HDS DD) BEUBGULBUULLL \ OES ee oaaaay Research and Writing Processes I writing and research has a rhetori- ical context, Just as the different ele- ‘ments of the rhetorical situation (purpose, audience, author, and topic affect a topic (F research question, the rhetorical situ: ation influences research processes and the writing of thelr results. For example, if your instructor says that you will need at least two academic Journal artic to support the argument you present in your paper, then your research will probably focus (at least at frst) on find ing academic journal articles. Similarly, Crane) COAL Ct teats Clraritecey in the example on the next page, if Qi knows that he wants to attend a school in New York City his research will be lim ited to schools within that area You will also likely be influenc the subject matter that you are resea ing and writing about. imagine that you ‘are conducting a research project in a physics class on the Doppler effect. Your research process will be influenced by the fed research practices in the field of physics, and your final weltten product will probably need to follow a specified > Sans PEC) orca rc contemporary writing rarerArthor: Qiwantsto comet the United States, New York City (NYO specifically to goto college. f He has time to do research before ‘coming to NYC, and he will be in NYC for six months before start- ing schoo Topic: Ofthe multitude of colleges in NYC that Qi could attend, which one should he choose and why? Aeadience: Although Qiisthe primary audience for his research and decision making, there are other stakeholders who are invested in his topic. Q's family, espe- earch and writing, Our hope i that you wil adapt these tools paaring = to help you address your speci projects. 4 J yo > Myths about Writing Sn , and Research Processes | rating : Before you get started, however, you should have reais expe = tations of what your research and witing processes might look > ke, Many of us carry around common myths about writing and ‘) " ‘esearch in our minds, but those myths don't measure up to thi en ietewa) _ calty of what we encounter as we start working. f you ft per > cecognize those myths as unrealistic, then you can avoid a lot of coe = frustration ater { tevsng > 1 Myth 1: You must complete each step in the writing r = process, The writing process is often described as linear = as showin in Figure 2.1. n this representation, wing Isa = imple process where you start atthe top, with prewriting : (or invention), systematically werk our way down through * each step, and finish with a perfectly written produ = Uwiting often doesnot happen this way though We dont praendg : intend to say that people cannot, or do not, sometimes > low these steps this order and finish with ane piece of writing. n fact, this textbook presents a process of working through a major research project that appears to Publishing presenting one step atatime, chapter Although we have a plan in mind, most of the time th actual process is much messier. Sometimes we have to beline: ‘chapter Figure2.1- pith)18 Research and Writing Processes revisit steps more than once, and sometimes we even skip steps (depending on . the rhetorical situation) that we might return to later in the process. You already know that many casual writing situations do not require every step outlined in Figure 2.1. For example, a grocery list might require revising . especially to make sure everything is on the list, If someone else Is going to do the shopping, you might also proofread the list before giving it to him or her, revising the list for clarity based on the new audience. One way you can make 5 the writing process flexible enough to wark for a specific rhetorical situation is, by following the steps that are needed for a given writing task. Give yourself the freedom to skip steps ifthey are net necessary oF to repeat steps ifsome require additional time @ Myth 2: Each step is equally important and time-consuming. Deleting steps isnot the only way writing processes vary from one anothet. The linear image of the writing process from myth 1 also gives the faulty impression that each step involved in the process will tke the same amount of time, energy, and work Depending on the demands of the writing project and the rhetorical situation, you may spend lots of time in one area and very little In another (Figure 2.2). Not only can the steps of the process take varying amounts of time and energy, but ess can change or shift in the middle of the project as a result of the process itself and what you have found in your research so far Myth 3: The steps are linear. The aforementioned myths refer to research and writing proces cor less linear. Even if you skip steps in these processes, or if you spend more or less time on a certain step, the represented process still looks like a neat, clean line. Many people bounce back and forth among the steps, though (Figure 2.3). Some very common moves include going back to the invention, or the thinking and planning, stage once you've begun researching, Your intial research might bring up some issues you had not considered, and so you need to move to a