Dictionary Abuse

I'm going to be blunt here. Very rarely is it appropriate to open an essay with a definition.

I'm talking about essays where the author says something like, “Merriam-Webster defines (insert term here) as...”. These statements almost never provide relevant context for the issue at hand, and frankly do more harm than good to your own argument. A lot of the reasons we write or argue something is to better understand it, but much of the time when this strategy is employed, it oversimplifies the term being used and broadens the essay's content in the process, while also suggesting the author is not familiar enough with the term itself, and the extent of their research capabilities is looking up a word in a dictionary. Or it suggests you don’t trust your audience’s knowledge and capabilities.

I believe there are a few reasons why students do this:

• First, and most frighteningly, they're taught to do it.
• Second, it's an easy way to do “research” and add another source to a bibliography.
• Third establishes how a specific term is going to be used.
• Fourth, they've seen it done elsewhere, especially in published works, suggesting this is an established and acceptable practice. However, in these published cases, rarely is it as simple as just quoting a definition.

The first two reasons need little explaining. The third and fourth, however, do warrant some explanation.

Sometimes, an author is using a common term in an uncommon way that may not be the first thing their readers will think of. In these situations the essay's thesis relies on a very specific, potentially specialized, unconventional definition. The thing here is your standard dictionaries tend to give the more general, conventional answers, those most people will already be familiar with. This is where using specialized definitions and resources can, however, come in handy. Different disciplines will use the same and similar words in different ways, and if a piece is aimed at an audience who may not share that specialization, defining the term is appropriate. However, these cases are rarely just definitions: they warrant more explanation and examples to help the nonspecialized audience.

The fourth one is a special case, especially because these sometimes pull definitions from several dictionaries. The point of these essays is to point out the problems these definitions have. In these situations, the purpose in bringing definitions into the essay is not to simply define the term but to show how the definitions disagree or leave holes. This then centers the entire essay on the issue of defining the term. It brings definitions together not to say “here’s what this term means,” but to say, “this term isn’t that simple.” In such a case, once you reach the end of the essay, you should be able to look back at the definitions quoted and see how and why they are incomplete or inadequate.

If your use of dictionary or encyclopedia entries doesn't fall into one of these two situations, then it's very likely you're doing more harm than good. Unless you need to define a term in a specialized or unfamiliar way or you’re finding issues with definitions, it’s better to trust your reader to already be familiar with whatever term you’re using. This can be particularly true in student essays where terms and concepts students should be exploring in detail, deconstructing, or should be applying, are merely defined. It’s kind of like summarizing a story or an article rather than analyzing it.

When providing a definition, it better be needed: the definition needs to be unconventional or one worth calling into question. If you find a definition you agree with and expect your reader will also, and if, by the end of the essay, you still agree with the definition and your reader should as well, then you're just wasting time and space.

Reasons and Processes: Identify How and Why in the Six Journalistic Questions

Four of the Six Journalistic Questions are straightforward. We identify people, places, times, concepts, objects, etc., but How and Why are more abstract. Sometimes students erroneously assume How and Why ask how they're going to research or write their essays, and why it's something worth writing about, but that gets away from the topic and into the writing of the essay. The Six Journalistic Questions are to help you focus on your topic, not the ins and outs of your process, and asking How and Why are integral to that.

At their core, How and Why ask about processes and reasons: How does something work, what goes into it to make it function, and Why does something work or happen, what's the causes of the issue, or even why is it an issue? So looking for the How and Why when drafting criteria asks about the underlying processes and reasons behind your topic. In this regard, they can be considered the most important of the six.

Here are some tips and recommendations for figuring out the How and Why.

What's the underlying issue? We tend to approach and deal with topics because there's some kind of issue with them, and asking How or Why requires digging deeper to think about it. It's what's at the core of your topic.

• Example: School bullying
• Why: Bullying causes physical and emotional trauma to children during important developmental years.
• How: Students who are bullied develop worse self esteem and trust issues, and perform worse in school and socially.

What do your criteria have to do with one another? Sometimes, answering How and Why means asking what everything else you've identified has to do with one another. This means there may be repetition, but you're not just reiterating the same thing: you're juxtaposing your criteria to figure out why it's significant to bring these criteria together.

• Example: Exercise for weight loss
• What: Weight loss; cardio vs. weight lifting
• When: Morning vs. afternoon
• How: The impacts different types of exercise have at different times of the day.
• While it doesn't explicitly state them, when the How says “different types of exercise” the What is implied, and the same for “morning vs. afternoon” and “different times of the day.

What's your perspective? The way you address the How and Why can shape your perspective on the topic and the rest of your criteria. The Who, What, When, and Where are just a collection of nouns you're bringing together, whereas the How and the Why help make them significant and related.

• Example: State Lotteries
• Why: (1) Helps fund education. (2) Winners usually end up worse off than they were before. (3) Promotes dangerous, wasteful gambling addictions.
• 1: This highlights a beneficial side of state run lotteries: their proceeds go to fund state schools.
• 2: This one takes a more negative approach to the lottery, targeting an unfortunate consequence associated with it. This doesn't condemn the lottery, but doesn't aggrandize it either.
• 3: This one takes a much more negative approach and outright condemns state lotteries.

It is possible to have more than one “Why” or “How.” In this situation, any combination of these could be used to consider different sides of the issue or try to find a reconciliation, rather than being one-sided on the issue.

Each of these examples can seem either straightforward, too simple, or obvious based on the topic. The thing is, there's nothing wrong with that. The 6JQ are supposed to help you get to the point. If you can articulate aspects of your topic in fewer words and as succinctly as possible, the better off you'll be, and just because something is obvious to you doesn't mean it'll be obvious to everyone else. The 6JQ aren't just a brainstorming and drafting tool; they can be a useful tool to help you stay on track, but if you're vague or broad, or off base entirely, then they're not going to help.

