SWA #4

For my fourth writing assignment I chose to examine "Debate? Dissent? Discussion? Oh, Don't Go There" by Michiko Kakutani as my piece to examine. The text of this particular article was good but a little confusing at times for me. It may not seem confusing to someone else but for me I had to concentrate very hard just to stay on track to what Kakutani was talking about. Over all he did well with the text and how he organized it. I think that Kakutani had young reader such as college students in mind when he wrote this piece. Maybe even some college professors. Because he talks a lot about colleges and the students. I learned that he believes debate is important for students to understand how to debate properly and that debate is slowly disappearing. He also uses a lot of quotes from other professors to help get his point across. Im not sure that I can think of any constraints that could have influenced the author of this piece. The only constraints that influenced me as a reader are the things that were being talked about in this article. The title also helped me to want to read this article. I do share the fact that I do think debate is growing less important to the younger generation and they something needs to be done to stop this. I do find this argument convincing because he brings up a lot of good points and he knows what he is talking about.

SWA#3

I picked an article from The Daily Gamecock about gas stations charging customers extra for using credit cards.

http://media.www.dailygamecock.com/media/storage/paper247/news/2008/07/16/News/Gas-Charges.For.Charging-3391240.shtml?reffeature=recentlycommentedstoriestab

The argument in this article is wether or not it is right for gas stations to charge the customers extra to use there credit cards or not. One guy said that it is not right to charge people extra because it is just a good as money if not better in some ways. Another said that the gas stations have no other option with gas prices being the way they are. Although you can see this from many different angles many customers have no clue about being charged four to twelve cents more for using their card. In 2007 the National Association of Convenience Stores said credit card fees were costing the convenience stores $7.6 billion. Yes that is a lot of money but I think that if they don't to have to pay the extra for the credit card use then why even bother to have the machines in their store. I don't believe it is fair for the stores to have the machines for you to use but yet they are charging you extra just so that you can use them. It is there responsibility not the customers. If they don't want the extra fees then don't have a card machine and there want be any problems with this issue. Charging extra for gas is crazy because gas is already so high it's not right for those of us who do not carry cash around to make us pay more.