secondary source research

Learning to Incorporate Source Material with a Full Menu of Options: Developing a Discrete Skill in Isolation

Activities, documentation, genre and discourse community, Integrating sources, primary source research, Process, quotations, citations, and style, research, secondary source research /

Stephen David Grover Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description Writing assignments often require students to perform a complex array of interrelated tasks all at once. For example, when composing a typical researched argument essay, students must keep their eyes on higher-order concerns like thesis, organization, and finding and evaluating evidence, while at the same time […]

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Fuzzy Logic: How the Fuzzy Definition of Plagiarism is Getting Even Fuzzier

Activities, documentation, Integrating sources, plagiarism, primary source research, Process, quotations, citations, and style, secondary source research /

Steven Engel and Staci Shultz Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description Rachel Hall Buck and Silvia Vaccino-Salvadore’s Writing Spaces essay, “‘Doing Research Is Fun; Citing Sources Is Not’: Understanding the Fuzzy Definition of Plagiarism,” suggests ways to help students unpack the complexity of plagiarism. Our activity extends these essential conversations by examining several recent highprofile

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Outside the Frame: An Image Analysis

digital literacy, rhetoric, rhetorical situation, secondary source research, visual/multimodal rhetorics /

Stephen Paur Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description This assignment invites students to critically analyze the rhetorical and emotional effects of images. The project is basically an exercise in contextualizing a news photo. It would work well as the culminating assignment for a unit on visual rhetoric, digital literacy, multimodality, mass media, or the public

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“Read, Feed, and Seed”: Fostering Research Writing in Classroom Spaces

Activities, annotated bibliography, collaboration and group work, demystifying writing assignments, documentation, Integrating sources, reading, reading strategies, secondary source research /

Mustafa Masihuddin Siddiqui Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description During my first two terms teaching first-year composition classes at the University of Toronto, I faced multiple problems—my classes were not engaging enough; many of the students’ essays did not showcase deep understanding of the key course readings; some students did not apply the evidence into

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“Are Cats Good? An Important Study”:Using a Meme Article for Teaching Writing of Analytic Summaries

Activities, annotated bibliography, information literacy, reading, reading strategies, research, secondary source research, summary /

Wei Xu and Hongni Gou Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description This activity is designed as part of the major project “Annotated Bibliography” in a first-year writing course. At the time the activity is implemented, students should have learned the purpose, context, and audience of an annotated bibliography and that both summaries and evaluations are

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Let’s Party: Composing a Review of the Literature on a Technical Topic

Process, professional writing, research, secondary source research, Synthesis, technical writing, Volume 6 /

Daniel P. Richards Volume 6 Chapter Description A literature review can take many forms and can be found in a wide array of academic, scientific, technical, and workplace documents spanning all fields and disciplines. Sometimes it is the full document; sometimes it is but part of a document. From essays in philosophy to journal articles

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Assessing Sources for Technical Communication Research

information literacy, secondary source research, technical writing, Volume 6 /

Therese I. Pennell Volume 6 Chapter Description As academic writers, your technical communication research papers will require that you use reliable sources to understand your topic and support your argument. This chapter provides you with tips on assessing sources to complete these types of papers. In high school you learned how to search for sources,

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Developing Fruitful Research Questions

demystifying writing assignments, prewriting and invention, research, secondary source research /

Emily Spitler-Lawson Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description When I was a younger, less experienced writing instructor, I told a classroom full of first year composition students, “Write about whatever you want!” when introducing a major research-based assignment. As you can probably imagine, I very quickly learned that some student-generated topics and questions were more

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Engaging Audiences Beyond the University: Writing in and Reflecting on Non-Academic Rhetorical Situations

Assignments, critical thought and analysis, drafting and revising, Public Writing, research, rhetoric, rhetorical situation, secondary source research /

Rebecca Chenoweth Assignments & Activities Archive Assignment Description This assignment invites students to identify academic knowledge that they value, and to share this knowledge with a new audience that is impacted by and/or can impact the topic. They are then tasked with analyzing their own writing in this “non-academic” rhetorical situation. Both components of this

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Dramatizing the Conversation: Creating Dialogue Scripts to Support Source Synthesis

Activities, drafting and revising, Process, reading, reading strategies, reading to write, research, secondary source research, Synthesis /

Kim Fahle Peck Assignments & Activities Archive Activity Description Kenneth Burke’s famous parlor metaphor presents a picture of academic research as a conversation between ideas and perspectives: Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too

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