Chapter 12 Summary Developing Your Argument

Chapter 12 is about ways to support your thesis statement and develop your argument. It shows you effective ways of choosing reasons for various documents. For example, there is blog posts and academic essays. There are reports and articles. These are different types of documents with different types of readers or reasons. For blog posts and academic essays you would figure out what kind of observations would be most significant to your audience. For reports and articles you would basically do the same thing but think about who you are targeting. The next step is selecting evidence to support your reasons.  This is just the general information you have collected over the course of your assignment. Different documents require different evidence. Appealing to your readers is a easy way to convince them to believe what you're saying. The different ways of doing this that the chapter talks about would be appealing to authority, emotion, or the principles and values of your readers. This all depends on your target audience. Once you learn the different ways of appealing to your readers you can set out on persuading them through different reasoning. After you clearly draw out what your argument will be the next step is to look for your fallacies and make sure you don't fall into one of the categories that will hinder your argument.

Chapter 7 Avoiding Plagiarism

People own words and sentences, who would have thought? Chapter 7 is all about avoiding plagiarism. Plagiarism is one of the worst things you can do in school or as a writer in general. In my opinion I believe there are two reasons for plagiarism. The person doesn't care for numerous reasons, or is to lazy to do their own work or cite correctly. Both of these reasons have probably happened to us all. Back to Chapter 7 summary. Plagiarism is when people copy someone's work and use it as their own. Sometimes it is just an accident. Other times it is because people don't want to work hard and think they will get away with it. Citing sources correctly can be the differences in plagiarism or having a good grade. The two main categories of plagiarism are unintentional and intentional. I believe these both are self explanatory and if not go ahead and re-read above. Chapter 7 then goes on to explain different ways to avoid plagiarism such as checking reference or works cited lists and making sure you include your source on the works cited or reference list, The chapter explains research ethics, which like table manners are something most people should follow. Acknowledgement of the source, fairly and accurately represent the information,, and provide citation information for your sources. The next topic discussed is "what is fair use and when should I ask permission to use a source?" (Palmquist 12). Fair use is the explanation of how much you can use from a given source and what type of material writers can use for different purposes. If you want to use a particular source that is copyrighted you should contact the owner for permission. This all depends on the situation of course. The last two topics in the chapter are how to avoid plagiarism and what you should do if accused. ( I swear I already talked about this, but emphasizing something usually means it's more important) . These steps to avoid plagiarism would be to  include the sources in the text, taking notes more carefully, citing sources in your works cited or reference list, and recognize misconceptions about intentional plagiarism. If you're accused of plagiarism prepare for the situation and ask for a meeting with the accuser. Review the document at the meeting and go over the materials and notes you have created during the time of your document.

Chapter 11 Developing Your Thesis Statement

The purpose of Chapter 11 is to help you develop the thesis statement for your particular project. At this point you should have most of your notes, sources, and a solid position on the topic of your choice. The position statement that you have worked on will come into play and help you with the development of your thesis statement. After reviewing the position statement you've created and all the notes gathered during this time, take some time to reflect over all this information. This will help lead you to a clearer thesis and help you identify how you want the thesis to come across. Always remember who your readers are and what type of document you are writing. After this step is completed start drafting your thesis statement. This consists of critically reading and thinking about your idea's and the position of your topic. From here you want focus and refine your thesis statement until it's completed.

Chapter 10 Searching for Information Summary

The main goal of Chapter 10 is to explain why you can and should use field research when collecting information. Field research is a good way to experience and consider the issue through your eyes and by interviewing other people close to issue. Sometimes you can't find the needed information about your topic through print or media. Other times you can't get the whole perspective that you could by doing field research. Even if you have the information you need, field research can only make your topic more strong. Interviewing others is one of the types of field research. Whether it be convenient because that person is around and has knowledge of the subject, or you get to speak with an important person related to your topic, interviews are always a good way to get perspective. Planning and deciding who and what you should ask in your interview can help make it so you get the best information possible. Make questions specific when planning for your interview. Also stay away from general yes or no answers to get the best information. Decide how to conduct your interview and what the advantages/disadvantages of each method will be. Observing everything in your interview can also be useful in collecting information. Figuring out the who, what, where, and why before observing can lead to better analysis. Chapter 10 goes over how surveys can be useful in collecting information.  Surveys help most in the what or who questions. Just like the other topics in the chapter you need to plan accordingly and decide if surveys would be worthwhile for your topic. The  last two ways of collecting information are correspondence and public events/broadcast media.  Correspondence is textual communication or social networks.