Quantity and Specificity: Getting a lot, and the most, out of the Six Journalistic Questions

The Six Journalistic Questions are a useful tool to identify the criteria of an essay: the topics and ideas you're focusing on. However, it's easy to just plod through these six questions and throw down the first responses that come to mind. This approach can only go so far, and actually undermines its usefulness. It makes the 6JQ more of an annoyance, busy work, than a useful tool.

How do you get more out of them? Simple: identify more criteria. Don't just write something down. Write everything down.

For example, for an essay about school uniforms. It would be easy to simply shoot out something like this:

• Who: Students
• What: Uniforms
• Where: America
• When: Now
• Why: Uniforms don't do any good.
• How: Requiring students to wear uniforms

There's an essay in there, but it's not a good one. The problem is every term here is vague, which defeats the purpose of using the 6JQ: this doesn't get any more specific or narrow down the topic. For example, when I was in middle school, we had “uniforms”, but it was basically a dress code mandating business casual attire: slacks, dress and a polo shirts, and girls could wear skirts. I have a friend who went to catholic school and described her uniforms as black tartan skirts and jumpers, with navy blue trousers and sweaters over white polo shirts. If we thought our business casual was bad, my friend's uniforms would have been torturous. Both of these are “uniforms”, but very different uniforms.

The solution to vague criteria is to move beyond the first responses and put down every possible response. This means taking those quick responses and breaking them down into as many variations as possible.

So let's break this down. First, Who: what types of students are you concerned about? Are there other people involved in this issue? What: What types of uniforms? What: other issues can uniforms impact? When: Specific grades or ages? Or are you looking at the history of school uniforms in the 1960's and 70's? And then there's Where: saying “America” is almost as bad as saying “Everyone,” and should either be dropped or made more specific: is this an issue to be addressed on a state level, city, district, or school? Or is this an issue for private schools?

Just by asking more direct questions and breaking down the 6JQ, you can turn the broad and vague criteria into a series of specific criteria:

• Who: Students – Elementary, middle, high school, private school, problem students, bullied students, bullies, bystanders of bullying, student-athletes, non-athletes. Parents – of any of the aforementioned. Administrators – teachers, principals, district administrators.
• What: Uniforms: business casual uniforms vs. specific uniforms; team uniforms; cost and availability. Student performance and behavior: bullying, grades, classroom disruptions, fights, cliques. School programs: athletics, clubs. Student performance, grades; classroom disruptions.
• Where: America – State level, city level, school district, individual schools, private schools, religious schools.
• When: Last 10 years; last 20 years; the 1990's, 1970-1990, etc.
• Why: Bad: Uniforms are uncomfortable; limit individuality and creativity; increase expenses for students; doesn't eliminate social issues like bullying. Still highlights class differences. Good: cut down on bad behavior, improved grades and student performance.
• How: Requiring students wear uniforms; allowing exceptions; allowing “casual/uniform-free days”.

These are just some criteria that stem from the issue of school uniforms. Given enough time and space, this could just go on and on. The important thing is everything on this list and everything that could be put on it can relate back to school uniforms. This means to simply say “I'm writing about school uniforms” it implies all of that and more.

The next step is to cut back to just a few criteria. Rather than finding broad terms to encompass a few terms at once (this would be undoing everything you just did), stick with the specific criteria and omit everything else. For example:

• Who: Bullied students
• What: Specific uniforms, business casual uniforms
• Where: High schools in California
• When: Last 15 years.
• Why: Impact of uniforms on bullying
• How: Relationship of bullying to types of uniforms

This then makes the 6JQ not just a matter of what you're going to write about but what you aren't. Once you've identified a few dozen potential criteria, you can focus on just a few, resulting in something like this, which looks at the relationship between bullying and types of uniforms in high school over the last 15 years across the state of California. The result is a streamlined set of criteria that is specific, which, when well handled, will result in an essay that is clear and direct. There's a lot of information it won't cover, but greater detail is preferable to broad information. This is much better than writing a treatise on everything related to school uniforms.

Short Term Productivity and Long Term Success

Rather than dust off last year’s unfulfilled goals and reattempt them, dust off a post from a year ago and read it and this one together.

First and foremost, I'm still not keen on year-long goals. Life just gets in the way too easily: adjustments and changes will always need to be made, and I want to use my blogs as an example. Last year, as I was starting this blog, I would have set a goal to get a post up every week, a goal which, in retrospect, would have just caused more problems.

Last month I was beset with the end of the semester which meant a combination of ending one semester and designing another. One moment I'd be grading essays and wrapping up one semester, reflecting on everything I'd taught my students, and the next moment I was busy preparing curriculum for the coming semester. And then it was the holidays: Thanksgiving and Christmas. In light of this busy time of year, I concluded that producing blog posts on composition and literature were just taking up time I needed for grading, planning, designing, and other end of year obligations.

But time isn't even all of it. Last year, after only seven or eight posts, I had a lot of what I wanted to say, but halfway through the year I had gone from a long list of things I wanted or needed to address, to giving more specific information on topics I had already addressed and addressing issues as they arose. At the start of the year, I wasn't teaching any classes that required Toulmin or Literature Reviews; I was designing lessons and assignments on the Six Journalistic questions. When courses for Fall were scheduled, I had to write some posts that would deal with subjects I would address in my new courses. But I still didn't feel like I had enough to say, or even the need, to fill a post every week on composition alone. So after July, I cut back from every week to every other week, and started updating Narrative Nuance on the off-weeks.

