So Claims Are Harder Than They Seem

The first week of class is complete and it turns out that creating a good claim isn't nearly as easy as I thought it would be. In the last post I gave some examples of claims that I had come up with, but upon reflecting on them, I realized that they lacked complexity and they were not backed up by any evidence. Claims are not just statements of belief, they must have the criteria that I formerly mentioned and that is why my last set of claims were not so great. Therefore, I made some revisions to make them better:

1.     Ads targeting children and the elderly are dangerous because they lack the ability to fully understand what could be harmful.

2.     It is difficult to stay away from advertisements, because company’s advertisements infringe on every aspect of daily life.

3.     Advertisements are dangerous because they can lack critical information that could determine whether or not people buy the product.

4.     Some advertising companies go too far when it comes to infringing on privacy.

5.     Advertisements should be more limited because people do not fully understand the psychological effects on them.

It turns out that creating claims is going to be harder than I originally anticipated. Yikes.

Creating a Claim

It's the first week on ENWR class and it's looking to be pretty straightforward. This week we are focusing on creating claims. A claim is a statement or assertion that the writer makes when formulating their argument. An effective claim is complex, contestable, and backed up by some type of evidence. The claim also portrays the main argument and the point of the paper that the reader is beginning.

Here are some of the claims I came up with as I was brainstorming for my first paper:

1.     Advertising is all around us all of the time.

2.     Advertising dictates a company’s sales and success.

3.     Advertising infringes on almost all aspects of daily life.

4.     People are exposed to more ads than they realize.

5.     Advertising appeals to the targeted consumer.

Syllabus Week

The first day of classes are always great. There is an endless flow of syllabi and teachers' warnings about how difficult their classes are going to be. I just got out of ENWR and luckily this syllabus doesn't look too challenging. Among some of the topics that we are going to cover, I think the easiest one will probably be creating contestable claims. On the other hand, I think that some of the more difficult concepts are going to be creating problem statements and acknowledging and responding to other arguments. I'm just glad that the first two papers are only worth 5% of our grade so we can ease our way into the semester.