Michael Kleine decided to write this article after walking into the library and seeing a lot of high school and college students writing "research papers." While watching them, he realized that they were doing actual research as much as they were translating textual fragments from different books and encyclopedias. He decided to write an article about what college-level academics-teachers do when they engage in an academic research.
In his article, "What is it we do when we write articles like this one and how can we get students to join us?," Kleine defines writing as a process that includes research, data-gathering and reading from start to finish. He believes that writing that includes research of any kind must be strategic, since the writer has to collect data and with an established and focused sense on their goal; and heuristic because he has to accommodate and consider unexpected data and insights that are discovered in the process.
The author developed a metaphor for strategic and heuristic modes of work based on Joseph Campbell's Primitive Mythology. He distinguishes "hunters" and "gatherers." A hunter is the one who strategically finds what he's looking for, and the gatherer is the one that heuristically discovers that which might be useful. Kleine realizes that writers are both hunters and gatherers during different stages of their research.
Keeping with his research, Kleine segmented the process of writing into four stages according to what he thinks that researchers/writers need to do. The four stages are collecting data, sifting the data rhetorically, seeking patterns in the data and translating their findings into writing.
Based on his metaphor of the hunters and gatherers, and the four stage process of writing; Kleine interviewed eight professors at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Three of them were from the English department, two from the Natural Sciences department, two from the Social Sciences department, and one from the History department.
As he was interviewing them, he found a lot of similarities between the writers. Kleine found out that all of them wrote out of interest based on conversations, reading the work of a peer or listening to a paper by a peer. They all agree that writing is a complex academic process where they move freely and flexible between strategic hunting and heuristic gathering.
Kleine also found differences between the professors from different areas. He noticed that the scientists, the social scientists, and the composition theorist remembered more about the research process itself. They think of research as the process of gathering, observing and quantifying that is prior to writing. They only write to communicate the results of their research. Meanwhile the subjects in the humanities talked about the audience and purpose, problems of establishing authority, about the rhetorical dimension of their thinking and writing. They think of writing and reading as activities inseparable from the research process.
Kleine also analyzed the different disciplines using James Kinneavy's discourse triangulation. This means, classifying a discourse according to it's purpose, and by the element of the total discourse situation that it emphasizes. Hence, a discourse that emphasizes the encoder is expressive; a discourse that emphasizes the decoder is persuasive; a discourse that emphasizes the reality or the world is referential; and a discourse that emphasizes the signal or language itself is literary. Based on this definitions, he classifies the scientists' discourse as referential and the humanities professors' discourse as persuasive.
Kleine concludes his article talking to the teaching community and giving advises about how to teach academic writing. He believes in creating genuine research communities in the classes and wants the classroom to become a place of researching, reading, writing and talking. He thinks that they need to encourage students to select, intelligently and critically, research procedures relevant to their own questions and problems. Kleine thinks that among academics, the research process is recursive, too complicated to code and incredibly rich that students must be a part of.
Pensonaly, I found myself described in the scene in the library when Kleine sees all those students copying information from books to their paper without doing an actual research process. Worst than that, my primary source is the internet and I'm sure I'm not the only one who does her research this way. After reading this article i totally agree with Kleine about the research process. It has not to be about translating information, but about selecting, analyzing, synthesizing, selecting and rejecting. It's a lot of hard work but I think it's worth doing it.
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Reading Response 1
In his article ´Argument as Conversation: The role of Inquiry in Writing a Researched Argument´, Stuart Greene explains to college students how scholarly inquiry is a different kind of research and argument from the kinds we encounter in our everyday lives or earlier schooling. He introduces the idea of writing as a dialogue, not only between author and readers but between everything that has been said or written beforehand about the same issue.
Greene believes that whenever we write an argument, we join a conversation that has already began. In this conversation we'll find other people with different opinions that can agree or not with our point of view. That's why every time you write an argument, the way you position yourself will depend on three things: which previously stated arguments you share, which previously stated arguments you want to refute and which new opinions and supporting information you are going to bring to the conversation.
According to Greene when we develop an argument it is helpful to think of writing as a process of understanding conflicts and answering questions. In this process is really important to do three things. First, we need to identify an issue which the author defines as a fundamental tension that exists between two or more conflicting points of view. Second, we need to identify the situation to frame the issue in a specific context. Third, we need to frame a good question that can be answered with the tools you have. Framing is a metaphor for describing the prospective from which writers present their arguments. Greene compares writers with photographers arguing that writers want us to see the world in one way as opposed to another, not unlike the way a photographer manipulates a camera lens to frame a picture.
