Gonzalez 1

Raquel Gonzalez
Writing 10
Professor Moberly
April 9, 2014
Reading Response Chapter 10
In one of their chapters in, From Critical Thinking to Argument, the authors Sylvan
Barnet and Hugo Bedau give instructions on how to correctly state and argument without
making the reader feel like they are forced to believe in what they are trying to argue.
The authors develop their ideas by giving examples of how as writers when we are
writing and trying to prove our arguments we threat the reader to believe what we are
saying is true and also gives us ideas on how to argue without making it sound like its
demanding. Barnet and Bedaus purpose is to give the readers a format on how to make
an argument based on communication and thru it both sides of an argument can be
understood. The authors use informative tone by providing evidence from other sources
and giving ideas of new ways of attacking an argument paper to talk to a scholarly
audience.
Part 2: Page(358) Mutual communication tends to be pointed toward solving a problem
rather than toward attacking a person or group
Page(361) It means to see the expressed idea and attitude from the other persons point
of view, to sense how it feels to him, to achieve his frame of reference in regard to the
thing he is talking about
Page (362) Each person can speak up for himself only after he has first restarted the
ideas and feelings of the previous speaker accurately, and to the speakers satisfaction
I considered these lines important because it explains what to do when you are writing an
argument. I connect with what the author said writers tend to do when writing these type
of papers. I feel like my main goal for a paper like this is to prove I am right on what I
say no matter what the other side says. Now that Im reading over these steps I feel like
my papers have been lacking information since I dont give the readers any other side I
just focus on what I am trying to prove.

Part3: Some of the strategies I noticed the author used was to give examples of papers he
might have seen or more like things that people usually do without realizing it. In my
opinion, his strategies worked because I know it got me to reevaluate what I have written
in the past and found a lot of connections between what he said and what I was doing.
The author discusses how writers tend to only try to prove their point or their agument
leaving behind the other side to the argument. With this in mind lacking communication
skills and ideas that might be important to the argument. He offered the idea of expanding
Gonzalez 2
topics into larger areas and when improving communication skills attitude will have to be
established as well.
Part 4: The purpose of this chapter is to guide writers and readers on how to prove an
argument with the communication, attitude and including larger ideas. The audience of
this chapter would be scholarly people. Writers would be interested in reading it because
it can help them improve their writing skills and by reading this chapter readers would
have the chance of knowing what to look for in an argument paper.

Part 5: While reading this chapter I came across a lot of different ideas that I related to
when I write my papers. For example, in the opening chapter the author explained how as
writers we always try to argue how point A is right and how point B is wrong but never
consider the other side. When I am told to write an argument paper I have always thought
the right way to write that paper is to try to prove your argument will always be right no
matter what the circumstance is, yet according to the authors it lacks communication
skills. Something important the authors suggested was to build communication skills and
opening the topic to larger ideas to make the paper easier to understand and help support
both sides of the argument. I enjoyed the reading myself because I felt like it went
straight to the point and explained both sides to the argument and gave writers ideas of
what would make a paper better.