Planning Again, Chapters 12 and 13

These three sections of the book talk about planning and drafting for what will eventually become your final research paper. Planning Again talks about how forming an outline before you start is not the most important thing, because sometimes it is more helpful to begin writing and THEN create your outline. There is no set time or set procedure to follow; just do what you feel you have to do when you're comfortable doing it. Planning Again also talks about when to start a first draft and topic-based vs. point outlines. Chapter 12 talks about planning your report. It discusses the major mistakes many new researchers make, how a plan can be a good guide, and how it can simplify writing when you sit down to do it. Chapter 13 talks about drafting, and how it is equally as important as planning to the research. It can help you discover new ideas and enhance them, and also work out all of the kinks that you have had in the research up until now. The last section also talks about my biggest challenges, procrastination and writer's block, and helped me not look so warily at the task I must do.
Because my first draft of my essay is coming up soon, these chapters were important for me to read. They will guide me through my first steps toward writing my paper and planning out what I will do in the future. Furthermore, they gave me new ideas to use when planning what I will say, and a new form of an outline that may be helpful. I especially liked the part about procrastination and writer's block, because between the two of them, they will be my downfall. I will take the steps the author's gave on how to avoid it and tackle my research project in smaller, but manageable steps.

Precis The Craft of Research - Part 3: Chapters 10 & 11

Chapter 10 talks about how to respond to other points of view in your essay. In order to write a full, and thoughtful research paper, other points of view must be acknowledged and responded to accordingly; otherwise, the argument will seem one-dimensional and incomplete. Explain the cracks in other points of view, and also why yours seems to be the better alternative. The authors give you a probable solution to just about any problem you might encounter while looking at other arguments. They also give you good ways to think of other points of view if you have trouble coming up with them on your own. Chapter 11 talks about warrants, or statements that connects reasons to claims. The authors discuss everything from creating your own warrants to questioning the relevance and significance of others warrants, and how to address them in your writing.
These chapters are both helpful to me, because they are the first main chapters that address how to look at other points of view. Also, they introduced me to the new term 'warrant' which I will now be keeping an eye out for. In my last essay, I did not generally address other points of view, or include warrants (that I was aware of), and now that I know how to do both, I will use these chapters to do that to the best of my ability.

Precis for Chapters 8 and 9

Chapter 8 talks about your research 'claim', or the answer to your research question. This serves as the main point of the paper, so it is important that it is clear and significant. There is no right or wrong claim, but there are ways to improve to upon the ones you make. For example, by asserting that your claim is specific, while giving you enough to talk about. The claim must also be significant and persuasive to the reader. Chapter 9 discusses the two ways to support your claim, reasons and evidence. Reasons help you logically order your essay in order to make it make sense, while evidence helps support those reasons. The evidence must be reliable and presented in such a way that it makes the reader believe what you are saying, which will be different for all readers.
These two chapters, especially chapter 9, will be helpful to me when I go to plan out my essay. I will need a strong and specific research question and claim, two things that I did not have before. which will help me focus my essay a little better on one, singular goal. Also, the reasons and evidence structure will be useful to follow while planning out my writing, and it will also remain a strong structure on which to build my paper. So far, I have found these two to be some of the most helpful and interesting chapters so far, and I will certainly keep them in mind as I move further into my research.

Precis for Assembling a Research Argument and Chapter 7

In this section of the book, the authors begin to talk about what you are to do once you have collected all of the research you need. One does not want to simply present the facts within the paper, but expand them and apply them to your relevant research problem. This will help you find a solution, and once that is understood, you will have a research argument. The prologue simply introduces this idea and explains how the next few chapters will go deeper into it, while Chapter 7 expands upon it and describes the characteristics of a good research argument. The authors give 5 questions that help examine your research argument; therefore, help you write the essay in a straightforward and to-the-point way. A strong argument leads to a strong paper, and it is a good way to organize your research and thoughts before the actual writing begins.
This process will be helpful to me, because it will help me narrow the idea of my essay and focus in on what specific information I want to include and/or need. For the most part, I skipped this step while writing my last paper, and it may have hurt me and hindered me while I was trying to write my essay. Although I am not far enough along in my research, nor deep enough into analyzing my topic to begin this step, it will be good to keep in mind and a smaller goal to work towards instead of tackling the big essay all at once.