Reading the Kroll’s article the second time helped me to see how this class helped me I feel like I understood the paper much better than the first one (of course the role of reading the second time cannot be underestimated) but I believe I could understand the rationale and the claims better. The paper is very strong in terms of giving writing teachers some ideas about helping students argue differently in their writings. However, I believe the tactics in the conclusion part are not as strong as the ones in the beginning and the middle. Even though Kroll highlights that the students need to make sure that they “resist the temptation to deliver to knockout punch” (p. 52) , still the students need to state their ideas and this statement of idea causes most of the hot debates.
I remember that while writing our responses on Tannen’s book there were comments about how much we liked the book, but we felt her a bit strong ( or she was stating her ideas strongly) on holocaust. These were the conclusion sentences! I think the idea that stating in the conclusion that “ a cooperative effort can be grounded” (p. 52) is a good idea but I believe there should be some other techniques to hinder the polarization.
Nilu,
ReplyDeleteI agree that reading a second time like this really gives a new perspective. That was also my experience. Usually it so happens that we grad students don't get to read things twice, and in many cases we are forced to jump into conclusions without much depth. Reading Kastely a second time gave me the same feeling.