Chapter 6 Summary

Chapter 6 focuses on how and why you should take notes, as well as organizing information. Good ways to manage and save the information you research are also talked about. Notes are very important as references to your writing. Other information that you gather should be organized as well on your research project. Organizing them accordingly and making sure you keep them saved is important. Some thought on how to do this in Chapter 6 would be to save files or information on your computer, thumb drive, e-mail, phone, or even using a service like google docs. Saving web pages to your favorites in specific folders is also a good way to organize your information. The second part of Chapter 6 talks about how and why you should take notes. Using quotations, paraphrasing, and summarizing all helps keep the notes in clean detail and easy to read fashion. The last part of Chapter 6 talks about creating a working bibliography.

Chapter 3 Summary

One of the most important things in writing is learning how to come up with a good research question. Chapter 3 goes over how to develop one. By reflecting on different research questions you can single out specific topics and create new ideas. Chapter 3 then goes over how to generate potential research questions and make it as specific as possible. All this thinking can lead to better ideas and a better question. Once you come up with a better refined research question, the next step is creating a research proposal. A research proposal is a formal presentation of your plan for your research writing project (Palmquist 50).  The reason for creating a research proposal is it allows you to get across information to your peers about your goals and the point of your project in general.

Chapter 4 Reading Critically

Chapter 4 Reading Critically goes over numerous ways to critique and think about different sources that you will be looking into while doing a writing assignment. It helps to gather as much information about your issue as possible, while making sure you understand and evaluate everyones feelings, thoughts, and arguments on the topic. This helps build up a foundation for your thesis. Maybe you thought one way and nothing could change your mind. Reading critically can help you make a clearer and smarter decision. As the book states, reading with an attitude can help with bias and getting your point across more effectively when you finally start your paper. Reading actively is also discussed. Reading Critically is key to getting the most out of the research you are doing while preparing for your topic. Getting into the habit of constantly analyzing your sources will help make you a better writer.

Chapter 2 Exploring and Focusing

Chapter Two of The Bedford Researcher is all about exploring your audience and topic. The chapter goes over how you can focus in on the different topics of a subject, finally picking one specific area and focusing on that. The title of Chapter 2, which is Exploring and Focusing, says it all. The first thing you want to do after picking a subject is exploring each avenue of the subject you can. For instance lets say you chose steroids and baseball. The first goal of exploring this subject would be to find out what others say and feel about it. What is most important to readers and other researchers before you. What are the facts and what are the speculations. Create a plan to get further information about the subject and go from there.This would consist of talking with peers and gathering as much information as possible. After you get a better understanding of the subject and different points of views, you can now identify a specific issue that you want to focus on. Making sure you have interest in what you will be writing about is very important. Investing time into something you enjoy will make life a lot easier.

Chapter 1 English 102

Scott Clark
English 102
Chapter 1 Summary

             Chapter One Getting Started gets us familiar with the idea's and ways to research and write topics with confidence. It's a how to guide on critical thinking and what steps may benefit us while doing different genre's of writing. The first step to any process is getting started. When starting a project we need to get the creative ideas flowing just like the title of the chapter suggests. The different strategies Chapter One points out to get the mind flowing and something down on paper are processes such as recognizing your need to commit to the project, brainstorming, and analyzing your audience. First and foremost the writer should choose a topic that he/she can invest time in and care about if possible. If the topic cannot be chosen and it is assigned, the writer should use ways of understanding and developing a position for that particular topic so he/she actually cares for it. This will make writing and researching much less tedious. After you understand and develop a position for your topic, brainstorming the topic and analyzing who will be reading it is very critical to get your position across successfully. The chapter gives you multiple ways of achieving these goals. Some of the ways Chapter One suggests is creating timelines, teaching you multiple writing processes, and ways to analyze your readers.