The researching process is a topic students don't review often enough, in my opinion. Or they do, but they skip corners and don't understand why their project isn't coming together. Assignments with research elements often ask for a mixture of scholarly sources (peer reviewed articles, for example), a certain number of quotes, summaries and analyses for each of those sources, support for an argument using these sources, and an analysis/conclusion of the topic they've researched. Phew! It's understandable how students can feel overwhelmed! How do you start something like that? Our job as writing coaches and instructors is to help them take this giant task and break it into smaller, more manageable bites. But how do we do that? The Writing Process If you've read my blog before, you know that everything I do as a tutor and teacher centers on the writing process. That's because I believe in autonomy, the ability to try things yourself. We are humans, not robots. There's no one way to produce a writing project, whether it be a poem, email, novel, or research paper. Oftentimes the project type, audience, and purpose will dictate how much time you spend on each stage in the writing process, but this can also vary due to writing experiences, perfectionism, or a person's learning style. Just so we're on the same page, let's talk about the different aspects of the writing process:
The Researching Process Now the researching process, though often tangled with the writing process, is a separate process. For me, they are closer to steps (not stages) meaning that it goes through a step 1, step 2 sequence, which is not always true for the writing process. Again, people have varying names for the steps inside the researching process, and like the writing process, they are often repeated, but for me the steps usually are:
Ideally, you'd start the researching process before you begin your writing process, but that's not always the case. Some students will keep a pad of paper to jot ideas down as they're reading or jump back into research after having drafted an introduction. That's fine! However, students trying to craft a thesis or draft their introduction and body paragraphs without having done the research first may find them in over their head. What coaches can do Well, I already mentioned one strategy: tease apart the writing process from the researching process. Defining and describing the various steps and stages will help students identify where they are at or where they are "stuck." Once you can clearly see where they're at, you can give guidance. Here are some other ideas:
You'll notice that I'm not going into specifics on MLA, APA, or in-text citations here. Those things are important and will very likely be included in these tutoring sessions. But this list is usually where I begin with these sessions. Researching is a crazy, wild, time consuming, messy process! But it doesn't have to feel overwhelming or impossible to us or our students. It's like eating an elephant! It's a huge task. How do you do it? Answer: One bite at a time.
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