Bedford Researcher - Chapter 12

Chapter 12 in the bedford Reader was all about developing your argument and making it the best it can be. It was divided into two parts, the first being "How can i support my thesis statement" and the second one being "How can i assess the integrity of my argument". The first section had 4 bullet points, the first being "choose reasons". This basically means you need to have many reasons to support your thesis. The more reasons, the better! The other useful thing i got from this section was that you need to decide how to appeal to your readers. There are appeals to emotion, authority, principles, values, beliefs, character, and logic. Each of these appeals is directed at a certain demographic. So depending on the type of paper you are writing, or what point you are trying to get across, consider using different appeals. The second half of this chapter was all about assessing the integrity of your argument by checking for fallacies. By searching for these you can eliminate them, and by doing this you strengthen your argument.

Bedford Researcher - Chapters 10 & 11

Chapter 10 was an interesting read in the Bedford Researcher. This chapter explained how to gather information but not in the usual ways. It involves using surveys, interviews, observation, and correspondence to collect information of your topic of choice. When considering any of these approaches, you first need to ask yourself if it is necessary to use field research methods. Will it help your product or will it detract from it? After that it becomes a lot easier. All of these methods have a lot in common. Basically, they all run through the same steps to get the results. For an interview, observation, or survey you plan it out, conduct the research, and then analyze the results.  This chapter provided me with a few out of the box methods to gathering information that I might consider using for my own project.

Chapter 11 was more of the usual stuff you learn in an English class. This chapter was all about your thesis statement and how to get it to be the best it can be! It started off with reviewing your position statement to get a handle on what you have. After that step, you review notes and sources and information you have gathered so far. Then you consider your purpose in this discussion and your role. These questions are all to get a grip on your situation as it stands and to assess whether anything has changed since you began your project. If anything has changed you need to react accordingly. After that first section was the section of actually writing your thesis statement. You need to identify important information, ideas, and arguments associated with you topic. This allows you to get a better understanding of the conversation and will make your thesis better. This chapter also mentions how you will want to draft multiple thesis statements because you might not like the first one, or the second, but the third might be the thesis statement you like the most. After all this you consider what type of document you want to write so that you can begin to focus your thesis statement and make it perfect.

Chapter 7 - Bedford Researcher

Chapter 7 in the Bedford Researcher is all about plagiarism. It fills you in on what plagiarism is and how to avoid it. It also throws in some helpful tips about how to tell if something is common knowledge or not, meaning that if it is common knowledge you would not need to cite a source to back up the fact. I picked up a bunch of useful things from this chapter, but the most important to me was the section n how to avoid plagiarism. The list of tips the book gives to avoid plagiarizing starts with conducting a knowledge inventory. This can be done by asking yourself three questions: 1) What do you already know about the issue? 2) What don't you know? 3) What do you want to know? This provides a good groundwork to avoiding plagiarism. The book also mentions taking notes carefully, so that you will know whether something you've written down was from a source or your own writing. Also, distinguishing your ideas from your sources ideas. This is important so that you don't write something believing it was yours when it was really taken from someone else. The book mentions other things, but the things i mentioned are what stuck out to me. This chapter provides everything you will need to ensure you will not plagiarize.

Entry for chapters 3 & 6 in the Bedford Researcher

Chapter 3 in the Bedford Researcher was all about how we can develop our research question. The book offered a lot of help when it came to that and really helped from step 1 all the way throughout. It helped get your bearings when it mentioned to reflect on your writing situation and then helped refine the question with the "who, what, where, why, and when". Adding those to potential research questions would be very helpful. This chapter also brought up a research proposal and how to go about writing that up. The Bedford Researcher went through the different parts of a research proposal and broke down each section to help us better understand.

Chapter 6 in the Bedford Researcher brought up taking noted and how to manage information. With this sort of project you are gonna be coming across a lot of information and this chapter was all about how to make taking notes easier and also how to manage all of the different notes you take and process the information that is coming at you. The first thing it brought up was how to save and organize print and digital information. It listed a lot of helpful tools but i think some of the best ways are using dividers and different folders for print info and using your phone to keep track of notes for digital info. It also went through the steps of how to take notes. The steps were:
1. Choose a method and use it consistently
2. Quote directly
3. Paraphrase
4. Summarize
5. Record your reactions and impressions
6. Compare sources
7. Classify sources
8. Plan your document
These simplified steps made taking notes a whole lot easier and made it seem like much less of a daunting task. The last thing this chapter went over was creating a bibliography to organize information you collect. It went through how to start a working bibliography and keep that up as you research. It also showed how to turn that into an annotated bibliography.

paragraph with two sources cited

1)      “Whether exercise can be offered to patients as a stand-alone therapy remains to be seen, but the existing evidence suggests that this might be worthwhile adjunctive treatment,” as Amanda J Daley states in her article “Exercise Therapy And Mental Health In Clinical Populations: Is Exercise Therapy A Worthwhile Intervention?” However, “exercise releases endorphins, which create feelings of happiness and euphoria,” as stated in the article “13 Mental Health Benefits Of Exercise” written in The Huffington Post, and this could alleviate the symptoms of some mental health diseases.

quotations from sources used in a sentence

1) In her article, “Exercise Therapy and Mental Health in Clinical Populations: is Exercise Therapy a Worthwhile Intervention?” Amanda J Daley states, “Given the prevalence and considerable financial costs associated with poor mental health, exercise as a therapeutic possibility deserves attention. Few clinical psychologists and psychiatrists currently consider exercise therapy as a worthwhile intervention strategy that could be useful in reducing mental illness.”

2) Doctors Clare Stevinson, Debbie Lawlor, and Kenneth Fox state in their article, “Exercise Interventions for Cancer Patients: Systematic Review of Controlled Trials," that there is “evidence that exercise increases physical function in cancer patients” (1035).

website evaluation

In preparation for my final project I spent time reviewing websites that had to do with my topic of exercise and the effect on mood.

The website I examined was associated with the University of Texas and had a domain of .edu which means it was made for higher education and it is a credible source.

Link: http://www.edb.utexas.edu/education/assets/files/KHE/Bartholomew%20Publicatoins/The%20effects%20of%20acute%20exercise%20on%20mood%20and%20well%20being.pdf

This paper was titled "Effects of Acute Exercise on Mood and Well-Being in Patients with Major Depressive Disorder" and was published by John B Bartholomew, David Morrison, and Joseph T Ciccolo. The paper had to deal with how exercise affects people who suffer from depression. The information given in the paper was precise and easy to read and sort through and had labels for the different sections of the research. Although it doesn't have to deal specifically with my topic, there is some good information in this paper that I'm sure I could use with my project.