This is why I don't like year-long goals, especially as I look back at a year and a half's worth of 3x5 cards, each detailing the activities of a given day or week. I'd hate to look back at last year's goals and think I hadn't met them – that I had somehow failed – when my needs and circumstances had changed. I'll take the flexibility planning out a day, a week, or a month in advance gives me over the limited perspective of what I'm doing now and what I could be doing in a year. I don't know what I'll be eating for dinner in a week, so why should I declare the accomplishments I'll have achieved in twelve month's time? I'll be productive now rather than planning out next December.

And productivity is what it is all about. I don't give myself goals and to-do lists because I want to accomplish something months in the future, but because I have work to do now. I may have a greater goal in mind – regular and consistent blog posts, a research project, ending the semester – but it's the smaller, day to day tasks that actually get it done.

Goal setting isn't about accomplishments. It's about being productive and getting work done and making sure you do it every day. That's why I like my stack of index cards. They're a reminder of how productive I can be, and it isn't because of the year long dreams. It's about the little things I have do every single day.

And here's looking forward to another great year!

The Toulmin Model

The Toulmin Model is a way to structure arguments to best understand what the information does, and the relationship each bit of information has with everything else. It helps us to dissect or prepare an argument by demonstrating how each bit of information relates to the claim being made: the model is made up of the following parts:

• Claim: The basic argument being made.
• Grounds: The facts, data, and evidence the claim is based on.
• Warrant: The logical connection between the claim and the grounds.
• Backing: Evidence that establishes the credibility of the warrant.
• Rebuttal: Restrictions placed on the claim,
• Qualifier: Words that denote how certain the claim is, like “probably,” “rarely,” “certainly,” etc. These are made to accommodate the rebuttal.

You'll notice each term has a direct connection with another, even the claim. When forming an argument, or constructing a Toulmin Model, these components are best expressed as brief statements to simply demonstrate the corresponding information, which in turn, shows its relationship to everything else. Here's an example based on the cost of college textbooks:

• Claim: Textbooks are too expensive for college students.
• Grounds: Individual textbooks can be more than a hundred dollars and students need to buy a couple of books for each class.
• Warrant: Students rarely have a lot of money and have to deal with tuition, so several hundred dollars in textbooks strains already limited funds.
• Backing: Increasing tuition costs; delayed graduation rates as students take time off of school to work.
• Rebuttal: Some students have scholarships. Not all disciplines have very expensive textbooks.
• Qualifier: Most textbooks are too expensive for many college students.

The Toulmin Model can be used for any level of argument: fact, definition, value, and policy. The above example is a fact level argument because the grounds and warrant seek to clarify whether or not textbooks are in fact too expensive. Consider it again as a policy level argument. Please note this is all hypothetical!

• Claim: Because textbooks are too expensive for college students, the university bookstore should lower the prices of textbooks.
• Grounds: Individual textbooks can cost more than a hundred dollars and students need to buy a couple of books for each class. The University Bookstore has a considerable profit from other sales.
• Warrant: Students rarely have a lot of money and have to deal with tuition, so several hundred dollars in textbooks further strains their limited funds. With a sizable profit elsewhere, the bookstore can lower textbook prices and still be solvent.
• Backing: Increasing tuition costs. Delayed graduation rates as students take time off of school to work. Profit and income statements of the university bookstore.
• Rebuttal: Some students have scholarships. Not all disciplines have very expensive textbooks.
• Qualifier: Because most textbooks are too expensive for college students, the university bookstore should lower the prices of many textbooks.

As the type of argument changes, the claim naturally changes also, and because the claim changes, the other information has to change to accommodate it. 

Note it is possible for the rebuttal to entirely refute an argument. If the rebuttal had been the bookstore profits fund scholarships and other academic programs, which in turn help students, the claim would have to change along with it, either being dropped entirely, or the argument would need to suggest eliminating or funding those programs another way to benefit more students a little, rather than a few students a lot.

Ultimately, everything pivots around the claim: it is the focal point of the argument and is to be defended or refuted. While Toulmin is not an organizational method for writing an essay, it provides a strong basis for analyzing, understanding, and developing arguments by giving every bit of information, whether hard evidence, logical inferences, or potential rebuttals, a specific place.

Reverse Outlining with Topic Sentences

An outline is an essay condensed into a list of its topics in the order they appear in the paper. On the other hand, a reverse outline is when an author reads over a draft and identifies just what it is they are saying. Reverse Outlining helps you see just what it is that you wrote.

Putting together a reverse outline can be an interesting experience. We can see how our ideas actually came out, how they changed, and even how our perception on our topic changed as we wrote. Or, we can miss the point and end up just seeing what we want to see in our drafts, as opposed to what’s really there.

Let me elaborate. You did your outline and it went well. You wrote a draft and it went well. But when you go to do your reverse outline, you know what you wanted to say in each paragraph, and so rather than writing what your essay says, you write down what you want it to say. This is only going to cause problems. Instead, I recommend trying the following when reverse outlining:

1. Identify the topic sentence in a paragraph. Look for the sentence in the paragraph that best explains what the paragraph is doing: which could work as a paraphrase of the paragraph. You may be surprised to find that this is not always the first sentence; it may come in the middle or the end, and you may find the paragraph ended up addressing a different topic than you had anticipated. No matter where it is, copy this sentence into your outline as is.
2. Reread the paragraph for tangential sentences. I'm not talking about tangents from the essay thesis: I mean tangents from the paragraph's topic sentence. It is when a paragraph does things or addresses issues we didn't originally expect, but these things still may be relevant to the essay as a whole. Take the sentences that best represents the shift or tangent and make it a subtopic of the paragraph's topic on the outline.
3. Repeat until the essay is done. Do this process for each and every paragraph. Don't fret too much over the essay thesis, but focus on identifying the sentences that mark changes in topic throughout the essay and within paragraphs.
4. Revise. If you've done it right, you've just identified topic consistency issues in your essay, which will help you go back and make the necessary changes. This may be as simple as revising the topic sentence to accommodate a concept introduced in the paragraph, or it could require hefty revisions.

