Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Online Activity: "My Research Advice" (Thursday, 3/6/2014)

Here's your online assignment to come in place of this Thursday's class:


My Research Advice

Directions: In a casual blog post of at least 500 words, describe what you do to make research and research assignments manageable, maybe even easy to do. Again, remember that this is an informal writing assignment, so requirements are not so strict. But try to put your ideas in some kind of clear, easy-to-follow structure. Also, be sure to present examples from your own research, either from this class or from other classes.

Remember, too, that the research process involves several different stages: The stage of deciding on a topic, the stage of conducting a search, the stage of choosing good articles to use, even the stage of sitting down to read an article to determine what it's trying to say -- and, of course, the stage of writing about what you find. As a matter of fact, there is no rule that says research goes in one specific order. Many writers start by writing, then searching, then reading. Many others reread articles they already know, then they choose a topic, then they write. Jumping back and forth in stages is very common. Repeating stages is common, too. It might even be that you have a stage in your process that I haven't included here. In that case, go ahead and mention this additional stage. What I want you to do is to discuss the approaches that you bring with you when you do research.

Me, I'm especially curious about how you approach the task of reading a new article. Reading has always been difficult for me, and I've noticed that the large majority of my students struggle with it, too, regardless of their background. So even if your advice is not about reading, I'd appreciate it if you took a moment to discuss how your advice can help someone who struggles with reading and picking out a writer's message and support details. I won't take points off if you don't talk about reading strategies. I'm just always on the lookout for effective reading advice.

Finally, be attentive: If you notice that another classmate has already described a method of approaching research that is similar to yours, try to respond to this classmate's ideas in your own blog post.

The deadline for this assignment is: Saturday night, 3/8/2014, 11:59 PM.

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