Exploratory Writing Apply your Annotated Bibliography work to

Exploratory Writing Apply your Annotated Bibliography work to this Exploratory Essaay

You’ve done the work of finding sources, now read closely to explore the topic An exploratory essay narrates a writer’s research process. When you write an exploratory essay, you pose a question or problem and dwell with it even if you can’t solve it. You provide a chronological account of your thinking about your question as your research progresses. You will write a first person, chronologically organized narrative account of your thinking process as you investigate your question through research, talking with others, and doing your own reflective thinking.

What’s the goal of exploratory writing? Your goals is to examine your question, problem, or issue from a variety of strengths and weaknesses of different positions and points of view. To keep a problem alive through consideration of multiple solutions or points of view. The writer identifies a problem, considers a possible solution or point of view, explores its strengths and weaknesses, and then moves on to consider another possible solution or viewpoint. The thinker resists closure—that is, resists settling too soon on a thesis

Exploring Exploratory Writing Show essay A and essay B Work in groups and analyze both essays, determine why one essay is better than the other.

An Exploratory Essay By the end of your essay, you are not expected to have reached a satisfactory solution to your problem. You will be graded on the quality of your exploration and thinking processes. In other words, your goal is not to answer your question but to report on the process of wrestling with it. The key of exploratory writing is to create tension between two views. When you start out you might not know where your thinking process will end up. Phrases such as “part of me thinks…but another part of me thinks this…” forces you to find something additional to say; writing then becomes a process of inquiry and discovery.

dialectic The idea that each thesis gives rise to an opposing antithesis, and the class between two opposing perspectives leads a critical thinker to develop a new perspective that incorporates some features of both. You initiate deeper and higher level thinking, dialectic thinking, any time you place alternative possibilities side by side.

Qualities of dialectic thinking are: See the assigned question as a genuine problem worth puzzling over. Considers alternative views and plays them off against each other. Looks at specific examples and illustrations Continues the thinking process in search of some sort of resolution or synthesis of the alternative views Incorporates the stages of this dialectic process into the essay

Keeping a problem open: Working in groups, read each of the following questions and write out the first plausible answer that comes to mind: Why, on average, are males more attracted to video games than females? Are these games harmful to males? Have online social networks improved or harmed the lives of participants? Why? The most popular magazines sold on college campuses are women’s fashion and lifestyle magazines such as Glamour, Elle, and Cosmo; Why do women buy these magazines? Are these magazines harmful?

Topic examples Pg 180 Should the US turn to nuclear power for generating electricity? How can we keep children away from pornography on the internet? Should we legalize the sale of organs for transplant? Should the homeless mentally ill be placed involuntarily in state mental hospitals?

The key is to pick a question, problem or issue that truly perplexes you. Your writing will weave two aspects together: Your exploration process as well as the knowledge, understanding and insight you gained through your exploration, and then how that changes the direction of your exploration.

Taking double entry research notes Pg 181 Novice writers avoid taking notes and instead print and highlight. Experienced, mature and academic writers use note taking as a discipline to promote strong critical reading. In double entry, you have one section for summarizing key points, recording data, noting page numbers and useful quotes, and another section for writing your own strong response to each source, explaining how it advanced your thinking, raised questions or pulled you in one direction or another. Daily you will receive a grade for your double entry journals.

Shaping and drafting Often times a writer starts out with one sharp, clearly focused question such as should the United States build a fence between the United States and Mexico? Often though, may writer’s don’t start with a single focused question but rather with a whole cluster of related questions swimming in their heads. This is fine as long as you have a direction in which to move after the initial starting point. Even if you do start with a focused question, it is apt to evolve as your thinking progresses. Your job is to document the progression of your research journey

Framework for an exploratory essay—pg 185