informal writing

Questions for Discussion and Journaling:

1. How does what Kleine is talking about line up with your own experiences? Does it sound like he’s describing the way you write and research, or not?

When I was set a task to go and research something, the first thing I would do is more than likely, type it on the computer and see the results it showed. I would then copy and paste, print it off and put it in the revision notes. However another option I would have is to look through books finding information, but rather than putting these in my own words I would do as Kleine sates “they were not reading: I detected no searching, analysing, evaluating, synthesising, selecting, rejecting, etc.” Kleine describes everyone being in the library at the same time which for me may symbolise that it is the day before work needs to be in and I believe this reflects my past experiences because everyone believes that research is easy due to things such as just copying out of a book, so it is left until the last minute. I also believe that most students research this way, rather than actually studying and reading through texts because it is quicker but in the long run, it is not actually beneficial at all and just becomes another piece of paper in your notes. 

3. How big a role do sources play in the research of the professionals Kleine interviews? What role have they played in your past research efforts? How can you explain the differences?

In the interviews each professional emphasised how important their individual research was. They all found it interesting and they spoke as if it was a personal choice to do so, not “My chairman made me do it”. I have used both hunting and gathering. When gathering information I found that it help my research because I was paying attention to detail whereas with gathering it was more a chance to copy from sources rather than understanding it. Research communities have normally taken place in the classroom. This can be a very helpful technique as the research is coming from more than one person however research communities can cause distraction due to the talking aspect may lead on to unimportant topics. The promotion of a variety of techniques helped me to stay on task and remained focused because it was not the same method over and over again which differs from hunting and gathering. I also believe this helped me understand and take in the information I was reading.

4. What would change about how you do research if you did what Kleine talks about?

Due to Kleine talking about, if there wasn’t enough detail or if he didn’t have a category for it, he would have to select the category which he interpreted it as. This may lead to inaccurate results so rather than the interview being free flowing, I would have set questions so that I knew the answer could fit into a category. These questions would most likely be short ended which include multiple choice questions but to gather more detail I would have long ended questions to allow the source to go into detail about their method of research. By the professional fitting their research method into a specific category, this makes Kleine’s research more reliable rather than just categorising something on first impressions. Also these impressions may differ depending on the subject’s enthusiasm, recall of experience, interest in the topic and detail put into the answer given which gives the interview less validity. (Page 27)