Writing Analytically, 6th Edition - Rosenwasser, David & Stephen, Jill.original_ [205]
Select from your “what’s going on” list one book-length source that you’ve discovered is vital to your subject or topic. As a general rule, if a number of your indexes, bibliographies, and so forth, refer you to the same book, it’s a good bet that this source merits consultation.
Locate two book reviews on the book, and write a summary that compares the two reviews. Ideally, you should locate two reviews that diverge in their points of view or in what they choose to emphasize. Depending on the length and complexity of the reviews, your comparative summary should require two or three pages.
In most cases, you will find that reviews are less neutral in their points of view than are abstracts, but they always do more than simply judge. A good review, like a good abstract, should communicate the essential ideas contained in the source. It is the reviewer’s aim also to locate the source in some larger context, by, for example, comparing it to other works on the same subject and to the research tradition the book seeks to extend, modify, and so forth. Thus, your summary should try to encompass how the book contributes to the ongoing conversation on a given topic in the field.
Append to your comparative summary a paragraph or two that explains how this exercise has affected your thinking about your topic.
Obviously, you could choose to do a comparative summary of two articles, two book chapters, and so forth, rather than two book reviews. But in any event, if you use books in your research, you should always find a means of determining how these books are received in the relevant critical community.
The next step, if you were writing a research paper, would involve the task known as synthesis, in which you essentially write a comparative discussion that includes more than two sources. Many research papers start with an opening paragraph that synthesizes prevailing, perhaps competing, interpretations of the topic being addressed. Few good research papers consist only of such synthesis, however. Instead, writers use synthesis to frame their ideas and to provide perspective on their own arguments; the synthesis provides a platform or foundation for their own subsequent analysis.
It is probably worth adding that bad research papers fail to use synthesis as a point of departure. Instead, they line up their sources and agree or disagree with them. To inoculate you against this unfortunate reflex, review the section in Chapter 13 entitled Six Strategies for Analyzing Sources, especially Strategy 6: Find Your Own Role in the Conversation.
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UNIT III
MATTERS OF FORM: THE SHAPES THAT THOUGHT TAKES
Chapter 15
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Forms and Formats Across the Curriculum
THIS IS A CHAPTER ABOUT ORGANISATION— the forms and formats writers use to structure their ideas. The first section of the chapter concentrates on disciplinary formats—the prescribed structures for finished papers in the academic disciplines. The best way to learn these formats is from professors in specific disciplines, but this book can teach you what these look like, their purpose, and more generally, how to analyze them so you can better understand what they do.
The rest of the chapter will then broaden the focus from specific disciplinary formats to more general matters of form:
ways of grasping the overall shape of a paper
how and where to locate the thesis
how and where to use transitions
ways of organizing paragraphs
Overall, the chapter overall seeks to increase your rhetorical awareness, that is, your awareness of how an audience’s attitudes and needs can affect the shape of your writing.
It’s important to recognize that all organizational