Please mention one important thing that you took away from the “Using Sources” (Lunsford and Ruszkiewicz, pp. 180-195) reading. Discuss how this one thing either refined something you already knew or how it taught you something new about writing research papers. Your response should be at least three sentences long.
7 thoughts on “Blog Post #13: Using Sources”
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One important thing I took away from this reading was building a critical mass and synthesizing information. Building a critical mass is important because for my argument I will need to include many different pieces of evidence and sometimes the sources won’t tell me everything that I want to know, but with the evidence, I do get I have to make sure that it supports my claim and builds my argument further. Building a critical mass also taught me about circumstantial evidence which helps suggest certain things but not proves it directly. Synthesizing information will be important to me because it will help me immerse myself with my information to the point where it’s natural. Synthesizing also taught me how to make sure the information I receive works in my favor and shows me a connection between my sources.
One important thing that I took away from this reading was the use of circumstantial evidence and how it isn’t always enough to back up your argument. This has taught me that sources that always claim something happened with no actual evidence can be misleading and have no relevance. This idea was new for me because I didn’t realize circumstantial evidence existed and I thought that evidence was reliable as long as it came from a credible source, such as a popular magazine or newspaper company.
I learned that we can synthesize information by gathering all the facts and details you encountered and make it work for you. This includes critical thinking and many industries use it. This also showed me we have to ask ourselves how we are going to cite and talk about this evidence. By finding out evidence, we may find ourselves seeing patterns, themes, and differences in the sources. You see what facts will be significant to your paper.
A good research paper includes an argument, and an evidence and how you are able to back up your argument with evidence and what source you use to find that evidence. Some evidence you use can be reliable while others aren’t. That is something I have learned in the reading. I learned the importance of circumstancial evidence is when you use evidence but it isn’t always the right evidence you use to back up your claim. This is relates to me because, I would always use evidence that aren’t always right evidence to backup my claim.
Although, I’m familiar with paraphrasing I think I’ve been doing it wrong. For example I didn’t know you had to “respect” your sources. I thought you could just paraphrase it and explain it the way it makes the most sense.
Something I took away was that it’s important to have the right evidence for your argument. There might be a lot of evidence but not everything will go hand in hand with your argument. For my argument, there’s a lot of sources that can help me write my essay but I need to pick out the right one and the ones that will help me prove my point.
Something that I learned from the reading was how to properly use quotations selectively and strategically. In the text, it mentions to keep quotations fairly brief and to make sure the quoted statements could fit smoothly with the language. I believe this would be essential in my writing especially since it a research. I sometimes use large quotes in my writing and struggle on how to shorten it into my essays.