blog #1

In the first section of readings, the biggest thing that was different from what I had learned in the past is identifying other people's arguments and proving why they are wrong.  In high school, the focus is more on building your points and not leaving room for others opinions.  I also liked the section on using informal vocabulary.  It has always been taught that writing needs to be extremely formal and cannot be relaxed or casual.  It helped how they showed formal next to informal and you could see that it was okay. I think my favorite section was the section on entering class discussions.  As it has probably already been observed, I don't talk very much in school.  Reading this section did help. It made the general idea of speaking up a little easier.  I can't promise that it will make me overly responsive, but it does help show how to jump in the conversations without feeling awkward or getting stumped.