Chapter 7+8 Quiz

The majority of my research for Core 4 consists of mostly arguments of definition, with an added bonus of one or two arguments of fact. When investigating what it means to write better, an article taken from Jack Herrick is mainly an argument of fact. He lays out a plan to aid the writing process from facts, not necessarily from the definition. This topic is very subjective; hence, while researching I ran across many more arguments of fact versus arguments of definition. In the Wysocki and Johnson-Eilola article, the definition was mainly argued. Information about the definition was needed in order to eliminate some of the bias within my research, so I found a dissertation by Christina Haas. Haas did an investigation similar to Goulds which was primarily about quantity and quality of writing. This dissertation included both arguments of fact and definition; this mix was the basis of her paper. Haas had two seperate groups of people write a short response, one group writing on the computer while others were writng with pen and paper. When analyzing the quality versus quantity, her findings concluded that the persons that were writing on the computer actually excelled at quantity over those with pen and paper, but the quality of those with pen and paper excelled. This could be because those with pen and paper knew that it would take them more time, so they planned more. Those who wrote on the computer planned less and edited more because technology allowed that. This researched played a major technological link in my research because it allowed me to bridge the gap between writing with technology versus pen and paper. In my research I planned to keep a balanced amount of arguments of fact and arguments of definition, but since there is a lot of subjectivity of my topic, most of my research is that or arguments of definition. More of this is needed to clearly explain my topic and make it more solid for investigating.

research evaluation/reflection

So far, the conversation between many of the authors of my research have been mostly informative. By informative I mean primarily presenting the facts. In the research that I found about the quantity versus quality in the study by Christina Haas, the conversation was intended to make the reader make his of her own interpretation. Haas presented her findings and made her stance about the findings, but also asked the reader to do the same. I think that this was the most reoccuring problems within my research. I was researching what it means to be a "good writer" as well as some general idea of what "more writting" is. Yes these two items are extremely open ended, but with a lot of specific research they can be closed to at least a crack so find some solid stance and or answer. Since my research was slightly open ended, I think that that is the main reason that the conversation between all of the authors of me research left their findings a little up for discussion from the reader, in other words the author left the reader interpret the findings instead of just presenting the findings the the final answer/interpretation of them.