Reading Response 2

Getting Ready to Read
2  I have one class this semester that requires the writing of a research paper, this class.  I imagine doing the research for this paper by going through the library looking for books or articles on my topic.  I also plan on browsing the web for databases, papers, articles, or other documents on my topic.  I think that to accomplish my project i will need to spend lots of time researching as well as writing and revising multiple drafts.

In his article "What Is It We Do When We Write Articles Like This One-and How Can We Get Students to Join Us?", Michael Kleine sets out to discover how people conduct research.  He wanted to know how academics researched and why students didn't research like academics.  He developed his own model of research tactics, dividing the steps of collecting, rhetorical sifting, pattern seeking, and translating into two different methods, "hunting" and "gathering" after how ancient humans lived.  "Hunting" is searching out specific information while "gathering" is collecting all of the information around you.  After interviewing eight of his colleagues about how they went about doing research he found that they all wrote because they wanted to, not because they had been told to.  Their inspirations to write had come from interactions with peers.  After his interviews he came to the conclusion that the writing process was too complex to describe with a linear model.  One cannot characterize how to do every research paper, nor can one characterize every writer based on their field.

He concludes that like professors, students should not just write for their teachers but also their peers.  This would cause more teamwork and cooperation among students and inspire them to write better.  Students should also research in multiple different ways, including procedures relevant to them and "hunting" as well as "gathering."

This article relates to Stuart Greene's article "Argument as Conversation" because in both articles the author is trying to get the reader to change how they view a part of writing.  Greene stated that argument is more a debate or conversation about a scholarly topic and how it should be used in papers.  Kleine's argued in his article that educators need to get their students to change their research tactics from copying text to actually learning the information in their sources and incorporating it into their paper.


Questions for Discussion and Journaling
1.  In high school whenever my English class would go to our school's library most of what would happen would be students sitting at computers next to their friends, talking while searching through wikipedia and other webpages.  Rather than copying encyclopedias we would do the 21st century version and print off pages from the internet.  That is the way that i have researched in the past, but i hope to change that with this course.

3.  With the professionals Kleine interviews many sources are used in researching.  They read lots of sources, analyze it, and then sift through to find what they need.  They combine that with info from many other sources to write their document.  In my past efforts I have used fewer sources and used more information from each one.  I do not break down each source as much as a professional, I just use the somewhat crude form of information it gives me to write my paper.

4.  If i changed my research tactics to what Kleine talks about I would spend more time researching but it would end up being much more fruitful because it would result in me having more sources to use and more (and possibly better) information.  It would also make my papers sound more professional.

Reading Response 1

        In the introduction to Elizabeth Wardle and Doug Downs' Writing about Writing the author's make a convincing argument for why it is important to learn about writing, not just how to write.  When one learns about writing they learn to put their own style and/or opinion into their writing.  They also learn to think critically about the writings of other people.  When one has worked on their ability to think through writings they can more easily participate in scholarly inquiry.  Scholarly inquiry is when a group of researchers come together to converse about a problem or the meaning of a text and what is the best solution to the problem or the most accurate meaning to the text.
          Stuart Greene expands on different aspects of writing in his article "Argument as Conversation: The Role of Inquiry in Writing a Researched Argument."  He attempts to convince his readers that all scholarly papers should take a side in an argument that is much more complex than what they are writing because their topic has been debated for longer than they could be writing.  Greene wrote that writers should try to make points for their side that have not been made before.  Greene also teaches that the frame, which is how much of an issue the writer presents, can be used to better writings.  Framing lets the author write from their perspective and can make a paper much more persuasive but also less honest.  It also forces the writer to not only establish their position on an issue but also to write exactly what they think on the issue.

QD
2 Greene quotes Kenneth Burke's metaphor again because it is very accurate in describing most arguments.  Most people that are currently involved in an argument over a large issue were not around when the argument began so they don't know how it began and cannot argue for or against all points.  The extended metaphor is that by entering a parlor you are a student or researcher that has just became interested in a topic.  You read multiple papers over the topic.  Eventually you feel that you have enough information over the topic to write a paper yourself.  Nobody that is going to read your paper was around when your topic first came to be so none of you know exactly how it was started.  This metaphor presents writing with a sense of curiosity due to that nobody knows all about a topic so other point of views are still precious.

3  Framing is writing from your own point of view.  It does not mean not being truthful, just only or mostly including information that supports your side of an argument.  The metaphor of a camera lens accurately describes framing because a camera lens lets one focus on what part a scene they want to be blurry and what part they want to be clear.  This concept is important to Greene because it allows a writer to make their arguments much more persuasive.

AE
2  Greene's article represents a conversation with the reader about different aspects of writing.  He frames his argument to convince the reader that elements such as framing are important in writing arguments.  Greene practices what he preaches in "Argument as Conversation" because in his article he uses the techniques that he is teaching the reader about.