2 Assignments w/1 Feedback Paper

Integrating Research, Revising Arguments

This unit, you are revising an essay from earlier in the course. Throughout the course, we have adopted a conversational stance toward academic writing, envisioning each essay as a rejoinder in a larger, ongoing dialogue. This unit’s revision to incorporate scholarly research is no exception; we must “think of sources not as answers but as voices inviting you into a community of interpretation, discussion, and debate” (Rossenwasser and Stephen 299).

In Writing Analytically, David Rossenwasser and Jill Stephen observe and warn against adopting this--a common stance toward research:

Many people never get beyond like/dislike responses with secondary materials. If they agree with what a source says, they say it’s “good,” and they cut an paste the part they can use as an answer. If the source somehow disagrees with what they already believe, they say it’s “bad,” and they attack it or—along with readings they find “hard” or “boring”—discard it, As readers they have been conditioned to develop a point of view on a subject without first figuring out the conversation (the various points of view) that their subject attracts. (300)

Rossenwasser and Stephen present four strategies you might find valuable this unit as incorporate research to “expand the conversation” about globalization:

Strategy #1: Make your sources speak. “Quote, paraphrase, or summarize in order to analyze—not in place of analyzing. Don’t assume that either the meaning of the source material or your reason for including it is self-evident” (300). Here Rossenwasser and Stephen suggest something called the “sandwich method” for integrating sources. Writers should always “sandwich” a source with a preview statement and, following the reference, with analysis linking the material to the writer’s thesis. This might remind you of the "signal phrase" strategy we explored in Unit Two.

Strategy #2: Use your sources to ask questions, not just to provide answers. “Use your selections from sources as a means of raising issues and questions. Avoid the temptation to plug in such selections as answers that require no further commentary or  elaboration” (301). Ideally, the scholarly article you  located for this unit’s revision will help you to re-envision your thesis, or to populate your supporting arguments with new voices and perspectives to accomplish a more sophisticated understanding of globalism. Moreover, in relationship to this unit’s reading on the rhetorical appeals, look for ways that your sources can complement your arguments with additional appeals to logos, pathos, or ethos.

Strategy #3: Put your sources in conversation with one another. “Rather than limiting yourself to agreeing or disagreeing with your sources, aim for conversation with and among them” (303). Conversation—the metaphor of our course! Consider signal sentences or phrases that will help you accomplish this conversational effect— for  example, “In  further  analyzing the  effects  of  globalism on  the  educational context, this source adds another dimension to an issue raised by Appiah and Foer…”

Strategy #4: Find your own role in the conversation. “Even in cases in which you find a source’s position entirely congenial, it is not enough simply to agree with it. In order to converse with a source, you need to find some way of having a distinct voice in that conversation” (306). Personal experience can—and should—bear upon your analysis of perspectives found via research.