One skill in particular that will help you to be able to clarify not only what you read, but also what you write, is to be able to cast an argument clearly. To be able to do this, it is helpful to start with some information that may (or may not) be relevant to what you are doing in this course, but that will give you an idea of what it is to cast, clarify, dissect, and provide renderings of arguments that will clarify things for you, as well as for others.
There are three different arguments from major authors in the history of philosophy (one from Descartes, one from Thomas Paine, and one from John Stuart Mill). From Descartes is his Cosmological Argument for God's existence. From Thomas Paine is an argument concerning the distinction between natural rights and civil rights. And from John Stuart Mill is an argument regarding why it is wrong for people to interfere in the rights of others. Look at one, or two, or all three of them and see whether you can cast the arguments clearly, one step at a time. If you need an example of this, click on the second link (below, at my website) to see generally how this can be done. We will cast arguments in this way quite a few times throughout the course, and it is not necessary that you become an expert at it today, or even during the first week of classes, but you will get better at doing this as the semester progresses. You might find that you're already pretty good at it.
Example 1: Go to Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy at Oregon State University at this link (http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/descartes/meditations/meditations.html) and choose "Meditation 3". Read sections 13-38 (Descartes' "Cosmological Argument" for God's existence). He says a lot here (a huge number of things, in fact), but it is possible to find the essence of his argument for God's existence if you carefully consider what he says.
A rendering of this argument appears at the following link: http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~stanlick/desccosarg.html (note that it will be completed in class). The idea behind this exercise in reasoning is to show you how a complicated argument might be cast in numbered statement form, from the premises down to the conclusion, showing the process of reasoning used by the author to lead to the conclusion.
Example 2: To see how good you might be (or might not be, at this point) at doing this, look at the excerpt below from Thomas Paine's The Rights of Man, Part I, where he creates an argument concerning the distinction between natural rights and civil rights. The excerpt is copied from http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/thomas_paine/rights_of_man/part1.html . See whether you can cast his argument in a clear, numbered proposition form, moving from premises to conclusion(s).
Hitherto we have spoken only (and that but in part) of the natural rights of man. We have now to consider the civil rights of man, and to show how the one originates from the other. Man did not enter into society to become worse than he was before, nor to have fewer rights than he had before, but to have those rights better secured. His natural rights are the foundation of all his civil rights. But in order to pursue this distinction with more precision, it will be necessary to mark the different qualities of natural and civil rights.
A few words will explain this. Natural rights are those which appertain to man in right of his existence. Of this kind are all the intellectual rights, or rights of the mind, and also all those rights of acting as an individual for his own comfort and happiness, which are not injurious to the natural rights of others. Civil rights are those which appertain to man in right of his being a member of society. Every civil right has for its foundation some natural right pre-existing in the individual, but to the enjoyment of which his individual power is not, in all cases, sufficiently competent. Of this kind are all those which relate to security and protection.
From this short review it will be easy to distinguish between that class of natural rights which man retains after entering into society and those which he throws into the common stock as a member of society.
The natural rights which he retains are all those in which the Power to execute is as perfect in the individual as the right itself. Among this class, as is before mentioned, are all the intellectual rights, or rights of the mind; consequently religion is one of those rights. The natural rights which are not retained, are all those in which, though the right is perfect in the individual, the power to execute them is defective. They answer not his purpose. A man, by natural right, has a right to judge in his own cause; and so far as the right of the mind is concerned, he never surrenders it. But what availeth it him to judge, if he has not power to redress? He therefore deposits this right in the common stock of society, and takes the ann of society, of which he is a part, in preference and in addition to his own. Society grants him nothing. Every man is a proprietor in society, and draws on the capital as a matter of right.
From these premisses two or three certain conclusions will follow:
First, That every civil right grows out of a natural right; or, in other words, is a natural right exchanged.
Secondly, That civil power properly considered as such is made up of the aggregate of that class of the natural rights of man, which becomes defective in the individual in point of power, and answers not his purpose, but when collected to a focus becomes competent to the Purpose of every one.
Thirdly, That the power produced from the aggregate of natural rights, imperfect in power in the individual, cannot be applied to invade the natural rights which are retained in the individual, and in which the power to execute is as perfect as the right itself.
We have now, in a few words, traced man from a natural individual to a member of society, and shown, or endeavoured to show, the quality of the natural rights retained, and of those which are exchanged for civil rights. Let us now apply these principles to governments.
Example 3: Finally, try this one. This is from John Stuart Mill, On Liberty. The excerpt is copied from the text appearing at: http://www.bartleby.com/130/4.html
But the strongest of all the arguments against the interference of the public with purely personal conduct, is that when it does interfere, the odds are that it interferes wrongly, and in the wrong place. On questions of social morality, of duty to others, the opinion of the public, that is, of an overruling majority, though often wrong, is likely to be still oftener right; because on such questions they are only required to judge of their own interests; of the manner in which some mode of conduct, if allowed to be practised, would affect themselves. But the opinion of a similar majority, imposed as a law on the minority, on questions of self-regarding conduct, is quite as likely to be wrong as right; for in these cases public opinion means, at the best, some people's opinion of what is good or bad for other people; while very often it does not even mean that; the public, with the most perfect indifference, passing over the pleasure or convenience of those whose conduct they censure, and considering only their own preference. There are many who consider as an injury to themselves any conduct which they have a distaste for, and resent it as an outrage to their feelings; as a religious bigot, when charged with disregarding the religious feelings of others, has been known to retort that they disregard his feelings, by persisting in their abominable worship or creed. But there is no parity between the feeling of a person for his own opinion, and the feeling of another who is offended at his holding it; no more than between the desire of a thief to take a purse, and the desire of the right owner to keep it. And a person's taste is as much his own peculiar concern as his opinion or his purse. It is easy for any one to imagine an ideal public, which leaves the freedom and choice of individuals in all uncertain matters undisturbed, and only requires them to abstain from modes of conduct which universal experience has condemned. But where has there been seen a public which set any such limit to its censorship? or when does the public trouble itself about universal experience? In its interferences with personal conduct it is seldom thinking of anything but the enormity of acting or feeling differently from itself; and this standard of judgment, thinly disguised, is held up to mankind as the dictate of religion and philosophy, by nine-tenths of all moralists and speculative writers. These teach that things are right because they are right; because we feel them to be so. They tell us to search in our own minds and hearts for laws of conduct binding on ourselves and on all others. What can the poor public do but apply these instructions, and make their own personal feelings of good and evil, if they are tolerably unanimous in them, obligatory on all the world? ...
To come somewhat nearer home: the majority of Spaniards consider it a gross impiety, offensive in the highest degree to the Supreme Being, to worship him in any other manner than the Roman Catholic; and no other public worship is lawful on Spanish soil. The people of all Southern Europe look upon a married clergy as not only irreligious, but unchaste, indecent, gross, disgusting. What do Protestants think of these perfectly sincere feelings, and of the attempt to enforce them against non-Catholics? Yet, if mankind are justified in interfering with each other's liberty in things which do not concern the interests of others, on what principle is it possible consistently to exclude these cases? or who can blame people for desiring to suppress what they regard as a scandal in the sight of God and man? No stronger case can be shown for prohibiting anything which is regarded as a personal immorality, than is made out for suppressing these practices in the eyes of those who regard them as impieties; and unless we are willing to adopt the logic of persecutors, and to say that we may persecute others because we are right, and that they must not persecute us because they are wrong, we must beware of admitting a principle of which we should resent as a gross injustice the application to ourselves.