Response to Melissa Dawson's Thoughts on 6 & 7

I also found that chapter six presented an interesting approach. So far in school I have only had to research for myself. In a job situation, you have to research for others and try to meet their needs with what you are writing. Trying to find what others might view as useful is a daunting task. But, if done correctly, can really help whomever you are presenting your information to. This can be challenging if you don’t know what the reader(s) want to know or if you don’t know them. To try to help figure this out it would be good to use the ideas that were presented in class: talk to others about the person, read things they have written or requested to know about the topic, etc. Hopefully, we will be able to practice more of this before we find ourselves in the workforce writing only what we find interesting and useful.

Good old topic sentences. I have written many of those over the years. Combine topic sentences with transitions, echo words, and forecasting statements and your reader will be significantly more likely to understand and follow what you are trying to say. Headings are also helpful when appropriate, which they are many times in professional writing. All in all, you had great insight into chapters 6 and 7.

Chapters 6 & 7

Chapter six gave plenty of useful information for conducting research. Guideline three went over the value of checking each source for leads to other sources in your topic area. I have found this to be very useful when researching. It is great when your source leads you to another that is just as helpful. The book’s point on carefully evaluating what information you find is very important. There are many times when I have been researching and found my sources are incorrect and biased. Especially with the internet, it is easy to find sources that look well-researched when in fact it was written by someone in high school who didn’t know what they were talking about.

Chapter seven has some interesting information about creating ideas. Personally, I am not in to freewriting just because I don’t like to write with no specific purpose. However, the book presented the idea tree and clustering which I remember from middle school. I haven’t used these approaches in a while and am now considering using them for my research paper. The last idea about conducting a survey seems a bit daunting but if the right questions are asked I believe much information can be gathered.