Discovery Tutorial

Starting your research.

• Students find that the hardest part is getting started.
• Research is more than just finding sources (find out what's being said)
• Find a topic that fascinates you
• Investigate about something you know and care about.

If you've been given a specific assignment

• Does it specify research methods?
• Is a research proposal needed?
• Is it a specific genre?

If you get to choose your topic.

• Choose something that intrigues you.
• Choose something that relates to your personal interests.

Analyze rhetorical situation

Audience

• Who will be reading what you write?
• Expectations? Knowledge? they might have
• What sources will they consider credible?

Purpose

• What do you hope to accomplish by doing research?
• Trying to inform? Argue? or something else?

Genre

• Have you been assigned a particular genre?
• Will you argue a position?
• Narrate a historical event?
• Analyze data?

Stance

• Your attitude towards the topic?
• How can you establish authority over them?

Narrow your topic

• Good research should be substantive.
• Not too broad
• Find out what's being said.

Background research

• See your topic in larger context.
• formulate questions to guide your research
• Articulate a question your reasearch will answer

Finding sources/considering research methods.

• Consider what kind of sources you'll need.
• Primary & secondary sources
• Scholarly & popular sources
• Older & more current sources

"They say"

"They say"

• A writer needs to indicate clearly not only what their thesis is but also what larger conversation that thesis is responding to.
• Keep an audience engaged
• Explain what you are responding to.
• Start with what "others are saying"

Templates for introducing "they say"

• It has been common today to dismiss ______
• A number of sociologists have recently suggested that x's work has several fundamental problems.

Templates for standard views

• Conventional wisdom has it that _____
• common sense seem to dictate that ____

making "they say" into what you say

• I've always believed that museums are boring
• When i was a child, I used to think that ______