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, parse out websites based on your domain anchors (.com versus .org, versus .gov), and streamline your work based on ideas from sources. These are important strategies, but your technical communication research papers require sources that are accurate, timely, relevant, focused, and rigorously documented. In college you have greater access to more academic resources, and at this level your technical communication documents require more demanding research standards. You are tasked with assessing sources to meet these standards. This chapter helps identify the multiplicity of sources you can use, categorizes them based on the rigor of publication, and helps you understand when and how to incorporate one or more sources within your paper to support your claim. You will also find information on using rhetorical reading strategies to help determine a source’s credibility and relevance. This chapter provides examples that illustrate how to begin the research process and how to use valid and accurate information to meet the requirements for technical communication research.
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