I found this chapter to be quite interesting and it has made me think more about my writing project and the difference between a paper that is just reporting something and a paper used to argue a point. I think that reporting something is much easier than providing an argument because reporting is more of a summary, whereas arguing you need to “defend” a position. As I reflect on my current paper it is more of a report than an argument. I am looking into restructuring the topic to make it more of an argument than a report. I am still in progress of this in evaluating what is a controversial issue that relates to my topic; to do this I plan to do as the reading suggest and revisit my rhetorical situation.
I plan to also take a look at the answers to my research question to see if there is an angle that I could more focus on that I may not have considered before; this may help me “narrow down” the different pathways my research question can go. There are so many different resources that I found and the information is overwhelming so narrowing the focus will be beneficial to me.
I thought the point in the reading the reading when it said that once the responses to the research question were listed you could narrow them down to the ones that were “reasonable, supportable, and feasible” to my rhetorical situation was valuable to me. It is important to meet these three criteria for my research question in order to provide a strong argument.
The section on developing a thesis help to clarify a couple of things. Right now my thesis statement is in a question format and in this section one of the guidelines is that the thesis is a statement, not a question. The other guidelines were helpful as well; especially the one about having your audience take action or become involved.
The section on supporting your argument had some really good information and ideas of what I can use to help provide a strong foundation for the side that I am taking in my research topic. I think for my topic I will be primarily using the persuasive means of ethos (credibility) and logos( reason). With my audience being primarily professionals in the dental field this is the approaches that best fit what I think is their receptive style. I have many claims and reason so far for my research, but from the reading I realize that I need more evidence to support those claims and reasons for my topic. I plan to look for more statistics and expert opinions to support my claims.
So from the reading and the different exercises in the the reading I think I will be better able to develop my research topic and the details to support my position.
2 responses so far ↓
1 Sarah // Mar 24, 2007 at 6:02 pm
When narrowing my topic and audience down I found that by freewriting notes about the goal, controversey, solution, and audience I was then able to cut and paste similair ideas together. I would re-read the notes to see what the common theme was and if I had three sentences in the same range how I could incorporate those ideas into one sentence. I would recommend that if you ever get stuck in narrowing something down this is a useful technique to try. Sounds like you are on the right path with your research-way to go!
2 bdoyle // Mar 26, 2007 at 6:30 pm
It is hard narrowing down information especially trying to decide what to keep and what to get rid of. I know in the beginning it was suggested to think of a different approach to my topic with concern they may not be enough information. In some ways this is true but at this point in the writing process I have found I made a wise choice by sticking to my original topic it has been hard finding information, but I still find myself having to decide what to keep and what to get rid of.
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