While discussing a section from The Craft of Research in class, my group and I focused on the importance of knowing the topic you are discussing in a research paper inside and out. In order to entertain your reader as well as show them why your research matters, you must know the history, facts, and new discoveries of your topic. Your audience will most likely be people who are interested in your subject; therefore you should reveal to them new facts that will help them to better understand your subject matter surpassing their previous knowledge. To present yourself successfully you must nail down your facts and evidence in a way to convince the audience their knowledge of the subject is quite small, and you can help them advance their flawed understanding.
A way you could successfully present a topic to an attracted audience would be to do so in an interesting way: with assumptions, guesses, questions and unproven stories. By conversing with your audience at the beginning, they will become more engaged and well aware of your large familiarity with the subject and therefore be more inclined to accept your research and standing on the topic.
Meghan McMeans
I have to wholly agree with your post and emphasize the importance of the content to rest of the class.
ReplyDeleteI can personally relate to this because my summer job for many years was teaching a technical skill to kids ranging from 11-18 years old. Since I knew "my stuff" like the back of my own hand I was able to successfully communicate with them. And the results showed. The staff that I was apart of proudly boasted a 99% success rate.
To echo and reiterate, success as a researcher presenting information is most certainly dependent upon your level of understanding Thus, understanding of said topic yields success!
I also agree with what you had posted. And I too can personally relate. I had worked at a local Burger King the past three and a half years or so. When I worked there, there were some times where I was the one who had to train a new employee. Though it was not my job to train them, I did the best I can. By communicated in a manner anyone who was new to the company could understand. I mean, sure fast food is basically the same all around, but there are some things that do need to be explained. Like how to take things apart and clean them.
ReplyDeleteLike I had mentioned before, I do agree here. Reaching out, and making sure your audience understands your information is absolutely necessary if you want to make sure people get the "know what" that is commonly mentioned in class.
Overall, I agree completely with everything that was stated in the post. Just as with everyone else that commented on the post, I also have had personal experience with what was stated. Every year I work at a summer camp for Diabetic children, and since a majority of them know everything about the disease I am constantly trying to figure out new information to keep them interested. Also when teaching new campers about diabetes, it is important to put things in simple understandable terms.
ReplyDeleteIn addition, when writing a research paper I believe that if you don't put yourself in the shoes of the audience members, you will be unable to get your point across clearly and effectively. Not everybody is knowledgeable in everything topic known so we must do everything possible to keep their attention.
I am in Meghan's group and I have to say that I think we really did have a good conversation about how to engage your reader into your paper. I think asking questions and telling stories does help the reader feel like reading the paper and maybe even relate.
ReplyDeleteI also like Alex’s comment with his personal stories about his camp. I work with children too during my summer brakes as a lifeguard at a private pool. Kids come up to me left and right crying that they hurt themselves and most guards do not relate to the kids and understand what they are going through. To them putting alcohol on to clean a cut is like the end of the world because they think that it is going to hurt really bad. I always try to relate to the child and maybe tell them a story or give them an ice pop to calm them down so that I can do my job and take care of them. This is the same tactic you should use on your paper. If you relate to your reader and try to think of ways to get them to trust you and your knowledge, they will want to stay with you and read your entire paper.
Jeffrey said:
ReplyDeleteMeghan has made an imperative point that we all, as first-hand researchers, must not overlook when we go to write our research papers. Readers are not looking for you to amuse them with new facts, though they would be happy if you do, or to help them do something. They want you to use whatever new facts you have generated to help them better “understand” what you are informing them about. Above all, they will receive you especially well if you can convince them that they do not understand the topic you are discussing about as well as they thought, and that your new data will in fact improve their flawed understanding. If you do not take the crucial steps in convincing your audience that their knowledge of the subject is quite small, then they will not care at all about your research paper, and their interest in it will fade. So remember, you are concerned with your audience, with their interests and expectations, with improving their understanding, based on the best evidence you can find. You want to create this specific social contract that all researchers must establish with their readers.