different step in the process. Likewise, many writers find that once they start drafting, or once someone else looks over their project, a large gap becomes evident and they need to go back to t research stage. Although iti easier to teach and talk about writing and research as single, linear processes, in reality, writing and research processes are all variations on the theme of the mythical, linear process. Most researchers and writers start their projects with the linear process in mind, but once they get working, they usually start adapting, They also find that Figure22Publishing Figure23 Myths «sa need arises, they might have to bounce a few steps back to repeat some work in a particular step. For example, if you were reviewing for your end-o year exams, you apter oF two of material you did not understand and only skim the ight even reskim that chapter right before the test. You know what you need to study, or research, or might reread a c rest. And youm rite, so your process fits your needs. This book will help you become a more proficient researcher, not necessarily an ing process might require you to revisit some steps out of order, of it might even require going back to the drawing board to refine, restate, or reconsider ont researcher. Good research is a messy, and somewhat recutsive, pro research and w your topic. Very rarely does research happen in a linear fashion andl when it does, the researcher has usually missed something. Take this example from everyday life: While answering "What do Ineed from the grocery store?" you might refer to the household's ly menu and refer to cookbooks for items on that menu. However, if you do not also check what is, or is not, in the refrigerator or cupboard, you could find multiple trips to the grocery store in your future. You might go several times from the list, to the refrigerator, to @ couple of recipes, and to the coupons in the newspaper before finally answering your original questionResearch and Writing Processes Good writers and researchers are aware of these recursive steps and even more sallow the indi vidual rhe cess for every project and help them determine what step to take next. Writers have several processes to choose from whe working on a writing project. The more you know about the options you have in tack ling @ research and writing project, the mo aware of thelr rhetorical situations. Effective writers and research ical situation to influence their successful you can be in completing it. You may have encountered descriptions of “the writing process” In classes you have taken. A listing ofthe steps of the writing process might include some ofthe following: invention or prewriting, researching, drafting, peer review, revising, editing, proofiead- ing, and publishing. Some of these steps relate loosely to principles of c Fic, and itis helpful to understand where some of these ideas came fiom first. As you develop your own successful writing processes, you might find that a combination of some of these approaches will work best in certain situations, sical rheto. Aristotle defined thetoric a “finding the available means of persuasion’ He acknovsh edged that although you may not use all of the information and materials you have discovered and developed, it important to identify them all so that you have choices. Ancient Greek and Roman shetoricians kept the purpose of writing (or speakin mind and the audience to whom it would be delivered, and this understanding rhetorical situation governed the w Peer revew i not the same thing as proofreading. Per review neudes reading | < and commenting on more global features of a piece of wring, ke the development = ofdeas othe evidence used to support an argument proofreading generally focuses 7 ticular citation style. The three types of changes you might make to your draft as you polsh and refine for ubleation are typialy revising etng and proofreading bee review could include gathering comments and feedbackon al three ofthese areas, : You might aeody have tunately, many students report having unfvorae in because they ii recave wel ead ite something ke"Thistoks good to me dung oper rev orf youve ce ass, Unfor ith peer review from a previou: ressions of peer review, often k rom their peers.ifyou have ever hada class peers give you conflicting feedback, you might have an unfavorable impression as well The key to good peer review is asking the right questions of your peers and helping | them understand what kind of feedback you need. Depending on your stage in th writing process, you might need different kinds of feedback. f you are at an early stage ‘of writing, or if you don't have any specific criteria for the project you are working on, you might try variations ofthe following questions: @ What work Nin this piece of writing? 4 What did you want to know more about as you read?—— 2 {WO Research and Writing Processes ‘@ What was unclear in this piece of writing? 