Tuesday, March 31 2009
January 10, 2009
Today’s Agenda
Last time we talked about the structure of our arguments, and we covered these topics:
Hertsgaard’s Thesis
Your Thesis
Your evidence, taken from your reading
The importance of telling the reader exactly how your evidence supports your argument
You homework was to e-mail me your revised draft, and you should have gotten that back from my by now. If you have not, see me after class. The final drafts of these documents will be due this Thursday.
This brings to the end of Unit Two.
Unit Three:
Today we are going to begin Unit Three – the final unit of this course and for this semester!
EH 124: RESEARCH ARGUMENT
This unit has several important goals, all of which will culminate in your creation of a compose a 4-6 page thesis-based argument on a topic of your choosing that incorporates 4-6 texts from a variety of sources.
Skills:
- Topic identification, development, and later revision
- Research methods (including skimming, note-taking and annotation)
- Discrimination amongst sources according to relevance and quality
- Incorporation and documentation of sources
I want to begin this unit by recapping the basic tools we have developed this semester to address rhetoric in writing. What are some of the major ideas we covered in Unit One? Unit Two?
In this unit, you will be choosing a topic for consideration. We are going to take the next five to ten minutes to come up with a subject that you think you know more about than anyone else in the room. We are NOT worried about PRO or CON arguments at this point. I simply want you to write about a subject that interests you and that you know something about.
Group Work
Class Discussion
What are some thesis statements we might come up with for an argument on this subject?
Where would we get information on these topics?
Writing: How do we argue in an academic environment?
Group Discussion
Class Discussion
You will need to have EVIDENCE from authored sources to back your argument up
Let’s look at chapter 16 (page 469)
Group work on the kinds of evidence that are acceptable in an academic argument.
Homework:
For Thursday:
Finish the final draft of your argument on Hertsgaard. Submit via e-mail by the end of business.
For Tuesday:
First, find and submit 15 sources for your paper in MLA format. The guidelines for doing this are on page 555 of your book. E-mail this to me.
Next,
2 page blog post that does the following. You have to 1) begin with a paragraph that introduces me to your subject and thesis, and then you must, in at least 5 separate well-developed paragraphs, introduce me 5 of the best of your 15 sources ( one source per paragraph). In each paragraph, you need to define the thesis for the source – the thesis should actually be quoted. Then, at the end, you need to write one paragraph on how you imagine that you will use these sources as you organize your argument. You must e-mail this to me and also bring a copy to class on TUESDAY.
[...] Tuesday, March 31 [...]
Nate Adams
4-2-09
Rhetoric and Composition II
5 Paragraphs of Hitting a Baseball
As the famous major league baseball player Ted Williams once said, “I think without question the hardest single thing to do in sport is to hit a baseball.” Williams is correct with his statement. Hitting a baseball at all different angles and velocities of the baseball is the single handedly the most difficult task to accomplish in baseball. There are many different aspects of hitting to keep in mind while you’re standing in the batter’s box. What is the pitch going to be? Where is the location of this pitching going to be? is it going to be a ball or a strike? Without question, hitting a baseball with solid contact into fair territory is the most difficult task to accomplish in sports today.
All of baseball can be a difficult sport to play in general. But hitting takes years of practice, and years of repetition to be successful. But one of the most important things according to major league baseball player Torri Hunter is, “You have to have patience, you have to accept failure, you have to make adjustments and you have to have fun.” Physics professor at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago Porter Johnson also agrees with this statement by saying, “If a person from another planet was told what’s involved … they would say it’s impossible.” Professional baseball player Torri Hunter also agrees with Johnson by stating hitting a baseball is difficult and says, “It’s a matter of precision, adjustment and accuracy, and there’s not much room for error. Miss by a half-inch, and you can top the ball or hit it into the ground. You have to have hand-eye coordination to adjust to the ball’s speed, and you have to see the rotation of the ball” (The Hardest: Getting Bat to Meet Ball).
A lot of scientists and physicists have studied the art of hitting a baseball. And without a doubt, a majority of these scientists would tell you that it is more complicating than first examined. Writer Shawn Liverance writes that, “My personal opinion is that hitting a baseball is the hardest thing to do.” He continues to go on and say, “You figure that a good hitter fails 7 out of 10 times he steps in the batter box. A career .300 hitter ends up in the Hall of Fame. Try to figure out how many times that hitter made an out….pretty mind boggling if you stop and think about it! That’s why I put hitting a baseball on the top of my list.” (The Hardest Thing to do in Sports).
Many players in baseball can rarely get 3 base hits in 10 at bats. If you can do this consistently, you would be a rich baseball player. A lot of amateur players find it hard to hit a baseball because of all the pieces that go along with hitting. One amateur player also believes that hitting is one of the hardest things to do in sports. He states many people think “hitting a baseball is not the hardest thing to do in all of sports. Well, it is.” This player believes that it is challenging and becoming successful in being a hitter takes time and preparation. (Bat Speed).