I recently did this with an essay of mine, and while most of my paragraphs were fine, a few introduced tangents. I had to use a variety of strategies to fix these issues. Almost all of them required some revision to the topic sentence, and while a couple didn't need anything else (to resolve the tangent), most needed more attention. I had rewritten sentences, and deleted some unnecessary words.

Thankfully, though, no paragraphs had more than one tangent. With one exception.

After I identified the topic sentence of one paragraph, I identified four tangents.

Four. An essay as a whole shouldn't have any. I had a paragraph with four. I identified the issues, so that as I moved to the next draft, I could outline properly and make the necessary changes. But had I never taken these measures, I probably never would have found and fixed these tangents, and would have only made the matter worse when doing normal revisions. I probably would have encountered this paragraph and would have known there were problems, but without identifying the topic sentence and tangents, the issue would have remained muddled and my attempts to mend it would have just made it more confusing.

The main lesson to be learned from this is outlining is more than just summarizing what a paragraph says or what you want it to say. Readers don't have the luxury of knowing what you're thinking. They have to go off of what you have written. So, make sure what you give readers is clear and coherent, from sentences, to topics and paragraphs, to the thesis.

Show that you Know: Source Integration Overview

Source integration is a matter of properly introducing, referencing, citing, and explaining research sources. On the one hand this is important for coherent writing. On the other, it's an important way to demonstrate familiarity with the research itself. If a source is poorly integrated, it suggests the writer didn't understand the information.

So, when you embark on a research project and are faced with referencing your research in your essay, take the following into consideration.

• Research First: When starting a research project, you shouldn't start with drafting the actual essay. Instead, invest in research and learn more about your topic.
• Active Research: Good source integration means good research, and good research means taking the time to read closely, take notes, and evaluate your sources.
• Take Notes: Jotting down interesting information, highlighting or bookmarking intriguing passages, and otherwise making personal records of what you learn from your research.
• Introduce & Explain sources: Any time you put research into your own writing you are repurposing and recontextualizing it. Therefore, it is essential to take the time to explain your research before summarizing, paraphrasing, or quoting it (also, see Hit & Run Quotes below).
• Summarize: Explaining the main points, thesis, and arguments of a source.
• Paraphrase: Taking a selection of a larger piece and reiterating the main points in your own words.
• Quote: Using the exact words of a source in your own piece.
• Blended Words: Carefully integrating a quote with your own words.
• In-Text Citations: Knowing where to place in-text citations, and why they go there.
• Synthesis: Finding and recognizing where your sources have related points so you can reference them together.

Knowing how to integrate sources is important, but sometimes a good way to figure out why we do something is to understand how not to do it.

• Hit & Run Quotes: This term comes from a book entitled They Say/I Say, and it refers to improperly introduced and explained quotes.
• Patchwriting: Paraphrasing and quoting at the same time and without quotation marks. This involves taking a selection from a source, changing a few words here and there, and not treating it as a quote. This can be borderline plagiarism. Instead, quote or use more of your own words.
• Just the first few pages: Don't just rely on a few pithy statements from the opening pages of a book or article; take the time to go through the entire piece and you'll find more useful information.
• Excessive Integration: There is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Sometimes, it's easier to just quote ad nauseum or even give too much supplementary information.
• Plagiarism: The failure to properly acknowledge research, or, taking the work of another passing it off as your own. This is one of the worst things you can ever do.

Improper source integration can harm an essay. Sometimes it’s easy to just drop in quotes or citations and call it good. However, good source integration is more than just a stylistic issue. Coherent writing means a coherent thought process, so coherently integrating sources suggests a better understanding of the material. An author who drops in quotes willy-nilly probably just found and crammed them in there and doesn’t understand what they are saying. Taking the time to introduce, explain, synthesize, and blend shows you know the information well enough it is part of your own thought process and knowledge: it shows you are confident in your knowledge and you can control the information.

Is It Worth Using? The Appropriateness of Sources and The Rhetorical Triangle

Not all sources are created equally. Some sources are better than others.

This post deals with research, but not how to use research. Rather, whether or not the sources are worth using. Unreliable or inappropriate sources can actually hurt your credibility because it suggests your research is insufficient, and if the information you are using to develop your argument is bad, then your argument will also be bad.

The hard part is in determining whether or not a source is reliable. Granted there are some indicators that will almost guarantee good sources – government web pages, peer reviewed journals, university publications – but these aren't the only reliable sources, and only deal with one aspect of reliability: who published it? While this can be a good start, it is important to evaluate a source from multiple angles. The angles I recommend evaluating from stem from the Rhetorical Triangle:

• Ethos: In a way, Ethos is how an author presents themselves in their writing: their ability to demonstrate their authority in the text itself. They may do this by referencing their own research or referencing their experience and work in the field, which is sometimes evident through their terminology and style. In short, whether or not the text presents itself authoritatively.
• Logos: If the source's conclusions don't make sense, or if they rely on logical fallacies to support their claims, then the source is not reliable. The source should move easily from topic to topic, without any jumps in logic, and should be in agreement with other sources on the same topic.
• Pathos: For whom was it written? This actually returns to the issue of publication; peer reviewed pieces will be written for experts. It is possible to identify the intended readership of a piece based on how detailed it is, or on the terminology used. A piece that appropriately uses specified vocabulary will be for a more educated audience than one that doesn't, and one that misuses terminology will be one to stay away from.