19 What suggestions would you make fora revision? hese questions will prompt peer reviewers to give a balanced response, discussing things that you did well and things to consider ina revision. You might also draft some questions based on ti fone an adequate job of addressing the int pecfics of your thetorical situation, For example, have you sand expectations of your audience? Ifyou were writing an annual repost for your job, did you provide the information your eriors would be expecting? Are there other issues they might want to see ad inthe report? Ty following these guidelines the next time you participate ina peer review 4. Ask for both positive comments and constructive feedback. I's what ipful to know ure doing well-not just what you should rev ‘Ask your peer to ask questions if there are things he or she finds the text, Questions invite a response, and resp fusing in ding to questions written on will help you begin revising, your draft during a peer revi Ifyou have specific criteria for an assignment or project you ask your peer to address each oft numerous criteria to consider, perhaps have several peers read your w have each ane look at separate crlter working on, there are rk and Finally, offer to review your peers! work as well. When you write a response for one of your peers, write the kind > Conduct Peer Reviews < review that would be helpful to you. , yenbie PH Jer nfrmatio’in the word proceso I csonte serene awmnsomgeeng be ——— Ifyou have access toa closed discussion Seve techndBgjil tools an factate peer beer for yours workplace, you could rele ther in adesioom sting orn posta dat of whatyou ate wrkngon ronment. fyouhaveaccesstodferent kinds with spect questons for eer review oftecinology youmigh ey onect the fallowing Then your pees can post th esponss Varlatons on peer review 1D Ifyou are comfortable using instant mes ate progam suchas saging software, you could schedule act using the “Insert Com with the peers) who read your writing nent on specific parts Chats work best one-on-one or, fyou have have time, have several ‘aces toa chat oom in very small group peers electronically comment onthe sa if you include more than four people, the iment, If you switch computers, be feedback canbe dificult to process ina certain to enter your information un hat environment, 1 Hfyou are usinga sof icrasoft Word”ng Wiriting is not like painting where you ke ‘an apen mind, and sometimes that tions, As you edit, you could pay attention t ) someone else to read otherwise might not notice when edit It can Be helpful to read your own essay aloud 0 heat howitsoundsjandit an sometimes be even mote beneficial to hear someone else read it If a you feel uncomfortable having someone read to you oweveorfyousimply dont have someone you can ask to dot, you can have your computer 3 read youresay to you. Granted, isnot quite the same thing and the computer snot going to tel you when something doesnt “sound right” The Computer also won't stumble over thing that are tollarger-scale changes you make toa d focus on the ke might be reluctant to delete things that you spent time writing, but revising is an ac Of refining, Sometimes revision will requir ‘ment, and sometimes deletion, The Nobel Prize you eliminate in order to make the w quires havin rather on issues of style and fluidity. Editing might include lookir to help the reader foltow y 14 also might look at sentence variety in your writing or the overal loud to “hear” how it sounds and how the language flov to you: either reading will help you to hear things the ontent of your writing, Revision can be y hard on your original draft, You the addition of ideas, sometimes move iter Elie Wiesel wrote that Writing is more like @ sculptur Theimportant thing is to rk visible written, Having some time between drafting and revising will also help you to see your writing with new eyes (re-vislon) Editing 2 Similar to revision, editing is a way of refining and polishing your paper. When you edit 2 however, your focus is not on the larger-scale Issues of cantent and organization bu at your use of ansi our tain of thought ina plece of writing, ‘one of your piec sistency in your writing. Try reading your fr you might ask awkward—itwillust plow Highton through. But eaing the computer read your wing isa different experience from reading it youself If you have never tid it, you might fnd that you notice areas for revision, editing, and proofead- ing that you didnt notice before You can download a free tial version of Read: Please, a software package that wil read vtting to you, at tp or26 | WHEN OKKAAgaAAY Research and Writing Processes Proofreading Many instructors combine editing and proofreading under one label. They are sepa. rated here, however, because we want to highlight that there are several different steps to polishing your writing, In addition to looking at isues of style and fluidity when you edit, you will also need to proofread your work, focusing on surface fea tures such as grammar, punctuation, and citations. Obviously, you can do.a first round ‘of proofreading by yourself, perhaps referring to the spelling and grammar checkers that are built into most word-processing programs. However, you need to be aware that they will not catch all of the errors in your paper. For example, many of them are “dumbs"and do not know whether your sentence needs there, thei, o they're, Automa ted