Response to "Helping Students Use..."

            In her article, “Helping Students Use Textual Sources Persuasively”, Margaret Kantz attempts to get students to use creativity when researching to debate facts and learn to develop a unique, original argument. She argues that facts are not always true and are used in order to get readers to see things in a certain light.

            This reading is similar to the article “What Is It We Do When We Write Articles Like This One – and How Can We Get Students to Join Us?” in that both articles the author is trying to get the audience to see that creativity is a very important factor in writing.

Getting Ready to Read

            A fact is something that is proven to be true and will always be true. A claim is something that someone says to be true but has not yet been proven. An opinion is an idea that someone has on a particular subject. An argument is a debate over a particular subject between two people with different opinions, usually backed up by facts.

Questions for Discussion and Journaling

1.)

            Kantz states that facts are claims that an audience will accept and not need proof, although they may want explanations. Opinions are given to an audience who will then ask for proof and take that proof then make their own decision on whether to believe it or not. Kantz says that arguments are things that need debating; one would argue facts over specific things.

2.)

            The main thing that I got out of Kantz’ article is that many people will read something and will accept it as truth. Kantz says that you need to understand that facts are debatable and use this to come up with your own, original argument. I never have done this before, which is probably a bad thing. I always accepted my textbooks as truth. Why argue ‘the facts’? Kantz has changed my mind on this now.

Applying and Exploring Ideas

2.)

            Prior to class I thought that research and creativity were completely separate. As I said above, I would always accept text as truth when I would research. I always felt as if I was taught this in school before now; read, transcribe, and put it on the teacher’s desk. Kantz says that you need to think creatively to research, to come up with your own arguments. I really can’t see these two ideas overlapping as I never put creativity in the same category as research.

Meta Moment

            Kantz is trying to analyze the construct of research being an activity that requires only fact, and fact is unarguable. It would be useful to understand her findings and claims because she explains that researching requires us to be creative so we can come up with our own ideas and original arguments on our topic of research. With this we can then come up with a more developed, unique paper.