Response to "What Is It We Do When We Write..."

            In his article “What Is It We Do When We Write Articles Like This One – and How Can We Get Students to Join Us?”, Michael Kleine attempts to show students how to change their way of researching papers from a formulistic method to a method filled with inspiration and purpose. He argues that most students just go to the library and transcribe text into their own text to put on their professors’ desks for the sole purpose of getting the paper done. Kleine wishes to change this by having students write about topics they care about and want to learn/spread knowledge about.

            This article relates to the article “Argument as Conversation” in that they both are attempting to get writers to change their simplistic, everyday ways, into something with a real purpose, something that has real meaning to the writers themselves.

           

Getting Ready To Read

           

A friend of mine’s most recent experience of writing using sources and mine share many similarities. We both used our class textbooks and articles on the Internet that were brought to our attention via online catalogues. When used in our writing we both had quotes and cited information that we took out of the articles and summarized in our own words. This seems to me, to be the basic method of writing using sources.

Questions for Discussion and Journaling

1.)           

Kleine is talking about my experiences exactly when he talks about the night library. Going to the library and not focusing on what I am writing about, just blindly transcribing text after text. The way he describes his idea about writing and researching will undoubtedly be my new basis for writing. Rather than boring transcription of books, I will find something interesting in the subject and pursue that, keeping my interest in the subject, and digging deeper and deeper.

3.)

            The sources play a decent role in the research of the professionals Kleine interviews. After all you need at least some information to have an idea of what you’re writing about. Although I think the biggest part of their research was through debating. Passing ideas around between others researching the idea. The role that sources have played in my past research efforts is huge. All of my information I used I had gathered from my sources. The difference between this is that the professionals used sources then debated back and forth about patterns they’ve found and translated and used that information, whereas I just translated the source and put it on paper.

4.)

            What I would change about my research if I did what Kleine talks about would be to boil down the information I have gained from all my sources and debate this information with others who know about the topic. This would increase my knowledge rather than just barely learning anything by transcribing text.

            I think this article was very informative. I was able to see my own research methods from a different point of view and criticize them that way. I realize now that my ‘research’ was hardly research at all! From now on I will have to pay more attention to topics that I research and pick a topic that interests me personally so I can feel as if I have something to gain from the paper.