Synthesizing also...

This is the first class I take on argumentation, even on rhetoric so lots of things were eye opening for me. In the first book we read, Tannen’s book, I underlined so many pages, put so many stickers around the book. The second, the third… But now as I read Bohm, I feel myself compare and contrast, agree and disagree with him. I believe this is the biggest change in me. I feel the influence of knowledge (cannot be compared to my classmates’) on me, my accepting and not accepting some of the claims.
In addition, I feel like I approach what I hear on TV programs or how I discuss with people differently. Even the most recent one, Bohm’s chapter on assumptions (ch.5) made me reconsider my attitudes in discussions, listening, observing.
Even the class discussions were very useful for me. One day Hayley described an anecdote happened with one of her students and I remember thinking “What I would say if I were that student?”.
As the reading so far, as I stated above the first a few of them were too hard for me to understand but I feel I can get a better grasp of the subjects now. The way people argue has been changing according to needs, culture of the people. The argumentation model that Toulmin has is pretty different than what Aristotle stated. Toulmin and Perelman, though they have some similarities, are different than each other also. The rhetoric model in Asia is different than the ones in West.