Reading Response

Wayne Hoseck
Christy Vance
English 102-009

I thought that this excerpt from Bruce Ballenger's book, The Curious Writer, was very insightful and helpful. His information really alleviated a lot of the stresses I had associated with this paper. It really helped clear things up.
I liked the first graph he shows. It really narrows down the process into four clear steps for how your paper should be structured. Of course, he eventually goes into the Toulmin model, which basically goes into details about the different sections of a persuasive paper. It was very easy to understand.
I especially liked Ballengers points on how it is nearly impossible to write a good-side, bad-side paper, simply because most topics you could choose have more then just two sides. This really got me to thinking about my own topic. Since I had chose it, I have kind of been looking at it from just one perspective, my own. It kind of made me realize that I was seeing my topic in black and whit, unfortunately this opened up much more questions then it answered. I am not worried though, my research is going very well, I'm just saying, I might switch sides on my topic.
I also liked the methods of development that he writes down. I knew most of them, but honestly, a couple of them surprised me. Like cause to effect, effect to cause. I especially found this method interesting, and i think it will help me a lot with my paper.
I also liked his listing of logical fallacies, which will be helpful when revising my first rough draft. There are a lot of things that you shouldn't do while writing a persuasive paper. I was surprised at the appeal to popularity one at first, but Ballenger makes the excellent point that, majority isn't always right.
I think that this excerpt will be very helpful in writing of my own paper. But it also kind of piques my interest in the book as a whole. I like writing a lot, I'm thinking about picking up a copy.
Wayne Hoseck