The move from your lit review to your first draft may seem challenging because there is not much cross-over between the two, and you want to make sure you aren't merely lifting chunks of your lit review into your draft.
I want you to begin to explore the differences using your own research as guidance. What are some central claims you believe you will make in your essay (in other words, what do you believe you'll be adding to the existing conversation)? How do these claims differ from your lit review? What are things you need to anticipate for your audience? What are things you'll need to include so that it's obvious who your intended audience will be? Last, what are some things you, as the researcher and the writer, need to keep in mind as you begin to start drafting your essay?
Shoot for 150-250 words.
The central claim of my essay will be that more information is needed to properly understand the relationship between abortion and mental wellbeing. In my essay I am going to explore how different studies and evidence suggest two different answers to the question of how abortion affects the psychological health of women. This differs from my lit review because in my lit review I focused on giving a wide range of facts to show how abortion affects multiple facets of human life. (Example: physical, mental, legislative, societal impacts). I need to anticipate that my audience may not know this controversy exists. To make sure my paper reflects the needs of my audience I must include research about abortion's mental effects before discussing how the research affects post-abortive women. As a researcher I must keep in mind that my essay should 1.) differ from my lit review, 2.) engage my audience, and 3.) include reliable/ non-biased data
ReplyDeleteThe research essay has much more freedom in the language and information used than the Lit Review. By freedom, I mean that I can create a more creative and interesting introduction and conclusion. I can also add information of my own research in the essay where in the Lit Review I couldn’t do that. The essay will revolve around my central claim, which is my question. Other than adding from my own research, I’ll try to grab the audience’s attention by exploring new perceptions of ghosts with strong support from my sources. I need to keep in mind that this essay is exploratory and that I don’t need to answer my question. I also need to make sure that I support my claims with my sources. Other than that, I believe that the organization of the essay will have a big effect on the audience and I need to make sure it does. The most important thing, and the most difficult, will be analyzing the information and not just summarizing it.
ReplyDeleteSomething that my Lit review didn’t include that my essay by all means should include is the perspective of people who are actually afflicted with ADHD (more specifically have been diagnosed). I think the addition of this element will make the final essay far more compelling and interesting to read while also shedding some light on the argument that many articles miss. Some claims I will use are the statements noted from both my interview and surveys while including field notes from the observations conducted.
ReplyDeleteBecause my audience is still being decided, I don’t really know currently what I need to anticipate. Something that I do need to keep in mind however is the use of first person, especially when contributing analysis on the interview, survey and observations. Another thing I should keep in mind is using some of the language used in the scholarly articles and other sources I incorporate within the essay.
As I begin drafting the essay, I think the most important part to include is ethos, pathos and logos. Without these three tools in an essay, the final product is hard to understand, follow and read. The drafting process will begin with an outline to establish logos. This will help me organize my information, research and analysis in a way that is logical way for the reader. With ethos and pathos, I hope to include enough information and background on the issue of ADHD to successfully fulfill these requirements within the introduction and concluding paragraphs.
I plan on still arguing the same points I have raised, the three themes, but I will add more analysis than is present in the lit review. Also, the lit review intended to synthesize the research, presenting common themes in the research. For my essay, I will raise new points as inferred by these themes and the existing research. I also will provide insight to the argument from my primary research. Through my interview, surveys and observation, I hope to draw connections to the existing body of research and corroborate arguments found with each other. These claims will differ from my lit review because I will be presenting more of a solution to the topic, rather than just what research is out there. I need to anticipate filling in my audience on the research I have conducted and the context of each source, not just taking it on faith that they will understand and believe the research I present. The tone in which I present the paper should be an indicator of who the audience is by there are other aspects that I need to include to make obvious who the audience is, such as references to the audience and tying in similarities they may have with the research conducted. As I start drafting my essay, I need to keep in mind the purpose of my essay, the direction I want it to go, and the audience that I am presenting it to.
ReplyDeleteThe central claims I will be making will be tying together my evidence along with my observations, surveys, and interviews to make conclusions on the evidence they provide for my issue. My job is to take the evidence provided and relate it back to my question stated in the beginning. My audience is college audience so I will need to write in a semi-formal manner that doesn’t sound too theoretical or I will lose the attention of my audience. Because my question is gaming in college, my audience is kind of obvious in that this research will be helping students that are transitioning into college. In my surveys and interviews, I will be looking primarily at first year students because I want to give transitioning students a view of gaming in college and how it is very different from gaming in high school. However, my main question is looking at the effects of gaming in college, meaning that my audience won’t be just first year and transitioning students, but also some other college students who are not just first years. As I begin to draft this essay I will need to keep my primary question in mind and not let my other thoughts on the subject take too much control. In other words I will need to make sure I keep my focus clear so that neither my audience or I get lost in the pages and words.
