Reading Response 3

Kantz – “Helping Students Use Textual Sources Persuasively”

Summary

In her article, “Helping Students Use Textual Sources Persuasively,” Kantz attempts to explain how to use a source properly in essays for students in college, through examples of good and bad of source use. She argues that if you use sources like you were taught in high school, you won’t be meeting your teacher’s expectations, and it really isn’t that hard to write the essay’s once you make the shift to a rhetorical mindset.

Synthesis

This reading is similar to Greene’s article, because it is encouraging students to think beyond the basic teaching of high school and to transcend the bare minimum for the assignments. This attempt to break the preconceptions of all of your other educational experiences seems to be a common theme, because Klein touched on it as well.

Pre-reading

In an argument I’ve had recently, the factual dispute was resolved when one side conceded the point when they assimilated the new information. They didn’t agree entirely on the facts, but they agreed to disagree on most of the other parts of the discussion, but they resolved the argument by settling one part of it and agreeing to come back to the rest at a different time.

QD

1. Kantz contends that facts are merely points that the community as a whole has decided is correct, but is always up for discussion, and has endured much discussion to fall under the tentative category of “fact.”

2. A list of the things that Kantz says students don’t know: problems writing persuasive researched papers, interpretation of assignment, interpretation of sources (as stories), expect sources to tell the truth, facts are a kind of claim, how to construct a more complex representation of texts, the concept of a rhetorical situation, understanding author’s facts are for specified audience, the true nature of plagiarism, task management skills, and thinking can write a paper in one draft. She is correct when applied to a vast majority of students. My experience in AP classes has given me a small glimpse to parts of what she explains we need to learn, such as using more than one draft for a paper and closer analysis of sources, but people without this experience fit in her profile well. I understand a good many of them, but it will take time to get into the practice of doing them well.

AE

2. The relationship between creativity and research, prior to this class, was how creative you were in paraphrasing your sources when you used it, and where you looked for sources. As Kantz talks about it, it is how you can interpret the “facts” in your sources and find the “truth” to use in your research. There is little overlap between the old way we were taught to research and Kantz’s method of research, but her methods have definitely influenced me to try harder when I do a research paper to try and come up with an original topic. She uses her model way too much, because I do know that research is much more fluid than her triangle makes it out to be.

MM

She’s trying to analyze the construct of sources holding all of the truth. It is useful for me to know this because it will help when I need to critically analyze something or do a much more complex writing assignment, and it will eventually help me to understand things other than just writing, if I work at it.

Thoughts

This article was okay, but it got repetitious fast. She could have consolidated the writing in about five pages less than she did. It brought up some good points, but most people have figured some of them out by now, so while parts of it were interesting, others were a chore to struggle through from sheer boredom.