SQR#5

SUMMARY:

In “Helping Students Use Textual Sources Persuasively” Margaret Kantz starts off the article by going about explaining how research essays should be done, and what they should contain. Kantz then goes about telling the struggles that students face while writing essays. She explains that students simply summarize what they read, or summarize a quote but don’t explain how it is significant in proving their point. Kants tells us about a student named Shirley, who is writing a research paper, and she was very bright. The problem was, that Shirley did not write her essay, or present her research adequately. Shirley simply summarized her information, and never actually choose her side or her view. It is at this point, where her friend Alice told her why she received a bad grade on the essay. Alice told Shirley that instead of summarizing, that she should go against the writer, explain why she disagrees, and then provide textual support that supports her ideas. Kant’s says that we readers interpret things differently. She says that instead of using textual facts as facts, we should look at them as arguments or something to discuss or even write about not simply assume it is correct. Kants says that as students, we automatically assume that everything stated in text books is true. Later she says that students don’t know how to use sources, or textual support properly so the result being that it actually makes their paper weaker rather than stronger. She says that students know how to agree or disagree, but not go further and explain excactly why they agree or disagree. Kants begins talking about the encoder, and the decoder, the encoder being the writer and the decoder being the reader. She talks about gaps in the reading process from encoder to decoder, the gap being a misunderstanding, or a different understanding, she also explains that there is a gap between decoder and reality. Kants then goes on to the topic of plagiarism. She talks about how students pleadgurise without realizing it. She says that a way students pleagurise without realizing it, is summarizing a quote, or article. Kants says that students use quotes or support too much at time, and don’t put enough of their opinions and feelings like they should, they are just simply writing down what others think. Kants wraps up the article by talking about drafts. She says that drafting is a good idea because we can further develop our ideas, and encode them better, she believes students assume we can say what we need to say in simply one draft. Kants ends the article by stating that writers or students need to be problem solvers and be more creative in their writing and research.

Question:

Is there a certain way that a writer should write or encode?

Answer:

As far as writing a certain way or encode, no I do not believe there is a certain way. We as the writer have full authority in how we encode, or write what we write. We can choose to say things in any order, and say anything we please. What we must realize is that while there is no particular order, we must make sure that we encode in a way that the decoder, or the reader will comprehend, but we must not alter our ideas to make them more understandable to the reader, just reword them.