using the knowledge you gain on the textbook or other resources, and then you put paraphrase it in your own words and present it to everyone. For persuasive speech, one needs to stand in their position, with enough supporting details, and adequate emotions in order to convince your audience. Before I give my speech to the audience, I would prepare my script and the emotions I need definitely. In addition, I will stand for my position strongly to let no one influence my arguments.

Journal 49: Reflect on Your Essay

When I was writing this persuasive essay, there are a few things that I found difficult with. First, it is hard to brainstorm the three major reasons why media violence has a negative effect on society. For this part, I am emphasizing the “major” part, because most of us already knew that the invention of media created equal amount of advantages and disadvantages. Therefore, it is not simple to find the three major supporting idea that can persuade the audiences. Second, finding the supporting details is also another different part. For each example, they required detail references from researchers or professors in universities or colleges. Moreover, your real life example need to be reasonable, otherwise no one will be convinced by the speaker. In addition, when I moved to opposing point of view, my position changed a little bit, because everything has its two sides, which are pros and cons. I deeply believe in my argument, because if I have doubts on my point of view, then how can I be able to convince my audiences? In fact, I haven’t found any flaws or holes in my speech, but I believe any tiny mistakes could make the whole essay structures fall. So, I should check my article a few more times before I present it to everyone.

Journal 48: Your Opposition

First of all, the topic of my persuasive essay is media violence has a negative effect on the public. In addition, this is not an issue that recently comes up. Therefore, there must be some solutions or adjustments for this problem. So, how can I anticipate how someone might try to counter what I say? I believe that some audience might reject me because there are some ways to avoid media violence. For instance, parents can set passwords for some R rated channel. Then, children would not be able to watch this channel. This is one way that my audiences might question me about. Also, audiences might ask, “what if some people do not have computer or television at home?” Then, how can media violence create negative effect on them? In this situation, I might raise my supporting details that we are live in 21^st century right now. This means we are surrounded by technology, most of the people are highly possible to be in touch with technology in modern days. So, as you can see, there are several flaws in my arguments. I need to be able to identify them and try to provide more detailed examples to persuade my audiences.

Journal 47: Writing or Speaking

In my opinion, I think speaking is more effective than writing for the following reasons. First, although you may think that speaking is only speak the script you wrote to everyone, which is similar to writing, it still have several difference. For instance, when a person is trying to persuade you a point by speaking, I think this person got a better chance to convince you than writing you a paper. The reason is that when a person is speaking, his/her eyes usually looks into you. This means you can have more eye contact with this person. Then, when the speaker's voice become louder and stronger. You will receive its effect immediately. This is similar to the fact that your mother shout at you when you got an F on your math exam. Yet, if your mother gives you a note and it says, " I am so disappointed at you because you got an F on your exam. You better study hard or I will throw away all your comic book!" This way, your mother's words seems less emotional. Therefore, I prefer to persuade others by speaking. This way, it makes my points more convincing and powerful. But, it might not be so simple for some to raise their points by speaking, because sometime people get nervous. What they wanted to say originally might be influenced, which will result the failure of a persuasion.

Journal 46: Your Argument

How would I characterize my persuasive argument? There are three ways to characterize it, which are emotional, logical, and ethnical appeals. Logical appeal is the strategic use of logic, claims, and evidence to convince an audience of a certain point. Emotional appeals target the emotions of the reader to create some kind of connection with the writer. Ethical appeal is used to establish the writer as fair, open-minded, honest, and knowledgeable about the subject matter. Since my topic is media violence has a negative impact on society, I think my arguments are actually balance in three major ways. The reason is that some of my examples are related to these appeals. For instance, there’s an example that occurs the statistics and data research of the professor in the university. So, this example will probably connected to the logical appeal. In addition, if I put an example of the influence of the media violence on the children’s characteristics build. Then, this example will probably related to the ethnical appeal. Yet, I believe there is one subject about the argument that lead to ethnical appeal. Since my topic is a well researched event. There are a lot of resources in different media that related to this topic. 

Journal 45: Persuade Me

Persuasion someone is probably one of the most powerful skills that people want. The reason is that we always have goals before we wanted to persuade others. For instance, John wanted to go to a concert during the final exam week. All of his friends are allow going to the concert, except John. Therefore, he would like to convince his parents to let him go to the concert. In this case, John not only needs to have effective communication skills, but also he needs to present some kind of “evidence”. By evidence, I mean like test scores or some basic requirements for his parents. For example, John might have to study extremely hard before he goes to the concert in order to persuade his parents. On the other hand, he might need to make a promise to his parents like he can get an A on his final exam. These two ways are probably the more convincing ways to persuade his mother and father. For me, I have tried to convince my mother to hang out with my friends before. The situation is similar to my example – John. The way I used to persuade her is the same as John. I told my mother I could get an 80 on my exam. So, she let me go out with my friends. However, I had to study very hard to fulfill my promise.

Journal 44: Reason Sits Firm

The interesting part of this English novelist’s quote is that, she uses personification to describe reason and judgment. In the quote, she says that reason sits firm and holds the rein, which can be interpret as reason is a person that holding the rein and trying to control everything. And, our passions can rage furiously and cannot be stopped without our clear sense of judgment. Indeed, according to the quote from Charlotte Bronte, sometime we do makes something furiously or out of mind. However, reason and judgment are still the two basic instincts we have. These two things control our mind before we wanted to do something crazy or unrealistic. For instance, one might perform a murder if he/she is lacking of judgments and reasons. He/She will do anything as long as it is worth. This can happened to anyone in the world. Every person on this world has different sense of judgment toward everything. Some got good judgment; on the other hand, some got bad judgment. Moreover, people do things with reasons. So, that is also why I think these two instincts are related together. In order to do the right thing, one has to perfom it with great judgment and accurate reason.