ReplyDeleteThroughout my essay I will attempt to make the claim that college students’ lives are being impacted based on the amount of sleep they get. I will discuss how small amount of sleep can be detrimental to academics, reflexes, psychological processes, and physiological systems. I will be adding to the existing conversation by relating sleeps’ affect on people, solely to college students. These claims differ from my lit review because that literature mainly focused on one aspect that was affected. Also, it focused on all people, whereas I will narrow the focus to students in college. In order to make it clear who my inquiry-based essay is directed at, I will include many references to college life. My audience is college students, so I will use anecdotes and observations to strengthen my appeals. By utilizing personal experience I will be able to connect to them on an emotional level, while the sources I have gathered will appeal to logos, and also establish my credibility. College students will be more likely to listen to another student if they are persuaded of his/her reliability and authority. As I begin to draft my essay it is important that I am not regurgitating what was written in my lit review. I need to add a fresh perspective on the topic and make claims that will provide new information to the topic. If I merely reiterate what other researchers have already concluded, then my question is not being answered properly and I am not focusing on my question thoroughly.
ReplyDeleteThe existing conversation regarding title IX discusses whether or not it is responsible for the decrease/increase of opportunities for men and women. It has been basically a yes or no response. I used this data in my Lit review and created themes based on this research However, I think I can add something more to this conversation. In my essay I will focus more on what degree of responsibility, instead of just a yes or no answer. I believe that this question is not black and white. The data supports that it change based on sport or based on the decisions of the athletic director. Also, I think that Title IX is partially responsible for this change in opportunities. However there have been many negative and positive outcomes that were initially unforeseen that have been attributed to Title IX.
ReplyDeleteMy intended audience is athletically minded individuals, in specific, men and women involved in college sports. I will therefore try to include graphs in my research so that this younger audience can have an easier time understanding the research that I have found. Also, I plan on starting my paper with an anecdote about a friend who was personally affected by Title IX. I think this story will help to capture the attention of a college aged audience.
Question: what responsibility, if any, does Title IX have for the change in opportunities for men and women in sports?
When talking about Greek life and its impact on a college campus, a claim I’m going to have to make is that is there an impact. The difference between the lit review and the essay will be that I will be adding my own personal research, while in the lit review I focused on sources that already had research published. There will be a method difference between my lit review and my essay because I will be using a survey, observations, and a few interviews to help support this impact claim being that we live on a college campus. My audience will therefore be this same age group that lives here at DU and in general, undergraduate students. When getting started as a writer for this project, I’m going to keep in mind the difference in genre from the lit review to the inquiry-based essay. Like Ballenger said, one thing that I will want to do is to always bring the writing back to one central idea. Sticking to this central idea, will be an interesting test for me.
ReplyDeleteMy question: How have lasting imagistic media trends from the Colonial period shaped American perceptions of Middle Eastern culture today?
ReplyDeleteCentral claims:
1. The trends of today’s imagistic media aren’t new or unique; they’re just continuations of past ones which proved profitable. (“Nothing breeds success like success!”)
2.It’s not that cultural differences don’t exist! It’s the way they’re constructed, by outsiders, to make ourselves feel high and mighty that is the issue.
3. Rhetoric matters! The way things are represented matters, especially in our increasingly interconnected world.
I need to anticipate a certain amount of skepticism from my audience. I know when I was learning about things like critical race theory for the first time, I definitely resisted because I felt like it was for some reason anti-white or anti-American. It was like I was bashing myself. However, that is NOT the case, and I want to ensure my audience that admitting our own privileges does not mean we are anti-anything. It’s just reality, and it needs to be done before we can openly learn about cultural topics.
Other than that, I need to keep in mind that my intended audience wouldn’t know as much background on the subject (and probably will care less too), so I’ll need to be sure to provide solid (but brief) summaries and plenty of well-analyzed examples to support my claims. It’s easy to fill in the blanks in my head while writing something, so Wednesday’s group meeting will be a good test to see if I’m being clear and capturing my audience’s attention.
