Last year, my partner and I had a disagreement about which of us would do the design of the presentation slides, and my agenda then was to lead in order to achieve my vision. Rather than trying to persuade her, I used the opportunity to try to win the fight by highlighting the weaknesses in their ideas, thus making it more of a power play in the argument than a persuasive debate that Heinrichs discusses in Chapter 1 of his book Thank You for Arguing. If I had the opportunity to do it again, I would use the technique of concession in Chapter 3.

Today in class, we read chapters 1-3 of Thank You for Arguing and summarized how different approaches are used for different debates.

I will use these different strategies used in debates to get out of different situations. For example, rather than arguing with my parents about something I did wrong, I could agree with them and make them feel better to lessen my punishment.