Chapter one opens up to preview research and the rhetorical situation and then explains what these things are throughout the pages. The authors explain that research is used in every day of our lives in ways like which car we will buy or what college/university we want to attend. We need to be aware that we will encounter situations involving research outside of schooling.
After explaining how often research is used, the authors turn to the rhetorical situation, which is the "context surrounding a particular research or writing task" (Miller-Cochran and Rodrigo 6). The rhetorical situation has contextual factors: topic, purpose, audience, and author. Another key point is that research means the writer is answering a question. Without a question, there is no purpose to research and no rhetorical situation. Being aware of contextual factors will help the writer develop their question and help them grow as a writer.
Disciplinary approaches are important as well in writing. Different preferences are called conventions. Depending on your conventions there may be differences in style, organization, voice, and formatting. To find your preferences it's recommended to look at examples of writing with the discipline that you prefer.
Chapter two is all about the writing process. People want to believe that the writing process is linear but in reality it is much messier. Hence, good writers are aware of this and are even more aware of their rhetorical situations.
Rhetoricians from Greek and Roman times developed The Five Canons Rhetoric: invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery. Invention is similar to pre-writing in which the writer brainstorms ideas. When brainstorming, some of your ideas are going to be discarded and that's okay because they still helped lead to the final draft. Research is also an important step to the writing process. Research consists of gathering information. It's a good idea to put the research in one place so you can look back at it, like journaling. When the authors discuss drafting, they explain activities writers do to help the writing process. These activities are freewriting, looping, and asking journalistic questions, where the writer puts words on a page or connections their main ideas. Asking journalistic questions means to ask the five W's:who, what, when, why, where, and how.
Peer review is the next stage in the writing process and it is not the same as proofreading. Peer review includes comments on the overall piece, not the grammar. The last three stages are revising, editing, and proofreading. Revising means to remove or add to the text and editing focuses on the issues of style and fluidity. Finally, once the writer corrects the grammar, punctuation, and citations for errors, it is ready for publishing.
I had mixed feelings about the advice given in the text of chapters one and two. There were things that I know for sure that I will use in my writing.
In chapter one, I was interested when the authors talked about how we use research in our everyday lives. Especially as a student, I am constantly studying for my 7 classes and agree with that statement. It got me thinking on my rhetorical situation and how well I am aware of it. As I read the chapter, I continued thinking about the rhetorical situation and how important it is to ask questions. When I first decided that my immersive project will be on going vegetarian, I didn't ask any questions like the authors of this book say I should do. Instead of creating an outline, I jumped straight into looking up articles and quickly realized how overwhelming it was. I decided to ask and answer the question: how was meat effect the human body? From taking advice from the book, I was able to pick my topic efficiently. That was the extent of the information I found to be important to my writing from that chapter.
Chapter two was a hurricane of questioning. Now that I am aware of my rhetorical situation, I was able to create an outline and look for the write sources. This is called the writing process, which is what is discussed in chapter two. One thing I found to be interesting in chapter two was the myths saying that writing is linear. As a mathematics major, I instantly imagined a linear graph and realized that it's true that it's definitely not linear. I have drawn pictures of the types of graphs that writing is:
What people want writing to be (linear):
What writing actually is (not so linear):
One thing that stood out to be in the writing process was said by Aristotle, "although you may not use all of the information and materials you have discovered and developed, it is important to identify a wide range of choices" (Miller-Cochran and Rodrigo). I liked this statement because it made me realize that all the research you find is important because, even though not everything will be in the final draft, the writer will become more well-rounded in the topic; making it easier to write about it.
Everything else involving the writing process did not interest me because they were things that I already know from experience in high school and my first semester of college. The two things I discussed in chapter two are things that I will keep in my mind as I research for my immersion project, along with growing more comfortable with my rhetorical situation.
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