Stuart Green believes that there are four reasons to use framing as a strategy for developing an argument. First, because framing encourages you to name your position, distinguishing the way you think. Second, it forces you to offer a definition and a description of the principle around which your argument develops. Third, it enables others to respond to your argument and to generate counterarguments that you will want to engage in the spirit of a conversation. And fourth, framing helps to organize your thoughts and readers'.
I've always thought of research as a process of collecting information for its own sake. After reading Stuart Greene's article I realized that it's much more complex. I totally agree with Greene's concept of argument as a conversation. It's not just about writing and gather information for its own sake; we need to understand ourselves what we are talking about before we explain it to someone else. The most important thing about information is the use we give to it and how we shape it to enter conversations.
QD:
2. Greene uses Burke metaphor to support he's idea of argument as a conversation. In this metaphor the parlor represents the topic of the research. When it says that you arrive late and other are engaged in a heated discussion, he is referring to how when you start a research, this already has been started by someone else before and there already exist different points of view about it. Some of these opinions may or may not agree with yours. When he says that after you leave the parlor, the discussion is still in progress; he means that even though you're done doing your research about this specific topic, other people will continue doing theirs.
3. Framing is a metaphor for describing the prospective from which writers present their arguments. Greene compares writers with photographers arguing that writers want us to see the world in one way as opposed to another, not unlike the way a photographer manipulates a camera lens to frame a picture.
Stuart Green believes that there are four reasons to use framing as a strategy for developing an argument. First, because framing encourages you to name your position, distinguishing the way you think. Second, it forces you to offer a definition and a description of the principle around which your argument develops. Third, it enables others to respond to your argument and to generate counterarguments that you will want to engage in the spirit of a conversation. And fourth, framing helps to organize your thoughts and readers'.
Greene believes that whenever we write an argument, we join a conversation that has already began. In this conversation we'll find other people with different opinions that can agree or not with our point of view. That's why every time you write an argument, the way you position yourself will depend on three things: which previously stated arguments you share, which previously stated arguments you want to refute and which new opinions and supporting information you are going to bring to the conversation.
According to Greene when we develop an argument it is helpful to think of writing as a process of understanding conflicts and answering questions. In this process is really important to do three things. First, we need to identify an issue which the author defines as a fundamental tension that exists between two or more conflicting points of view. Second, we need to identify the situation to frame the issue in a specific context. Third, we need to frame a good question that can be answered with the tools you have. Framing is a metaphor for describing the prospective from which writers present their arguments. Greene compares writers with photographers arguing that writers want us to see the world in one way as opposed to another, not unlike the way a photographer manipulates a camera lens to frame a picture.
Stuart Green believes that there are four reasons to use framing as a strategy for developing an argument. First, because framing encourages you to name your position, distinguishing the way you think. Second, it forces you to offer a definition and a description of the principle around which your argument develops. Third, it enables others to respond to your argument and to generate counterarguments that you will want to engage in the spirit of a conversation. And fourth, framing helps to organize your thoughts and readers'.
I've always thought of research as a process of collecting information for its own sake. After reading Stuart Greene's article I realized that it's much more complex. I totally agree with Greene's concept of argument as a conversation. It's not just about writing and gather information for its own sake; we need to understand ourselves what we are talking about before we explain it to someone else. The most important thing about information is the use we give to it and how we shape it to enter conversations.
QD:
2. Greene uses Burke metaphor to support he's idea of argument as a conversation. In this metaphor the parlor represents the topic of the research. When it says that you arrive late and other are engaged in a heated discussion, he is referring to how when you start a research, this already has been started by someone else before and there already exist different points of view about it. Some of these opinions may or may not agree with yours. When he says that after you leave the parlor, the discussion is still in progress; he means that even though you're done doing your research about this specific topic, other people will continue doing theirs.
3. Framing is a metaphor for describing the prospective from which writers present their arguments. Greene compares writers with photographers arguing that writers want us to see the world in one way as opposed to another, not unlike the way a photographer manipulates a camera lens to frame a picture.
Stuart Green believes that there are four reasons to use framing as a strategy for developing an argument. First, because framing encourages you to name your position, distinguishing the way you think. Second, it forces you to offer a definition and a description of the principle around which your argument develops. Third, it enables others to respond to your argument and to generate counterarguments that you will want to engage in the spirit of a conversation. And fourth, framing helps to organize your thoughts and readers'.
AE
2. The article represents a conversation with the readers and also with others writers who have ever write about Arguments. I would say that Greene practices what he preaches in "Argument as Conversation". I thing he knows what he's talking about and explains it in a way that I was able to understand it. Also he quotes other writers to support his ideas and that's a way to show that there are other authors involved in this conversation.
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