Take a few minutes and reflect on your first two writing assignments for this class. As a writer, how did you approach compiling your annotated bibliography? What did your writing process look like for this project? What did you learn about research from doing it?
Next, contrast this experience to that of writing your research memo. What did you do differently as a writer to create this document? How did your writing change? How did you figure out what to include in this memo and what to leave out? What do you think you’ll take away from this assignment as a writer?
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For compiling my annotated bibliography I honestly just typed words into the data base search engines and chose articles based on whether or not their abstracts seemed interesting. One of the articles I chose to read didn’t really fit into the theme of the other four articles but it had a really interesting take on why women don’t report being victimized on the street instead of why they are victimized in the first place. My writing process for this project consisted mainly of reading articles and regurgitating the most important information into a useful couple of paragraphs. In this assignment I didn’t analyze or internalize any of the information in order to put my own voice and opinions into the writing. I learned that research, which is basically boring and tedious, is very important and that the annotated bibliography is a great tool in which I can get the main points of an article and summarize what I want to use in future assignments written down in one place.
ReplyDeleteThe writing I did for my memo differed a lot from the annotated bibliography. This time my own voice was used in the assignment and I had to internalize the information so that I would be able to break down the more technical information into understandable and useful knowledge. My writing changed in that I chose the information from the articles that was most useful to the memo and left out the stuff that didn’t really have an effect on the point I was trying to make. I really worked to condense the information I had used in the annotated bibliography down into a manageable size. This assignment had an emphasis on being able to take massive loads of information that is gathered during a research session and then being able to weed out what is important and what is relevantly unimportant. It also made me work on being able to condense information in a conservative way without taking away from the importance of the material as well. I had to figure out word choice that would convey the message without taking up too much space.
As I look back on the first two writing assignments that we completed this quarter, I am confident that they both turned out pretty well. I compiled my annotated bibliography by first reading the articles and highlighting main points that I wanted to include in the summary or that I thought were important to include from each section. For this project when I begun writing I first started by simply typing out what I wanted to say. I am the kind of writer that writes first then goes back and revises. It may not be a good idea to work that way but it works for me. From completing the annotated bibliography, I learned that I need to focus more on trying to keep the summaries shorter along with including all important details.
ReplyDeleteCompared to the annotated bibliography, the research memo, I found to be just as difficult in terms of keeping the memo short and to the point. However, I did manage to keep the memo short by brainstorming what was extremely important information that the community should know about and information that would help TGP. My writing was more fluid and focused on the audience when I wrote the research memo. There was a hint of “we” and “you” but those words were not used in the annotated bibliography. When writing the memo, I figured that information that was useful to include would such information that shocked at least a few people and gave them insight to homeless mothers. I also thought it would be useful to input some tactics that are used at Gateway Battered Women Services because we do a lot of parenting support too. As a writer I think I will take away the ability to write shorter and to the exact point that I am trying to make.
Compiling my bibliography wasn’t too difficult, though the topic was hard to search for, so I read through some sources I did not end up using, though they were interesting. For the bibliography I was in academic mode, trying to write concise summaries of the sources while still relating them to my topic. What I learned from this research project is that I need to start reading my articles sooner because not all of them will probably be used in the final paper/bibliography.
ReplyDeleteFor the memo, I felt I was able to pull only the most valid pieces of research to present to TGP—I only picked the research that had empirical evidence of women participating in the informal economy. It was hard giving them suggestions for a problem that is not really in their control to fix. I tried to make my writing not as academic, but I feel that my memo sounded to impersonal, and probably lacked appeals to ethos and pathos. As a writer I think that what I will take away from the memo assignment is that, it is alright to give suggestion that are idealistic/theoretical even if they aren’t useful they apply to the research, and to pay better attention to my tone and audience.
When I compiled my annotated bibliography, I found it as a challenge but then I began writing down the common themes that I noticed as well as the more important findings. Writing this project was mostly collecting data and findings, and trying to find a correlation of what it is like to be a homeless minority woman. To write each summary and the memo, I had to pay close attention to what the methods of study were, what the findings were, and the conclusion that was made in order to summarize what I read. What I learned from research is that there are reliable sources then there are sources that should not even be considered.
ReplyDeleteWhen it came to writing the memo, I basically felt that emphasizing the key points and findings was necessary. I also felt a bit of a rhetoric urge as I wrote this, and to be persuasive to the readers was one of my goals. My goal was to show that even among the homeless, there are significant differences in the problems that homeless minority women face compared to the homeless Caucasian women. I never really figured out what should and should not be included into my memo, and for the sake of brief aspect of the memo I only knew that it should be a summarization of what I had found so it narrowed down the content of what I wanted to write. After completing this assignment, I realized what I am capable of as far as collecting data and finding ways that it could be utilized. What I learned from this assignment will be very useful to me in the future as I continue my research of various topics.