I absolutely agree with this post and everyone's comments as well. As a researcher you have to choose a topic that fits you and present it to the right audience. I agree with how you have to find new facts or data to keep people interested in your research due to the fact that your audience will be people interested in your topic and know a lot about it already. I really like how people are relating their own experiences in life to this post and its really interesting to hear how everyone can relate.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the concept that research should be applicable to an audience. However, I do not think that an audience needs to be entertained. While it is important to keep a reader focused and engaged in their readings I feel that certain papers do not require the audience to be entertained. Say for example a doctor who has been researching cancer treatments publishes a paper about his work. In this context he does not need to entertain his audience with what may be considered amusing like jokes or personal anecdotes to keep their attention. Rather, in order to keep the audience's attention, the writer, in this case the doctor, need only to include factual and useful information. In doing this the writer helps their work to be taken more seriously and possibly help more people.
ReplyDeleteJeffrey says,
ReplyDeleteMeghan has made an imperative point that we all, as first-hand researchers, must not overlook when we go to write our research papers. Readers are not looking for you to amuse them with new facts, though they would be happy if you do, or to help them do something. They want you to use whatever new facts you have generated to help them better “understand” what you are informing them about. Above all, they will receive you especially well if you can convince them that they do not understand the topic you are discussing about as well as they thought, and that your new data will in fact improve their flawed understanding. If you do not take the crucial steps in convincing your audience that their knowledge of the subject is quite small, then they will not care at all about your research paper, and their interest in it will fade. So remember, you are concerned with your audience, with their interests and expectations, with improving their understanding, based on the best evidence you can find. You want to create this specific social contract that all researchers must establish with their readers.
In this section of The Craft of Research I felt that the authors made very strong points. When writing a paper you need to keep your audience in mind. For an example, if you were writing a paper on medical technology, you can either write your paper for people that are familiar with that area or for people that are unfamiliar with that area, but are itching to learn. If you were writing the paper based on the readers being familiar, then you would not have to worry about explaining yourself and explaining terms. If the paper were to go the other way, then you would have to do just the opposite.
ReplyDelete-KRISTI QUINN-
I understand that knowing your topic is important I wouldn’t want to put a lot of emphasis on it because since you are the researcher, you are trying to find as many answers as possible but since you are not an expert in that particular area, it makes it difficult to know the ins and outs of that topic. An audience is going to bee intrigued by what you find by how you present it and how you take the knowledge that you learned and teach to other people. Also the interest that you, the researcher have in the topic will also lure an audience in. If you are really passionate about your research and have very convincing evidence, an audience is going to be more willing to accept your research.
ReplyDeleteUsing facts is obviously a powerful approach when trying to convince people. However it does a little more than that. It makes researchers look creditable and obviously reliable when using that research for future papers. One thing to be sure of however is that facts must be given examples to make it more clearer to the reader what the fact is. In away it makes the fact more understandable to the reader so he/she knows what it is.
ReplyDeleteI also believe that we as researchers should prepare ourselves to get our audience involved in our work. Making your audience understand your research and commenting on both sides of the argument will really keep your readers attention. There will always be readers who disagree and readers who agree with you. It is important to state your problem, state both sides of the argument and make sure you can convince your reader to understand your side of the argument.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your post. Researchers should know as much as they possibly can about their subject and should always keep their audience in mind. If your research is going to be presented to an audience that is enthusiastic about the subject you do not want to seem incredible or present them with information they most likely already know. A research writing wants to maintain their readers attention so it is extremely important to present them with new important information that makes them think and what to learn more about your proposed subject and problem.
ReplyDeleteIt is important to write with an audience in mind because then you can anticipate the possible reactions, ranging from agreement to outright rejection of your thesis. Research writing isn't creative writing, so I don't think the overall objective is to entertain your audience, but rather to convey new findings and try to persuade your audience to accept your perspective. This is not to say that the writing should not be interesting, but trying to appease every possible reader will absolutely compromise your paper.
ReplyDeleteRachel said:
ReplyDeleteYou really need to get your audience’s attention when writing a paper. I learned in my English class last semester that a good strong beginning to a paper will draw a person in to be interested in your paper or not. Most people will read the first few sentences in a paper and decided if it is worth reading on or not. If you bring the reader in right away and get them interested then you will get them to fully read your paper and also they might want to share your paper with other readers.
I think that usually when writing a research paper a writer chooses a topic that is of interest to them. I completely agree with Megan that it is important to know the history and facts of your topic because, like she said, usually the audience is someone who also has an interest in your topic, but I also agree with Megan McCreery that this is in fact a research paper, so the researcher can always learn different facts about their topic while doing their research. I also agree with Megan McMeans that presenting your topic in an interesting way is very important and I like that she gave ideas such as presenting the reader with unproven stories.
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