Persuasive Essay Summary

My thesis is that the Hamilton Beach BrewStation Deluxe is the best coffee maker of the 4 models compared. One of the advantages is that you can choose between 4 different options (iced coffee, regular, flavor+ and 1-4 cups). It was rated excellent by Consumer Reports and got a rating of 90, which is the best of the 4 machines they had listed in this category. The price was also very competitive. The only reason for me to buy the more expensive machine Viante is the looks of it. It does have a more expensive look to it than the other coffee makers.
Kristina Hanson

Research, Research, Research

I did this one in the APA style, as you said we should do our paper in the style we use in our degree program. I'm in nursing and we use the APA style.

Kristina Hanson

References

Aliventi, P. (2011, September 03). Mr. coffee 12-cup no carafe coffeemaker-buy a hamilton brewstation instead. Retrieved from http://www.epinions.com/review/mr-coffee-bvmc-zh1b/content_562750656132

ConsumerReports. (2011). Coffee makers. Retrieved from http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/products/compare.htm

Hamilton Beach Summit. (2011). Coffee maker review. Retrieved from http://www.coffee-maker-review.net/hamilton-beach-48463-brewstation-summit-12cup-coffeemaker.html

Johnson, M. (2011). Coffee maker review. Retrieved from http://www.coffee-maker-review.net/hamilton-beach-brew-station-deluxe1.html

Viante. (2010). Cafe viante. Retrieved from http://www.vianteusa.com/cafe.html

Style

I never thought about rewording the sentence to make it more memorable.  It's amazing how different a sentence can sound when words are moved around.

Tip #1 "Place yourself in the background" makes sense to me and I have never really thought of it.  Instead of trying too hard to show your feelings in the writings and hurt your writing with it, just focus on writing good and your style will emerge at some point.

I like tip #2 a lot too, which is "write in a way that comes naturally".  I never thought about this before, but it does make lots of sense.  Some students in this class write so much better and use vocabulary that I never thought of using.  If I would use these words in writing it probably wouldn't sound right, unless I would use them when I speak also.  English is my second language, and even so I have been here for quite a while, there are still lots of words I have never heard before.  I should take the words I like in my verbal vocabulary first, and then they will come natural when I'm writing.

I like all of these really and they all make sense.  The only one really going against my intuition is tip #11, which is "do not explain too much".  I always thought it makes more sense to explain more about the mood of the person you are writing about.  So this one really goes against my intuition and is something I need to work on.
Kristina Hanson

Effective Argument

He is addressing his fellow clergymen. He is addressing racial segregation. He seems angry and concerned in the letter. I believe this letter is very effective. He was a very good speaker. I find the argument "Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds" logical.  We should be interested what happens all over the country,
 and not ignore it, just because it didn't happen in our area.  It can still happen there too.  I feel like he does a great job balancing logos, ethos and pathos. He mostly uses logos, but also ethos and pathos.  He uses name calling and hasty generalization. I feel like he should have left out the logical fallacies or word them different, but then it wouldn't have been as effective. I think reading this before my persuasive paper would have helped me a lot.  He wrote a very effective letter. 

Kristina Hanson

Logical Fallacies

Begging the Question: Male hamsters make better pets than female hamsters. I know this because my male hamster was nice and my female hamster bit me.

Polarization: All vegetarians love animals. (There might be another reason like not liking meat)

 Hasty Generalization: I have heard that all Germans like beer. Kristina is German so she must like beer.

Kristina Hanson

Topic

I chose coffee makers as a topic. I wasn't quite sure with some of the other topics I was thinking about if they were okay to use, so I figured this one was fine as there were several different options. We are wanting to buy a new coffee maker for Christmas, so I thought it would be fun to write about it and learn something about different types to buy one that really is what we need/want out of a coffee maker. I found this topic to be a little hard in regards to getting sources though. I argued about the different coffee makers, what options they have and which ones are recommended by Consumer Reports to prove my point why one of the models is the best one to buy. In the hindsight, this was not the best topic, and next time I will look more at research options before starting a paper.

When Your Opinion Matters

I honestly can't think of a situation right now. It has been a while since I have been trying to convince someone.  It has to be very important for me personally, or I won't argue. I don't really like confrontation. Sometimes my husband and I will argue about something and if it is very important to me, I end up getting what I want, but not always.  I definitely need to develop better argumentative skills.  I always think afterwards that I should have approached it differently.  Sometimes it seems to be a language problem, with me growing up with German as a primary language.
Sometimes I have to convince patients of something that is important for their health. I don't give up as easily then, as I don't want them to get sicker or not better by not taking a certain medication. I'm trying to get better at communicating and watch people who are really good at it.

Muddiest Point

I feel like the following point was the muddiest for me: “The point of this paper is not to argue for or against a position (such as abortion, immigration, the death penalty, etc.), but rather to select something from which there are a range of similar choices.” Doing this post now after actually doing my assignment, I’m especially not sure I understood this correctly. Some of the papers I was reading for the peer review used topics that I didn’t think were appropriate to use after reading this. Maybe I made this paper much more difficult for me than it really was supposed to be??? Maybe some examples with different type of topics would have made it clearer. For example, comparing dogs to cats and other pets was being used by someone I reviewed. I didn’t think this would have been okay to use as the other animals are not that similar. Or did I make it more complicated than it was? You could have put examples, like comparing different computers with similar options, phones, TV’s, compare animals to see which one makes best pet.

The guidelines on what was expected in regards to transitions, margins, conclusion,… were very clear. Also the deadlines were very clear.