Note-Taking Guide

Consider this note-taking guide your first argument to me. You are seeking to convince me that you are a dedicated, academically honest student. If your responses are clearly done by a computer, you are telling me something about yourself. If your answers are identical to those of other students, you are telling me something else. If your answers are thorough, unique, and written in your authentic voice, you have told me what I most want to hear. Your first grade in the class will be an assessment of this note-taking guide and a quiz that requires you to apply your knowledge of the concepts of Heinrichs’s book.

The notes are divided into two sections: Rhetorical Concepts and Logical Fallacies. I want you to keep those notions separated in your mind because the Rhetorical Concepts are devices that I want you to analyze as effective tools, whereas the Logical Fallacies are either mistakes by the person arguing or are deliberate misrepresentations of reality that are designed to trick an audience. 

To keep matters simple, I have included your final task at the end of the document and titled it "Argument in Action." Look at the next section of this site to get more information about that final task.