grammar and spelling checkers might be a good place to start proofreading your ‘writing, but you won't want to stop there for most rhetorical situations. f you are work. ing on a piece of writing that needs to be polished in its final draft, you defintely will want to proofread carefully yourself and also have someone else ead your paper vet time, most people realize that they havea writing style that tends to rly on certain words and sentence structures, and they tend to make the same errors over and over again or example, when one ofthe authors was in college she had an instructor who repeatedly marked her papers for passive vole. She spent an entire semester focusing on learning what passive voce was, how functioned ina sentence, how to identify iin a sentence, and haw to correct it. Now shes very aware of when she uses passive voice and only uses it to make a speci point in be writing This ‘Was. trouble pot that she identified and keeps track of inher writing, Answer the following questions to start. list of the idiosyncrasies of your writing style, What ave frends, family members, and instructors identified as strengths in your writing? iat have they sald that you do wel? What word, phrases, or sentence styles do you find yourself repeating in your wring? What things do you alway find yourself correcting in your own witng? What things have fiends and family members poltely corrected fr you? Ifyou til have them, pull out graded wrting assignments fom pas cases, Read though the comments. What common themes run through the comments? What parts of your own writing (paragraphs, complex sentences, semicolons, passive voce, €c) da you already know you should spend some time focusing on and improving? fou know you have problems ina spcicatea ask someone to pay close atentontoit when he or she peer reviewing your writing, Ifyou tend to aveuse certain words or sentence styles, consider checking to make sure that you add variety to your mriting, Also use this ist o help you select one «aspect of your writing that you would like to work on improving during a specfc amount of time (perhaps during a semester. Consider sharing this list with your instructor to discuss methods by hich you might improve upon specific trouble areas. a _ WAAARAnAnA;: RRAAAPublishing Once you have brainstormed, researched, drafted, revised, rethought, edited, drafted again, edited, and proofread (whew!) you will be ready to publish your writing. Pub- lishing could include a variety of ways of presenting your writing to your readers. For example, you might print a paper and turn itn to your instructor. Or you might upload might turnin a report to your supervisor at work. Your choice of publication method willbe influenced, of course, by your thetorical situation. The final “publication” of Qi's and writing at the beginning of the chapter would likely be quite different you might tum in fora classi school. & ur research onto a Web site. Or you might send an article in to a newspaper. Or Although research is listed as one of the possible steps in the list of contemporary eu writing processes, that step can be broken down into a series of smaller steps, processes, And as we did with wrt ch processes; {talks emt however, realize that individual research processes are just as rhetorically situated the tterent and variable. Although we present the steps as alist, and we put them ina specific order in this textbook, you should always adapt the approach you use forthe spe- Mean cific writing/research project you are undertaking, - In Chapter 1 we mentioned that the simplest way to understand research Is that research ansivers a question, Many writing tasks qualify as research because the the answering of a question (like making a grocery list), even though they do not feel ike major research projects. However, there are five basic steps in research that you should follow when you take on any research project larger than a grocery list: g processes, well describe resea Identify your topic/problem and develop a focused research question. (Chapter 3) 2. Assess what you know and what you need to know and develop a research plan. (Chapter 4) 3. Locate and document resources. (Chapters 4-8 and 12-15), Analyze resources and develop the answer to your research question. (Chapters 9 and 10 5. Present the answer to your research question resources. (Chapters 10 and 1 hile carefully citing your Many students make the mistake of simplifying th locating resources, Without the careful preparation of steps 1 and 2, however, aswell as, reful analysis and presentation of the results of your findings in steps 4 and 5, the workin step 3 can be completely overwhelming and not well represented in the results of the research project. Another way in which many students simplify the r process by assuming that the only product of thelr research is the final report or pe- sentation of the results. We hope you noticed that each step above includes an actual product that researchers should be developing as they work through the step, ‘esearch process down to step 328 CC Research and Writing Process The writing and research processes outlined so far in this