Sunday, September 25, 2011

Taylor Wisnieski Blog #7

As I began reading the first thing I noticed about an exploratory essay is that you have to create a tension between alternative views. When you start out you might not know where your thinking process will end up but when you start using the statement, "I used to think... , but now I think.." your writing becomes a process  of inquiry and discovery. I agree with this because when you begin to think of things in different ways you may completely change your opinion about an issue once you give it more thought from both sides. They later go on to say, "These same dialect thinking habits can be extended to research writing where the researcher's goals are to find alternative points of view on the research question." (Ramage, Bean, and Johnson 108), this I can agree with because it forces you to look at all points of view, not just your own. I can also relate to this because when I have had to write a paper that gives both points of view on an issue I have ended up changing my own view on it because it makes you look at it in a whole new way. One of the other hot spots that stood out to me was the evaluative annotation in a bibliography. I like how in an evaluative annotation of a bibliography you can critique the work and include comments on it, which normally help the reader. Annotated bibliographies serve many important functions, one of the most important things is it, "...engages researchers in exploratory thinking by requiring that they read sources rhetorically like experts, entering critically into scholarly conversations" (Ramage, Bean, and Johnson 116). They can also be valuable time saving tolls for new researchers in the field. All of this is important because it forces the researcher to think rhetorically about the bibliographies instead of allowing their own view to get in the way.

2 comments:

  1. I like how you said that when researching other sides of an argument, you changed your opinion. I can relate to that--it really gives you a look at different angles.

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  2. I agree with what you said about having to research both sides and actually changing your own view of the subject in the ending of your research for a paper.

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