2A Thought provoking discussion

The Most useful article I read this week was an Argument Worth Having. This article talked about what all successful college students need to do. There are four tips I learned that I believe everyone should use throughout their college education.

           

1.     You have to recognize that knowing a lot of information about a lot of different things won’t do you much good unless you know how to use it. For example if you know 1000 different integers of pi but there is absolutely no point in knowing that because you are not a math major. That information is absolutely useless to what you’re learning. You would probably be a lot better off knowing the first 1000 stanzas of Beowulf by memory because you are talking about it and analyzing it for your English class.

2.     Pay close attention to what other people are saying and writing in your classes so you can have a better insight into a specific topic. By doing this view on a specific topic may become stronger. You also may have the ability to having stronger arguments when talking about this topic again.

3.     As you are listening to a speaker and summarizing their arguments look around the room to see whom this topic provokes. It is harder to get a good discussion going when not many people are thinking and or being provoked by the topic. Without good thought provoking you will have a very bad discussion further on in the class.

4.     Use the summaries you write as motivation. You want to catch your audience just like the person speaking caught you as an audience.

Overall as you are speaking and listen to other people speak you need to think a lot about other people. If people are not paying attention to what you’re saying you know you need to find ways to provoke their thoughts.