CARS intro. (04/13/10)

Move 1: Establishing a territory

The subject of my argument is whether or not race affects digital literacy. This subject is important because it shows that a person’s race contributes to how literate they will be.

Some generalizations about the subject are people in American believe that all the races are equal; there are still aspects of life that are affected by race.

I have researched this topic and I have found supporting articles that prove that race affects literacy. There are many articles that point out significant percentage differences in literacy of people of different races. They show that people of White descent are more digitally literate than people of Black or Hispanic descent.

Move 2: Establishing a niche

A counter claim to my argument could be that there a person’s race does not contribute to how digitally literate they are.

There is no evidence to show that this claim could be true.

Is my evidence/research questionable? I believe that the research I have found is credible because there is not only one article/author making these claims, there are many.

This essay is continuing a tradition. There are many events in history that support my claim.

Move 3: Occupying the niche

Step 1: The purpose of this essay is to educate reader’s about the impact of race on digital literacy. The research supports my claim.

Step 2: The reader can expect to find evidence that shows race has an impact on digital literacy.

Step 3: The essay will appear in the order of Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, and Conclusion.

Chapter 7&8 Quiz

According to Lunsford’s definition of an argument of fact vs. an argument of question, I would say that my argument best fits under the category of “argument of fact.” Lunsford says you a entering an argument of fact when you make a claim about fact or evidence that’s controversial, correct an error of fact, and challenge societal myths (195). Like in Malcolm X, my argument revolves around a set of facts. For my paper, the situation I described is the issue of race affecting digital literacy, when I noticed this issue it caused me to raise many questions about the cause of this and whether or not it actually existed. The error of fact/ societal myth I am looking to correct is that many people like to think we live in a perfect society where there is no racial discrimination or segregation, but there that is not true.

According to Lunsford, the issue should have the attention of potential readers, or in my opinion, should have their attention (186). This issue is definitely worthy of attention, because more people should be willing to put forth effort into bridging the gap of races. Also, another key feature of a factual argument is that it offers substantial and authoritative evidence to support the claim (194). I believe that my evidence is substantial and authoritative because all my sources are considered scholarly. I am using peer reviewed journal articles for all of my research; I think these sources can be substantiated.

In chapter 7, it tells me that it is difficult to distinguish between factual arguments and those offered for more public consumption in media. The journal articles I have found to support my claim are not entirely scientific but they do contain supporting charts and graphs of statistics. Because my issue is about society the evidence has to be collected from many different sources. I have to look at research that studied many different phenomena in society. The definitions of argument of fact more closely fit my argument than the others. I believe that the guide in “Everything’s an Argument” to construct an argument of fact will help me with the process of writing my final Core 4 paper.

Reflecting on research (class 04/06)

The research I have found to date has pretty much gone along with my original thought that race impacts digital literacy. The authors seem to agree most of the time but some authors think that along with race, there are other social factors that influence digital literacy (such as class). I think that the articles I have read are correct in their thinking. I have found the conversation between authors to be informative, interesting, and very helpful.

Some problems I have had is that there seem to be discrepancies among the authors and researchers about certain statistics and trends. To overcome this disagreement, I am going to use the more widely used statistic and examine the bias one author might have which is making the statistics different. I also need to obtain more supporting facts in order to strengthen my argument even more in my Core 4 paper.