chapter are fairly generic descriptions ofthe steps and procedures you might use for any given research po} ect. We're sure it will be no surprise to you, however, that we want to emphasize the importance of adapting the process that you use to the specific situation in which you are writing and researching, One particular circumstance that wwe would like to adress 's the variety of approaches to writing and researching that you will encounter (ond likely have already encountered) in school settings. From one class 0 the next you will ome across diferent proferen 5, oF what writing teachers often ca each discipline. As an extreme example, the writing that you do when completing an observational lab report in a biology class will be very lfferent from the writing you 0 when completing a poetry assignment for a creative writing cass. Similay, you writing ina literary analysis paper will probably have significant differences from your ‘writing in an experimental psychology report. OF course, there are many similarities in the too. Since they are al fairly form: will thoroughly writing you will do in these contexts, assignments completed in an academic setting, you pofread and edit your work. Also, you will carefully cite ¢ that you use in your writing because the citation of others‘ideas is an important part of writing in any academic setting. But there may be differences in style, organization, voice, and even the format for citing your sources, depending on the conventions of the discipline. You will even find that what counts asc from one discipline to another. While vidence foran argument canvary 2 logically constructed argument defending a theory might count as evidence in one class, another class might require the collection of data through observation Each discipline has conventions experimentation to defend a claim, the writing in that field, One ofthe best ways to discover the kinds of conventions that are expected is to look a in that disciptine, writing that you want to emulate, You'll notice certain pattems, For example: if you look at various observational and experiment examples of writing I reports in the natu fal sciences and social sciences, you might notice that many of them follow the same organizational pattern, Researchers andy generally, will be organized as foo ters in these disciplines expect that reports, @ introduction and review of relevant research 4 description of the methodology used in the study 1 presentation of the results of data collectio # analysis of the results 4. discussion of the results and concluding comments Of course, exceptions to this pattern exist, too, and partof being an effective writer determining when to follow the conventions andl when to break that decision, you have to know them. In orderto make he conventions in the first place. Learning about the30 Research and Writing Processes Discover Disciplinary Patterns and Conventions Begin by nding a teacher or professional that you could talk to inthe dsipine/majorcarer that you are interested in pursuing. You might talk to a professor that you know, or you might tak to someone whos currently inthe kind ofjb you woud ke to hae. Askthe fl {ake careful notes onthe responses you recive. 1. What kinds of vriting ae assigned in clases inthis fla? What kind of writing do professionals inthis eld do onthe 2. fre there specifi pattems or conventions ‘expected inthe writing inthis field? fs, what ae they? tare the mas common problems that students ornew writer in the fed have? How could these problems be avo 4. What kinds ofresearch are conducted ‘most often inthis ele Ifyou do receive a piece of wring that you could analyze ook forthe patterns an for you. Then share that the teacher or professional ident You might try filling outa table ke Table 2 ences among the disciplines you each investigate. lowing questions, and Are thee pectic esearch processes that people in this feld/profession usually fl low? How do they lear th acess? What citation syle is primaily used for research conducted in this fl? Why s that citation style used Ae other styles sometimes used aswel? fs, how should a new writer inthe fed choose an appropriate citation style? Is there an example of writing in this field that you could share with me? (You might ever ask to see something that the teacher or professional has witen,) ur discoveries with your classmates, so that you can compare the similares and difer-Oe Ma eld Table 22, ‘Research Patterns in een ras rena pany Cerri aero os ta ier Bena eeecans roe prrrnen AP rer it Ber Pc Ciera cerryResearch and Writing Process This textbook will provide you wi ina variety of contexts, but you will n h strategies to approach writing and researc to adapt them to fit rhetorical situations, For academic writing and research projects, an important part of your thetorica situa tions the conventions and expectations ofthe discipline within which you are weting, Always try to ask questions and look at examples of writing in fields with which you are unfamiliar you can discover a wealth of information from analyzing exemplary pieces of writing, and that will increase your chances of writing effectively.