A Sense of Doubt blog post #3005 - ENG 102 - Starting The First Draft of the Research Project Time, Chunking, and Weaving

A Sense of Doubt blog post #3005 - ENG 102 - Starting The First Draft of the Research Project Time, Chunking, and Weaving

Welcome to episode one in a series of instructional videos for English 102, research and writing, first-year composition.

In this video, I instruct about the importance of starting the drafting process far in advance because "time is money" as Einstein proved.

In research paper writing, reaching a sufficient number of sources and understanding those sources makes the research paper easy to write.

I discuss two drafting strategies for getting started: CHUNKING and WEAVING.

In chunking (hence the pictures of "Chunk" from the Goonies film), a writer chooses the easiest chunk to write, the one they are ready to write at the start of the process.

Too often a huge project feels daunting and students do not know where to begin. Background and definitions are easy places to start. But sometimes, a part speaks to the writer, often based on a source, and so...

WEAVING

Start writing content around a source. It's best to construct the topic for which that source is evidence though not required. I don't think I said that previous sentence in the video. :-)

Then, WEAVE in other sources.

Some of the most important goals of a research project and how it differentiates itself from a typical first-year composition essay (say in English 101) is depth and complexity.

Depth and complexity is achieved with depth not breadth: the deep dive not the wide surface stretch across too much of the scope of the subject area.

Deep dive happens when student writers find connections between sources, ways in which sources corroborate each other or make similar claims and/or ways in sources contrast each other and often contradict one another.

Multi-source use paragraphs and sections are a goal of a research project. This does not mean that the writer cannot compose any single-source use paragraphs, but many paragraphs or sections of paragraphs should use multiple sources, showing those connections in-between.

This work can be achieved with weaving. If a writer starts with a source that speaks well to a topic and then begins to revise and weave in other sources, eventually the depth goal and the multi-source use goal are achieved.

My notes follow the video, though they are sketchy, as notes are.

Thanks for tuning in.

Starting The First Draft of the Research Project Time, Chunking, and Weaving

Chunking and weaving - first drafts - NOTES

Time vs anxiety

Time = money - FAR SIDE

“paying attention”

Time and anxiety charts

Enough research - project writes itself (almost)

CHUNKING

- You do not have to write in a linear fashion

- Think parts

- Pick a part

- Definitions and background are easy parts to start with

- Write a part (it’s okay to be sketchy - it’s first draft writing)

- Then pick another part

- part for part - pretty soon you have a lot of pages

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ENGLISH 101 ESSAYS AND ENG 102 PROJECTS

Move away from exclusively single-source use paragraphs and ONE topic per paragraph 

to

Multi-source use paragraphs and one topic per section

Sections are then divided into many sub-topics

- achieve depth and complexity

- Corroborate

- find connections between sources (compare and contrast)

- multi-source paragraphs and sections

WEAVING

Explain my research project work

Let’s say I am writing about CRT

Start with a source on the validity and importance of “systemic” racism

- add another source that corroborates

- add another source that corroborates

- add another source that corroborates

Now move to a contrasting view

- are there other contrasting views or can I only find one?

Remember your job is to argue

and to inform as you argue

But the goal is not just to inform

- cite and signal phrase as I draft = SIP

S - Signal

I - Information

P - Parentheses (cite)

Full signal phrases the first time (author, article title, source, credentials, credibility)

followed by just author signals

I like full cites

(Author pg#)

(Author para #) or (Author par. #)

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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2305.11 - 10:10

- Days ago = 2869 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.