ReplyDeleteWhile I have not yet begun to write my first draft, the biggest claim I plan on discussing is the change in perception of privacy due to facebook. My other claims include employers are using social media like facebook to screen potential employees and the feeling of a need to have a facebook account. These differ from my lit review in that my focus on a change in privacy is due primarily to facebook, where in my lit review, the change in privacy was attributed to the internet in a more general sense. Also in my lit review, I didn’t talk about the feeling of need concerning having a facebook account. Some things I should be anticipating about my audience is age and education status. In order to make it obvious what my intended audience for my essay is I am going to need to include information that is relevant and connects with my intended audience. I should also be cautious when thinking about the voice of my paper. As I begin to draft my essay I need to keep in mind the direction I take my paper, inquiry essays are not summaries, I need to be asking leading questions and exploring my research.
I plan to use my lit review as guidance for the background information for my essay. The lit review discusses what has already been said about my topic, so I can use it to support other findings. I will talk about the interview I conducted with someone who went from drug addict to iron man and use the research that is already out there to explain possibly why he was successful. I can also use evidence in my survey of positive psychological effects and explain why that is the case with the research I have already done. I believe my research, especially my observation and my survey, will add more about the psychological benefits to college students. I need to keep in mind any biases I might have towards this topic. Being a runner myself, I know there are tons of psychological benefits and the research so far supports this. I need to make sure I am not closing off the possibility that there are could be negative psychological effects as well. I also need to keep my audience in mind. My audience is geared towards runners, people who used to run, or people that never gave running a shot. This excludes the much younger and older population that shouldn’t really be exercising intensively but does not exclude the younger population that is just starting to work out or focus on their health. For me personally, the last thing I will keep in mind when writing this draft is making sure that my voice stays present throughout.
ReplyDeleteI believe I will be adding more evidence and applying research in specific about the DU climbing wall. I will be taking the previous information I have gathered to show how it can be applied to DU. This claims differ from my Lit Review because with the use of my surveys and observations I will be connecting it to life at DU and the effects that it has here. Unlike my lit review and how I merely just gathered the information to get an idea what research had already been done. My audience is the DU board, I expect to provide charts and graphs to brake it down into simple easy to understand and concise forms. Mainly for my introduction I need to make sure it captures my audiences attention and to keep them engaged and intrigued. I need to keep in mind that my audience does not want to read any fluff, that they just want the facts and my ideas presented in a concise manner. So therefore I think some of the most important information will be the research I have conducted, because it directly links to the actual feelings of the student body.
ReplyDeleteThe differences between my lit review and my final essay don’t seem that apparent to me immediately. The biggest difference, I think, will be how I incorporate my own work. Since most of my research lead towards a better understanding of how the events impacted the market, I will be spending a lot more of the essay focusing on that. I think that I will be able to bring a new understanding of the impact of the events because there really isn’t that much information out there on it. I find that my natural writing works well at addressing an audience. I’ve never struggled with making my writing work for an intended audience. If there is something that doesn’t work, I usually address it in my second draft, as it’s usually something that needs a structure already laid out to be worked on. I need to keep in mind what I want to say in my essay. With the lit review, I was able to more address the writings themselves, while the essay will require me to focus on my thoughts more. It will require me to be able to assimilate my thoughts in an understandable way.
ReplyDeleteThe lit review is not similar to the inquiry based research essay; in fact they are quite different. Some of the information I will be adding to the existing conversation on gun violence vs gun control will be results from an interview with a FBI field agent. His interview will be very interesting since he deals with guns and gun violence on a daily basis in his career. Also I believe that my survey results will be imperative to gathering support for my claim that in the United States, stricter gun laws do not necessarily mean less violent crime. I am going to be referencing these two primary sources numerous times throughout my essay.
ReplyDeleteThese claims differ from my lit review because in my lit review I was only discussing intertwining themes throughout my sources without my own personal interpretation of those references or statistics. Putting my own personal research (observation, survey and interview) into my research paper will help me differ the inquiry based research essay from my lit review. Some things I will be anticipating from my audience is either a strong agreement with the research which I have conducted or a strong disagreement. Since my target audience is young professionals down through high school students there is going to be plenty of room for disagreement or interpretation of the writings to be different. I think it will be important to include more casual but still academic language, words that these scholars can understand. I also believe it will be important to reference college in some way in my paper which would hopefully give a hint to who the audience is. I will need to keep in mind that I still have work to do. The first draft isn’t just a walk in the park. I need to get a good start to my writing because the writing process is a lengthy one.