Writer Kevin Crowley believes that hitting a baseball is more difficult than playing a round of golf, and spotting the ball in golf, as well as any other sport that involves hand-eye coordination. Crowley demonstrates why hitting a baseball is one of the most challenging things to do by saying, “The mental challenge, the physics of the ball-and-bat contact is crucial to the game and fundamental to its difficulty.” Crowley also describes hitting a baseball as, “From the vertical to horizontal position, the swing of the bat doesn’t lose much potential energy, and thus gains little kinetic energy. So most of the energy exchange in the motion of the bat is produced by the batter’s legs, torso, and, if he’s a little out-of-practice, arms. This central rotation is required to really “hit” the ball, and not just throw the bat up and let the ball make contact.” (The Most Difficult Thing to do in Sports is Hit a Ball).
Many young baseball players go through some sort of instructional learning to become knowledgeable in hitting. Baseball coach Vic Hernandez believes that through his program, hitters can become more knowledgeable at hitting, and be aware of situational hitting. Hernandez states hitting a baseball is, “All about timing and balance. It is very important that a young hitter realize this. He must master the balance part, in order to get his timing down properly. If one is off, the other will suffer.” Vic continues to point out ways to improve a young hitters approach to the plate, and how to improve your swing. (Coach Vic).
I will use a variety of these quotes to help my explanation on why hitting a baseball is one, if not the hardest thing to do in sports. I will use a variety amount of quotes to help explain how to hit a baseball, and then go into detail how to hit a baseball. With all of this evidence, will come up with a conclusion on why all of these steps make this more difficult then shooting a basketball, or hitting a golf ball. I will start my paper by introducing what hitting a baseball is, then state my these. I will then take 5-10 paragraphs on how to hit a baseball, along with the evidence of how hard it is to hit a baseball. I will then come up with my persuasive conclusion.
The United States was founded upon Christian principles and the phrase “in God we trust.” Yet, this Christian nation is now declining in the numbers of self-proclaiming Christians. In my argument, I want to explore this fact and propose that American churches are failing and the number of Christians is declining in America because of our emphasis on individuality and the abandonment of the Bible. Third-world countries are experiencing explosions of Christianity. This is because they do not compromise Biblical beliefs and think in a different way than Americans do. While some Americans claim that the church in the U.S. needs to become more lax, other nations have proven that this is not true.
One source that I will use for this paper is the article “How Christianity is Growing Around the World” by Charles Colson. This article is written to state that Christianity worldwide is growing. However, the growth is not taking place in the West. Colson claims this is because “biblical orthodoxy is winning converts while churches that have lsot their biblical moorings languish” (1). Because America is abandoning its Christian historical beliefs, churches across the nation are closing. This is very close to my own theisis, which is why this is going to be one of my sources.
Muchelle Vu, a Christian Today US correspondent wrote an interesting article called “Cultural architect: why churches ard declining in America.” Vu cites data that shows a decline in church members in the United States. She claims that “why churches are declining in America is because they are self-centered” (1). This is a major point I want to make in my own argument. Not only will I be able to use the data that was collectd, but I will also be able to build upon her thesis to prove my own point. This is that individualism in America, though positive in som aspects, has negatively impacted Christianity in this nation.
In order to write a thorough argument, I will need to use raw data. This is the reason behind my use of the article “America is becoming less Chrisgtian, less Religious” by Dan Harris for ABC News. Harris uses the latest American Religious Identification Survey as the basis for his article. In this article, he claims tahat “America is still a predominantly Christian nation, but it’s becoming bothe less Christian and less religious” (1). To appeal to an academic audience, I must use raw data for my argument. With the data from this article, I will be able to hopefully write an effective argument.
Once again, in order to write an effective argument one needs to utilize raw data. This is the reason why I am using the CNN report “America becoming less Christian.” Much like Harris’ article, this article’s thesis is “America is a less Christian nation that it was 20 years ago, and Christianity is not losing out to other religions, but primarily to a rejection of religion altogether” (1). This article does have some of the same data as Harris’ article. However, it also has some data that Harris excluded. Also, if more than one source uses information, that info rmation is more likely to be correct.
Finally, I will use a rather strong article to back up my argument. “The Christian Paradox: How a faithful nation gets Jesus wrong” by Bill McKibben is certainly such a strong argument. I share some of McKibben’s viewpoints of America in terms of Christianity. However, he is somewhat stronger in his attitude, as his thesis is “when Americans hunger for selfless love and are fed only love of self, they will remain hungry, and too often hungry people just come back for more of the same” (14). I do believe that America’s attitudes that have changed over the years are significant factors in the decline in Christianity in America. This is the reason behind my use of McKibben’s article in my argument.