Most Interesting Concept

Like what I mentioned in my past blog, I have learned so much from this class. However, the one that stood out the most and I really enjoyed learning is about General Claims. I always notice people saying some or all, no or only, as well as vague generalities. Before this class I thought that mentioning those words was just fine when stating facts or doing a report in class, because it seems like everybody else says it. However, after this class I am very much more careful when it comes to using those words because it is misleading for people that you talk to. I remember one time when I told my friend and said “Some cars are harder to park in the SJSU parking lot.” By saying “some” I could have meant just a car or two or I could mean more than the half of the type of cars that park in the garage. By learning about being vague, I notice more how I use some words very lightly even if they can be misinterpreted by many.

Opinions About The Class...

I had an online class just a semester ago, and I had a tough time because our lectures were online, and watching it on the computer was the least motivating thing you can do for an online class. This class was surprisingly different from the one I took, and is so much more manageable without having the student lag on their classwork, because there is a due date for each discussion every week- which I like because it makes me have to do work to earn a good grade, and not push it off until the last minute. The exercises we used as well were very helpful and something that anyone can relate to so it is easier to comprehend and apply to our own situations.

The only thing that I least like about this class is how I did not really get to know the people in my group as well as those people that I see in class, but the group work that my group had was tremendously great. Through that I know that the group members are just as amazing as they are online. I also don’t really think this class need any much more improvement since it is a pretty good and enjoyable class- I love getting comments from my fellow students on my blog and the idea of a blogging class is also fun. I really enjoyed taking this under Professor Perez because she made it very much enjoyable :)

What I Have Learned From This Class...

This Critical Decision Making class has helped me in many ways, not only to support my arguments and claims but also how to communicate well with other people as well as through groups. I have learned so many ways to exercise critical thinking for school and also for communicating with others- particularly, analyzing claims such as prescriptive, objective and subjective claims, the difference between vague sentences and ambiguous sentences and how to identify if a statement is one of those.

I also learned a lot of different fallacies that people use in their statements to lure the person on leaning towards their side when it comes to arguments. Since I already encountered fallacies in my English 1B class, I like how this class supplemented more fallacies that I did not learn. Some that I learned from this class are: begging the question, shifting the burden of proof, strawman, relevance, slanters, and ridicule- which are the Violating the Principle of Rational Discussion. I specifically liked the appeal to emotion chapter, because I have noticed how appeal to pity usually gets me every time that I see the commercials about animal violence or children from Africa on the television. Appeal to fear is also something that candidates use to earn more votes, that I did not even realize they are using until the book we use in class mentioned it.