Evaluating sources is a matter of looking for textual evidence showing the author's appropriate use of Ethos, Pathos, and Logos. For a classic example, I turn to Wikipedia. Wikipedia gets a bad rap because it is collaborative - anyone and everyone can go and make changes to it and it is frequently shot down on that basis alone. However, like I said before, that’s only looking at it from one perspective: it’s important to consider it from multiple angles:

• Ethos: Despite the collaborative, anyone-can-do-it nature of Wikipedia, most Wikipedia pages have references lists and citations, like any decent piece of research. These pages are also checked and double checked by users who make sure that the information is correct and accurately presented. Whatever few bad vandals there are, there are many more that make sure the information is good.
• Logos: The information on Wikipedia tends to make sense: it's logical, and users can keep the information straight. With this in mind though, it's a good idea to go back and double check Wikipedia pages in case there was faulty information. So, it could not be reliable on this basis, but it isn't the nail in the coffin for this resource.
• Pathos: It's an encyclopedia. Encyclopedias are designed to be neutral and provide readily understandable information for people who have even a superficial understanding. This means the information on Wikipedia, while likely trustworthy, will not go into any substantial depth. The information is cursory; superficial. It's basic information that someone doing serious research should already know.

In short, Wikipedia is a reliable source – but it is not an appropriate one. It’s information is accurate, but superficial. You can do better.

Once we stop and understand that just because something is reliable does not mean it is appropriate, we can look at our research differently. It's like when I have students who count fact sheets as resources: lists of dates, figures, and sometimes fancy info-graphics without any serious analysis. The information may be perfectly reliable, but if you are committed to doing serious research, leave the sundries aside and focus on the sources that explore the concepts in detail.

Active Research: An Overview of Research

Every composition course I’ve ever taught has had a research component, and in some it’s more prevalent than others. With each course, I hope my students understand that they take composition classes not just to learn to write but to be better prepared to work in the disciplines they're studying. I want my students to understand research is an important part of why they’re in school. We don't just research to satisfy assignment requirements, but to learn: it’s the same reason we go to school.

Good research requires more than skimming a few sources and quoting a few quaint lines. It involves a lot of work to properly read and understand the research being done, so here’s a few things to bear in mind:

• Selection: Taking the first few results on a Google search or books from the library shelf and only using these is not research. It's important to read, or even skim, through a plethora of sources to determine which ones are worth taking a closer look at. It may take some time to find sources pertinent to your topic.
• Close Reading and Note Taking: Skimming is okay when selecting which sources to use, but research requires more than just that. Research involves reading closely and taking notes to help yourself understand, process, and, most importantly, retain the information.
• Authority: An expert in a field can tell when someone who isn't an expert tries to pass themselves off as one. Having authority as a researcher and writer means you recognize and understand the breadth and complexity of your field, while also understanding there is a lot you just don't know yet.
• Hypothesis: A hypothesis is what you expect your thesis to be. In order to properly hypothesize, you need to have a basic understanding of the topic – and you need research to do that.
• Quoting and Paraphrasing: It isn't enough to just read something and cite it; you need to take the information and fairly and correctly present it in your writing and develop upon those ideas.
• Summary: Similar to quoting and paraphrasing, but rather than selections from a piece, summarizing involves describing the entire piece, cover to cover.
• Evaluation: Determining whether or not a source is worth using. This is more than the aforementioned selection because it’s going from if a source is worth reading to considering its reliability or how it can be used.
• Citing: Making sure you are showing credit where credit is due. Properly citing shows your understanding of conventions in your discipline and respect for those whose work you are using. Any time you use the ideas, concepts, or words of others, you show where it came from.
• Plagiarism: Failing to cite. Not showing where you got your ideas from is tantamount to stealing. Don't do it.

In addition to relevant topics, a few genres deal specifically with research.

• Annotated Bibliography: A list of sources with accompanying commentary, general summaries or evaluations of the sources in question. These are rarely published but are extremely useful tools in research.
• Literature Review: These can be stand alone essays, but are generally the opening pages to research pieces. They address the research going into the piece itself, demonstrating how the writer developed their conclusions and hypotheses, while simultaneously establishing their authority through their familiarity with the research.

When you approach research assignments, don't just stop when you have enough to fill a works cited page and scatter a few citations in your writing. Research is an invaluable opportunity to learn, to become more knowledgeable and expert about your topic, to hone your interests in specific ways, or to even learn just where your interests lie. Research, therefore, cannot be passive: it has to be active, involving multiple steps and hard work, not because it's important to do research assignments, but because it is important to learn.

Organization: An Overview

Organization is ubiquitous and yet invisible. It’s an issue identified with words like “flow,” and transition,” terms that are neither technical nor specific. An essay should flow, but what does a flowing essay look or sound like? Should an essay flow like a river?...What does that even mean?

Maybe a different comparison. 

In filmmaking, editing is the process of piecing together the different shots of film into a coherent whole. It involves sifting through the filmed footage and finding the best parts to include and putting them together seamlessly: so that you don’t even realize it’s going on. Poor editing stands out. Good editing goes unnoticed.

A well organized essay will do the same thing. You’ll be able to move from word to word, sentence to sentence, and paragraph to paragraph without stopping to notice the fact the subject matter has changed or shifted. Organization is supposed to make the transition from topic to topic smooth and understandable: to tame the beast that composing an essay.

