I need to take this course because my English skills are lacking in many aspects and as a business major I will need to construct well written proposals and emails. The only reason I should not have to take this course is it could really hurt my GPA, since everything to do with English has always been hard for me. However, the course is needed to fill a requirement for the business school and will help me with all future writing assignments in any class. Also if I just took an easy course instead of challenging myself, I would run the risk of not improving my reading/writing skills. Which as I have said already, are in need of an exceptional amount of improvement.
"Using writing as a way of thinking new thoughts" means to make connections as you are writing and write in a sort of free flowing way. In other words, just write down thoughts as they pop into your head. Then try to better explain the ideas you have written down and keep thinking on them until they become coherent. I hope that made sense.
I felt that "instead of expecting knowledge to be true once and for all, we might try to see it as pragmatic..."(xxxiv NHR) best exemplifies the rationale of the book. The purpose of the book is to get its readers to think on their own and not take anything for granted. All 'facts' are meant to be questioned and tested. It does not matter if someone else has tested the facts already, each individual is responsible for finding out if facts are true on their own.
The 'shared horizon' is the idea that two seemingly separate ideas can be connected somehow. The example from the New Humanities Reader was elephants and love.
The word discourse was unfamiliar to me. It means to speak authoritatively, and the point of this book is not to just assume that when someone speaks with authority, they are correct.
Overall the book appears to be a good tool to get a reader out of their comfort zone and thus able to learn something new/improve already learned skills.
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