I began working on the annotated bibliography early, reading more slowly than I should have. I read some of the articles three or four times, struggling to get the main ideas out of dense "consumer-researcher" sentences. My annotated bibliography was an exercise in precise description and some analysis. In many ways, the annotated bibliography turned out to be an outline for my memo, at least a collection of ideas for reference.
ReplyDeleteThe research memo was more stressful. I wanted an interesting, direct, short, informative, descriptive, meaningful, helpful, sensitive, conscientious, and smart research memo. The annotated bibliography really helped me choose information to include——I had already had to slim up to 30 pages into a 250 word description. I had never written a research memo before.
I am glad that I have because I think this mode of writing can have impact: an anonymous research memo to an organization can change a policy (or just a mind). This assignment demanded a sort of conciseness that takes away the worry of personal style, and allowed us just to deliver a message. This is an important lesson to learn about writing, to be a good reporter.
Both the annotated bibliography and the research memo required me to pick out the most important information from each given text. For the annotated bibliography, I had to thoroughly read through all of the research studies in order to determine what specific aspects of the story to tie into my summaries. Similarly, the memo required me to read through my summaries and determine the most important aspects of my own research to fit into the memo. I learned that one must be thorough when reading and interpreting research. While the memo had a little more room to write persuasively—inputting clips of anecdotes where appropriate and offering analyses of the research findings—the annotated bibliography maintained an objective approach. The memo required “big picture” topics, focusing on main claims and concepts. Unlike the annotated bibliography, I decided to not use a whole lot of details from the research, like the mean age of however many participants, for example. I take away from this assignment that ability to interpret research and convey that interpretation concisely. The memo, on the other hand, allowed me to learn how to analyze and apply the research studied.
ReplyDeleteWhen compiling my annotated bibliography, more specifically my annotations, I had myself and my research in mind. I summarized the crucial information of each article and offered up suggestions for myself as to how I could use each one in a future writing paper. When it came to my research memo I had to take an entirely different approach because it was for the eyes of a different audience, and expert audience. I had to make sure and use only the most telling information from my research and to include suggestions as to why the information was important, relevant, and helpful to TGP staff. The contrast in these two writings reminded me that audience is the most important part of writing, who you are writing something for shapes how that something was written. My research memo ha to be written with an air of professionalism and expertise as well as include greater analysis of what my research could mean for TGP.
ReplyDeleteCompiling the annotated bibliography was simply a matter of finding articles that applied to my subject and taking out the critical information. For the most part, the writing process was pretty strait forward. The hardest part was identifying what information was most important out of articles that were sometimes very large and trying to condense that information into short summaries. The research process itself was challenging simply because of how much information there was on my subject. It required a lot of sifting through articles to decide which ones would be the most helpful. I also discovered that it was important to be flexible. For example, sometime searching for something with one key word doesn’t appear outright to be helpful, but if you keep looking you might find something in those articles that will give you another idea of what to look for. It is important to keep your eyes open for anything that could apply and not through something away or assume something is useful at first glance.
ReplyDeleteMy writing process for the research memo was much different mostly in writing style. For the annotated bibliography, I was writing mostly for me with the idea that I as analyzing sources that would be helpful for my research. In that sense the document was personal. The research memo was being written for The Gathering Place so I felt I had to try to be more eloquent and in a sense more professional. At the same time it was important to find out where the line was between being eloquent and persuasive and keeping it brief and to the point. This was difficult for me, but I think I clearly emphasized what the point is through a descriptive and simple summary and then moved on to my suggestion without making the memo too long. I think that in doing this assignment I learned a lot about how to decide what is important to include, and how to prevent a piece from becoming unnecessarily wordy.
My annotated bibliography focused more on the information I found in the articles. Simply, they were a tool to summarize each article, so when I worked on the memo, the really significant information stood out. The writing in the annotated bibliography comprised of facts and explanations. The writing style was still very academically based. In nature, it was more serious than that of the memo. The scholarly reviewed articles were written in a similar tone. Specifically regarding research, I learned that there are many different types of way to present data collected. The articles, for example, contained a lot of math and probability/statistics jargon. In order to gather data and information for my annotated bibliography, I had to sift through that, picking out what was relevant and comprehendible. My research memo, on the other hand, was in a way both informative and a little persuasive. I talked to my audience how I would in real life, but made sure to prove my points with viable facts. My memo was a combination of my initial question, the data discovered, and my own analysis of the situation. My audience in the memo probably already knows a lot of the information from the annotated bibliography, so I tried to share the new and surprising discoveries. I also did not want to solely fill the memo with facts, so I made the memo more inviting and pleasing in its level of language. I think as a writer, this assignment has allowed me to practice two different styles with the same information, so I was really able to see the similarities and differences.