There are many topics that address the finer nuances of organization, none of which I have time to adequately discuss here; I’ll have to devote a specific post to each one later. For now, a simple overview will have to suffice.

• Outlining: Listing the topics you are going to write about in the order you are going to write about them.
• Methods of Organization: Using a specific form or model to give your essay a way to disseminate the information. There are a lot of different methods, and sometimes an essay will employ several.
• Transitions: Statements at the start and ending of paragraphs designed to signal the subject matter is changing. And an issue with which I have mixed feelings.
• Balance: Making sure each topic receives a fair amount of attention, and the essay is not spending undue time and attention where it should not.
• Thesis Consistency: Tracking the development of the essay’s thesis from the very start to the very end of the essay.
• Paragraph Structure: Not just the essay but the information in paragraphs need to be carefully structured and developed.
• Topic Sentences: Sub-theses for your paragraphs.
• Sentence Structure: Determining how best to place information in specific sentences so that their form and structure emphasizes your point.
• Tangents: Oddities that arise and appear out of place. They do not support the thesis and introduce topics not discussed elsewhere.

This is, at best, only some of the issues dealing with organizing. It is, as I said, made up of many topics and finer nuances. I hope that this list gives at least an understanding of how nuanced and ubiquitous it can be.

You may also notice that I left out “flow.” This was a deliberate choice. I use it to describe essays, but only for lack of a better word. I don’t feel like it’s a great teaching tool because all it really says is the information throughout the essay made sense. It doesn’t give me a model to present to a class or write about here, and it may not even mean the student has fully grasped the concept of organization. Maybe they got lucky. Maybe they wrote a way that made sense to their professor. I can teach a lot of things about organization, but I can’t teach “flow.”

My purpose in this introductory post is to emphasize the complexity of an otherwise undervalued topic. There are so many things more apparent when it comes to writing and composition, like thesis, editing, research, citations, etc, that organization can be relegated to a day or two in any curriculum on the rush towards more apparent topics. Therefore, I don’t want to take it lightly or undervalue it. I want to give it the time and attention it deserves.

Take a Thesis along

Think of a swamp. A noisome mass of life and liquid you'd rather not deal with. You'll probably want to get out as quickly as possible. If you forge ahead, then you have to hold your breath and try your luck. And there's nothing to let you know where you should be going.

That's an essay without a thesis: an entanglement of information that may be beneficial but it isn't clear how. Without something to indicate how to get through the quagmire, you'll end up lost and confused. A well crafted thesis in a well written introduction will give a piece of writing purpose and make it comprehensible for your reader.

"Cypresses"

A thesis is a one (or two) sentence statement of what you are trying to do in your essay. Drafting these sentences forces you to identify the relationship between your topics: how they influence one another, refine your overall topic, and what significant thing you have to say that brings everything together. You have to think about the entire essay and what conclusions you make and what your purpose is in writing the essay. This sounds like a daunting task, but if you use the six journalistic questions to sort out and clarify what you’re writing about, drafting a thesis and adhering to it can be much easier.

My other posts on the six journalistic questions deal with amassing ideas, but you need to figure out how and why you are bringing them all together for a thesis. For example, you may say you are interested in silent film and in pharmaceuticals. Two valid topics with nothing to do with one another (at least no connection I can figure out). Writing a thesis forces you to take these different things and explain, in about as succinct a way as possible, what they have to do with one another

The thesis gives you a way to make your responses to the Six Journalistic Questions more pertinent and interconnected as you say you are going to “compare and contrast this and that,” or “demonstrate how this can help resolve such and such an issue.” That lets the reader know what you are writing about, but also how you are using the information.

A thesis lets the reader know what to expect from the essay: what information you are dealing with and how you are dealing with it. It can be easy to slosh from paragraph to paragraph, but then you're leading your reader through an information quagmire. Make sure you have refined your topic and that your thesis shows up early and clearly enough that, no matter how messy the essay may be, there's something to give it purpose.

"Saltpancrk12"

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Works Cited

"Cypresses". Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cypresses.jpg#/media/File:Cypresses.jpg

"Saltpancrk12" by Adam.J.W.C. - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Saltpancrk12.jpg#/media/File:Saltpancrk12.jpg

How will you use it? Evaluating Research Sources

This post has been replaced by the post "More than Quaint Quotes: Source Assessment", posted Wednesday, April 27th. Please refer to that post.

Part of evaluating sources, particularly for annotated bibliographies, is determining how and why they are useful. Apart from considering whether or not a source is reliable, it is important to survey how you expect to use the information you’ve found. To describe this, I have identified three different ways to use sources: as background Information, thesis Support, and results. By considering your sources in these different ways, it gives you a good idea of what to look for in them and how you will end up using them in your research. Also, bear in mind that one source may be useful in more than one area.

Background Information

Depending on your topic or your audience, you may need to take some time to address some of the basics in your field or a sub field if you are bringing several topics together. For example, if you were writing about what music to have playing during athletics practice and you were writing it to coaches, you’ll need to find sources that offer basic information on music. This helps to show your own understanding of the field and briefly introduces your audience to the field. This information generally appears in literature reviews at the start of formal research essays and demonstrates your own understanding of the field.

Thesis Support

It is one thing to understand the basics in the field, It is another thing to demonstrate and suggest ways to apply specific information. This information is more specific and gives additional credence to your thesis by showing how you reached it in the first place. It may be easy to shirk thesis support because a thesis is your own ideas and thoughts, but it is still important to show how your ideas work within the ideological framework of your discipline.

