Kleine

Before Reading

In high school, it was drilled in us that we are to make sure to site every source that we use. I compared my last writing assignment that included sources with one of my roommates, and we found that we both used a school search engine to filter and sort out the "bad" sites and were able to use more qualified information. It is interesting to see how many people did not even know what an MLA sited paper entailed. From my freshman year in high school, I was always taught MLA and was told that this will be very important, especially once I was in college.

Questions for Discussion and Journaling

1. The way that Kleine goes about explaining how one researches definitely is not what I was expecting. I have done many research papers over the years, but never have I thought that there was a certain formula behind just how I am conducting my research. Finding information and sources always seemed like a two step process, but after reading about the "hunters" and "gatherers" it did not seem that simple anymore. Before, I would not have thought that I put that much into finding information for my papers, but now that the process has become apparent, I see that I do some of the same things that he was trying to observe with the different colleges. I do tend to pre write and when it comes to finding information, I focus on one thing, and search until I find it.

3. All of the colleagues loved the research and found what they were doing to be very interesting, not something that they just had to do. They had no problem finding sources because they set out to find something that they were interested in. That is where the line is drawn for a good research paper and a great one. When one is able to write about something that they truly have an interest in, the paper is going to have a lot more time spent on it, with a writer is knowledgeable due to the fact that there was a want to find the information for the paper. As for myself, I find that when I am not interested in a topic, I tend to not look at the facts as closely. In the past there have been certain papers that I loved to find information on and write about.

4. If I were to do what Klein talks about, I would spend even more time on validating sources and understanding more what it takes to really research a topic well. A lot of the time while researching, I try and find what I am looking for instead of going above and beyond and trying to branch from the topic. In this case, it would be more a combination of hunters and gatherers.

Synthesis

There article that Klein read is very similar to Greene, for both are giving good information on how to write a good, solid paper. Both show good tools on just exactly how to construct the best paper.

Summary

In the article, Klein describes his theory on how there is a formula that people use without realizing it while conducting a research paper. He describes how there is more to researching than meets the eye, and different people research in different way. He describes the hunter/gatherer concept, on top of several other theories that he has.

Thoughts

I found the article to be very interesting. I never thought that there was so many steps when it came to writing a research paper. I think that a few of his thoughts were over the top, but for the most part I could definitely see just exactly what he was talking about.