ReplyDeleteFor my annotated bibliography I found it helpful to complete each summary one at a time. For some of the summaries I would read the article, take a few notes, and then decide what was important and write the summary immediately after. Then, as I began to get more used to the writing process of these summaries I started to write the summary while I was simultaneously reading the article. I learned that this technique saved time and also allowed me to be more specific about the exact techniques the researchers used and the conclusions they came to without having to re-read the article too much. I also learned that in a short summary such as this, it is important to explain the main parts of the study without going into so much detail that you lose the main focus. From this assignment I learned how to utilize the online research tools provided by DU to search for scholarly, reviewed articles, something that I did not know how to do before.
ReplyDeleteWriting the research memo provided a similar challenge because I wanted to get the main points of what I had learned from my research without going into unhelpful detail. Obviously this type of writing was different because I didn't have to go into the procedures of the studies themselves, but instead explain how the conclusions from the studies could be useful and possibly applied to a shelter such as The Gathering Place. A lot of my writing and wording for the memo came straight from my annotated bibliography but I tried to only include the main lessons to be learned from it. As a writer I think it was important to learn how to not only research a subject and comprehend its contents, but then to analyze it and write about it in a way that it can be useful to others.
In writing my annotated bibliography, it was nice to refresh my skills in compiling scholarly articles and utilizing research databases. I first identified a topic of interest to me (mainly derived from reading Tell Them Who I Am) and generally stuck to rather broad keywords (e.g. "chronic" and "homelessness") so as not to prematurely narrow down my search. As I researched, I gathered more ideas with respect to my topic, but did not turn it into a comprehensive piece of writing, but instead took a more straightforward approach in analyzing the writers' arguments and research techniques. This turned out to be a very useful exercise for a number of reasons: 1) it provided me with the skills to critically analyze writers' techniques and their effectiveness to my particular focus or piece of writing and 2) it helped to further engage with my topic of study in taking a hard look at the ins and outs of each writer's research - which helped greatly in generating more ideas for my own writing.
ReplyDeleteMy research memo, on the other hand, was not looking at one specific area of writing or focus, but instead synthesized the information with my own topic - which was more of a collection of all the writers' various focuses. But rather than analyzing one writer's research style or way of writing, I was compiling their research to use to back up my own claims as I sought to make significance of all the research I found with respect to my one topic. I had to take some 100 pages or more of research and narrow it down into a smaller focus that could fit onto two pages, and synthesize all the fragmented pieces of information and varied focuses into one conclusive argument. This assignment gave me the experience of piecing together extensive research into one concrete argument and to be more discerning as a writer with respect to what to include and what not. I was able to take into account all perspectives and bring them together to shape a much more brief conclusion surrounding an overarching theme - a skill necessary whether one sets out to reveal the struggles of homelessness and write a brief for a legal proceeding.
As I began looking for sources on the topic of mothers experiencing homelessness, I strived to find sources that had both qualitative data as well as some quantitative data. Using the keywords homelessness and mothers, I was able to find 5 very detailed and useable research articles. As I read through these articles, I highlighted important parts, including relevant statistics, key findings in their data, and what they had concluded from their research. With this information picked out, I was able to summarize each study and compile this into my annotated bibliography. Highlighting those parts was very important for my writing process because it allowed me to grasp the concept of each study and sort of dismiss the information that was almost irrelevant to the writing task. While doing this task, I learned that one must be able to pick out the important information while also trying to grasp concepts or data that one hasn’t seen before. It’s also imperative to read through the studies more than one time; this will ensure that the reader has not missed out on important data or conclusions made.
ReplyDeleteWhile writing the research memo, I had to take a different approach in order to complete the task. As a writer, I had to add a more personal tone to the assignment. Rather than just compiling all the information I had learned and putting into a summary, I had to cut most of that information and use only the most relevant and significant findings in the research. Since this was being addressed to people at TGP, especially those who have worked with the women, I had to become more personal in my writing. I only included information that I thought the staff at TGP would find interesting and relevant. This assignment has taught me that it’s important to be able to adjust your writing for the audience, sometimes drastically, in order to be an effective writer.