Returning to the music in athletic practice example, you could find studies that look at different genres of music and athletic performance. There could be certain songs, artists, themes to the lyrics, or tempos that could shape your own hypothesis. Maybe some researchers have looked at how some songs are better for practices, and others in preparation for big games. Once you have this information, you can demonstrate you have more than a rudimentary knowledge of the subject as you build it up to support your thesis.

Results

Being able to demonstrate the validity of your claim or argument, or to show it is more than an abstract theory, involves demonstrating your idea works by focusing on its outcome. This can be your experimentation, tangible evidence done elsewhere, or a thought exercise; it can vary depending on the situation or discipline.

This information generally comes in two forms: it can be either anticipatory or proven. If it is anticipatory, it hasn’t been proven by experimentation, but you have something to suggest what you think is reasonable. If it is proven, then you have concrete examples to support your conclusions. For the athletics and music example, there might be studies that have already employed what you are suggesting. If so, you could cite these studies, possibly as both evidence of results and as part of your thesis support. 

Including a discussion of your results, whether anticipated or proven, with research to back it up, to show an understanding of how information and practice can coalesce into a solid result. It shows you’ve thought your ideas through from start to finish, and you can find ways to make your ideas and your research useful beyond abstract concepts.

No matter what, a strong research piece should have a smattering of each research source. Without any one of them, a piece will be lackluster, missing important information to either establish author credibility r, thesis validity, and the usability of the new ideas.

When evaluating sources, consider not just whether or not a source is useful, but how it will be useful. Consider what kind of information it is and how you will use it so you know where to include it.

Writing Exercise: The Annotated Bibliography

I will not mince words. Annotated Bibliographies are weird. They almost always precede larger research projects, are rarely published, and have a set of rules far apart from most every other form of writing.

Rather than the steady flow from paragraph to paragraph, each one building on ideas and concepts, Annotated Bibliographies list citations of research sources, accompanied by annotations of the important aspects of the research. Hence the name Annotated Bibliography.

They’re like archipelagos: scattered, separated, independent, but interrelated.

People who encounter them for the first time sometimes have a hard time figuring out just what exactly it is they’re dealing with and why they’re dealing with it. A lot of the major rules about writing - transitions, organization, and in some instances the valued thesis, introduction, and conclusion are tossed to the wind. But annotated bibliographies can be invaluable in a research project.

Part of the problem is that the requirements vary from situation to situation. I’ve assigned annotated bibliographies for five different courses at three different schools, and was assigned them as an undergraduate and graduate student. Each time the parameters have been different, but there are a few constants.

The main constant is the form. At its core, an annotated bibliography is a list of citations with annotations, i.e., a few paragraphs describing the citation. What these annotations contain varies.

The first, and most common, annotation is the summary, an explanation of the source itself. This represents the content of the source without any interpretation, criticism, or other analysis. If you can’t reiterate the main points of a source, then you can’t summarize it. If you can’t understand it well enough to put it into your words, you should sit down with your research and get to know it better so you can.

The second annotation focuses on the rhetoric, and is sometimes called the evaluation. Rather than determine whether or not a source is useful, this determines whether or not it’s credible and reliable, generally through a rhetorical analysis. This considers the quality of the source’s arguments, if the piece is properly written, whether or not the author is credible.

The third annotation is an evaluation of the sources’ usefulness and can sometimes be called an assessment or reflection. Here, the writer gauges how helpful and relevant the research is. This is an opportunity for the writer to move from the research alone and consider their project in the long run. Sometimes determining a source’s usefulness calls for references to other pieces of research, but the main thing here is you can identify what you expect to do with the source.

There are certainly more out there, but these seem to show up the most.

Different circumstances will call for different approaches. Sometimes you may only need a summary. If it’s for a class, some teachers may be more interested in their students deciphering rhetoric than applying the source to a larger project. The purpose though is largely the same regardless of the situation. Annotated bibliographies exist so we can put aside a lot of the issues that come with writing a research essay and just focus on the research.

Outlines Make Everything Better

Usually when I discuss an essay draft with a student, I ask if they’ve written an outline.

This isn't because it’s a routine question.

It almost always comes after some discussion about the status of the essay and the student's concerns.
Many of the problems I have encountered in writing – that of my students and students I have worked with as a tutor – stems back to issues of organization, which can be resolved or improved with an outline.

Outlines seem simple. They're lists of information and subjects to be discussed in an essay. A lot of people ignore this step though, because they already have a collection of paragraphs or they have an idea of what they are going to write and so don't worry about making a list.

But an outline makes everything clearer.

A piece of writing is a mass of words running left to right, and hundreds of them can fill a page without much to say where one point ends and another begins. Writing an outline is a way to take that mass of information and express it clearly, simply, and succinctly.

Seems easy enough. The first benefit is a list takes the task of writing an essay and turns it into a series of topics: one daunting task is now a list of manageable tasks. Second, because you have a series of specified points, it is unlikely you’ll be blurring topics in a single paragraph. Third,  because you have sorted the ideas, it is easier to understand why you’ve put topics where you have and what they have to do with the whole. Each paragraph should have something to do with the paragraphs before and after it, and having an outline makes it easier to recognize those points. From there, it makes it easier to find, remove, or repurpose tangential sections or paragraph. Fourth, once each paragraph is in a logical place, it becomes easier to transition from paragraph to paragraph.

Overall, an outline helps your essay become more refined, specific, focused, and easier to follow.

Outlines aren’t a panacea though. They still require attention and detail, and can themselves be a couple of pages if the essay is longer.

You also may start with a solid list, but things don't always go according to plan. Enter, one of my favorite tools, the reverse outline.

Reverse outlines are outlines you do after you've written an essay. Go back through your writing, and identify what's going on in each paragraph. Chances are they’re not what you planned or expected them  to be. This can be illuminating for the same reasons doing an outline is a good first step. It helps you figure out what you've addressed and where the essay has grown as you come up with new ideas. Maybe you discovered you need to address a certain topic in a different place or the topic of a paragraph changed from what you intended. Basically, you discover you need to reorganize a few things. So the next step is to make a new outline as a guide to what you need to do with the next draft..

How many outlines? I would say there should be at least one, maybe two for every draft.

Here's how to use this tool:

• Put together an outline before writing, if you haven't already.
  
• Then write a draft and make an outline based on what you wrote.
  
• Revise that outline to fix whatever issues you came across while making your outline.
  
• Use that revised outline to revise your essay, and then, put together another reverse outline.
  

Outlines give you a way to look at an entire piece on just one or two pieces of paper. Everything whittled down to the bare necessities. Whether it’s the start of a project, or just one in need of revision, taking a step back and transforming your essay into a list is clarifying.

Happy Accidents in Research

I have on my bookshelf a copy of a 1996 book entitled Novel to Film, written by a professor named Brian McFarlane. I discovered this book rather recently, but I wish I’d had it years ago.

When I was an undergraduate I did a research project, basically my senior thesis, on novel to film adaptation. My approach was simple and direct, and coincidentally, very similar to the approach taken by McFarlane. I was surprised to discover that what I had done, someone else had done years before. There were, of course, substantial differences: different films and criteria for selecting them, and different terminology; but the theory, the approach, and the premise of my study and his book parallelled one another.

When I learned this I was disappointed, but not because I saw a piece of work with a similar premise much better than mine. I was just disappointed I didn't have this book years ago when I did that study. if I’d had this book at my disposal, I could have spent my time and energy developing upon McFarlane's ideas rather than unknowingly presenting a variation.


It may not seem like it but coincidences like this are something to be happy about. Research has twists and turns, and sometimes projects need to be significantly diverted from where they were originally expected to go. Some research projects are undone because something new is discovered, and other projects are enhanced by it. Yet no matter, what a researcher, regardless of skill or experience, can't get discouraged by changes or new information. It is better to use it to further develop your thoughts and ideas. Just as you ought to with any other piece of research.


Had I found McFarlane's book back then, I wouldn't have changed my project much. I still had something worth saying despite the similarities. I still had something worth adding to this academic discussion. If I am to be upset about anything, it isn’t my work becoming redundant but that I missed an opportunity to do more with a subject that I care deeply about.


There's a lot of information out there. Young researchers taking their first serious steps away from Wikipedia and into the academic writing deluge may find their ideas, or some variation thereof, have already been tackled by another. Someone else's work on a similar premise is merely an opportunity to further your own research, to put your own spin on it, to find something they overlooked, misinterpreted, or to test their premise in a new and different way. That's really all I did with McFarlane's work. I just didn't know it until years later.

Long Term, Short Term

I want to start this off on a pessimistic note. I don't like New Years Resolutions. I never hear people in November or December talking about how their lives are better because of their resolutions. If anything it's “You know that thing I wanted to do this year that I didn't? Well next year I will get it done!” I think we forget that projects, goals, and resolutions get done in short term steps and not in long term hopes.


So, I'm sorry, this post is going to join in the cascade of “Good and Bad Ideas for New Years Resolutions” blog posts and articles.


I have on my desk between me and the computer monitor, a few index cards. Even though books, pens, and papers crowd this space, I always make sure I can see them.. They are my to-do lists and goals.


This started a few months ago. Every night, I make a to-do list of the things that I need to do everyday: exercising,personal reading, and household tasks (I miss dishwashers). After these, I have the MITs – Most Important Tasks. Grading, writing, course development go in here – stuff that has to get done. Then secondary: stuff that I'd like to get done or I could get a head start on, or even just projects I'm working on but didn't think I'd have time to deal with that day. I write a new one of these every night on an index card and leave it on my desk. If I'm spending most of the day away from my study, I tuck it in my wallet and take it with me.


But this is just one of the cards. The other is the weekly goals. These I categorize by project. I identify the different classes I teach and what I'll have to get done for them for that week, like writing quizzes and grading assignments, what books I'm reading and how much I want to have done, and whatever research I'm working on. It's basically stuff I know I need to get done this week.


When I write my daily to-do lists, I refer back to the weekly one. When I write the weekly one, I refer back to my monthly goals, which I have started keeping on my computer where I can keep a closer look at what I'm doing and when it gets done. Alongside the monthly goals are the quarterly ones, which includes 12 blog posts – one for each week of January, February, and March.


I'm not comfortable with year-long goals. Maybe I'll get there, but things change too quickly and too easily. This time last year, I never would have put “Start a Composition Blog” on a list of New Years Resolutions, or, more personally, “Get accepted to a research conference” or “Submit a scholarly article for publication,” nor “Start online teaching.” But each of those has happened. When I got a second teaching job, I had to, for a time, put my personal research on the shelf as I underwent training and preparation to teach in a different environment for a new institution. Because I take things one day at a time, I can keep track of what I need to do, what's really important, and what I need to do with my time.


Don't forget the short term when dealing with the long term. Maybe your resolution is to get straight A's. That's a wonderful goal, but it doesn't have any planning or action. Figure out what you need to do in the short term to do your best at achieving long term goals and do it regularly. Keep track of your assignments, classes, readings, and get them in on time and you may discover those A's are more work than you expected, but it's spread out over more time and with more focus.


Happy New Year and I wish you well in your endeavors, whether they be personal, professional, or academic.