Evaluating Print Sources

This handout will discuss strategies to evaluate secondary printed sources—books, journal articles, magazines, etc.—based on three criteria: objectivity, authority, and applicability to your particular assignment. Printed sources, whether primary or secondary, provide the evidence for most of the academic essays you will write in college. Non-print sources, such as webpages, works of art (performance and fine), and interviews often provide significant source material for analysis but are not covered in this handout.

Introduction

At some point in your college career, you will be asked to write a research paper. While you may associate research papers with history or political science classes, the study of most disciplines involves the collection and interpretation of data with the intent of making and supporting an argument. To do this, you must use some printed texts, whether they are primary documents or secondary sources that analyze primary sources.
If you have never written a research paper at the college level, the process may appear daunting. The first step, of course, is to develop a topic that investigates a problem important to your discipline. For this, talk to your instructor or the library Reference staff and check out our handouts on understanding assignments, constructing thesis statements, and argument in academic writing.
So you come up with a good idea and head to the library to begin research. UNC's Davis Library contains over five million books and journals. Which ones are useful to your study? What if the information they present is false, outdated, or biased to the point of inaccuracy? How can you tell? This handout will help answer these questions.
Researchers approach an unfamiliar source and ask questions of it with the intention of discovering clues that will tell them if they can trust the source and if it can add anything to the argument. The steps that are outlined below may appear drawn-out and perfunctory to some; each step is outlined in detail so that both novice and advanced researchers can benefit. It will help you approach your sources more carefully and critically.

Primary and secondary sources

This handout will focus on how to evaluate secondary sources, but the critical skills you learn here will help in analyzing primary sources too. Before we can get to secondary sources, we need to differentiate primary from secondary sources. Primary sources come in various shapes and sizes, and often you have to do a little bit of research about the source to make sure you have correctly identified it.
In a nutshell, a primary source was produced at the same time that the events described in the source took place. Sound easy? In most cases it is. Here are some examples and problem areas:

Diaries and letters written by people who were participants in the actions they describe are easy to classify as primary sources, but what about memoirs or autobiographies? These are usually written well after the events took place and often will tell you more about the period in which they were written than about the period they describe.

What about newspapers? The author of an article presents an interpretation, but if the article reports current events, it is primary. If the article reports past events, it is secondary. Keep in mind that an article about a past event can present valuable primary evidence concerning the author's context.

What about fiction? If you are studying the novel or poem for its own sake, it is a primary source. If you are using the novel or poem as evidence—a historical novel, for example—it is a secondary source. In the same vein, a 19th-century history textbook can be considered a primary source if you are studying how the work was influenced by the period in which it was written or how it fits into a continuum of historical analysis (that is called historiography).

Check out this table to help differentiate primary and secondary sources.

Primary	Secondary
The Tempest by William Shakespeare	An article that analyzes the motif of the 'savage other' in The Tempest.
The Diary of Anne Frank	A book about the Holocaust
The Declaration of Independence	A biography of Thomas Jefferson
Population statistics on Ethiopia from The World Factbook	An article titled "The impact of population growth on infant mortality in Ethiopia."

Secondary sources will inform most of your writing in college. You will often be asked to research your topic using primary sources, but secondary sources will tell you which primary sources you should use and will help you interpret those primary sources. To use them well, however, you need to think critically about them.
There are two parts of a source that you need to analyze: the text itself and the argument within the text.

Evaluating the text

You evaluate a text to determine the objectivity of the author and the credibility of the work. Do not assume that your sole motive or goal is to eliminate sources. While this may be a consequence of your analysis, your goal should be to understand the context of the work so you can assess how it can inform your argument. To do this, you must analyze the text according to three criteria: the author, the publisher, and the date of publication.

Author

Remember back at the beginning of this handout I wrote that critically analyzing sources is all about asking questions? Well, here is where you show off that skill. The next time you pick up a book in the library, look at the author's name. Have you heard of her? Do you know if he is cited in other books on the subject? Has your instructor mentioned the author's name? Is she affiliated with a university (which may or may not add to her authority)? Does the author acknowledge an organizational affiliation? The acknowledgements and preface are good places to get the answers to most of these questions.

Publisher

The questions you will ask about the publisher are similar to those asked about the author. Look in the first few pages of the book for the copyright and publisher information. Did a university press—for example, UNC Press, UT Press—publish the text? Did a popular press—Jones and Bartlett, Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich—publish it? You can be relatively sure that if a university press published the book, it has been held to a high academic standard. Popular presses differ in their standards. You may have to look at other aspects of the book (see below for tips on identifying tone and audience) or look at other books produced by the same publisher to judge the credibility of the text. Remember, you are not looking for ways to exclude works. Rather, you are trying to understand the context in which the book was written so you can better analyze its content.

Date of Publication

If you are researching a current issue, it stands to reason that you want the most up-to-date sources you can find. If your topic is not so current, it is often acceptable to go back ten or even twenty years for your sources. If there is a more recent book on the same topic, make sure that you look at it. Maybe the author found new evidence that drastically alters the argument of the first book. The age of a work can be easy to determine, but it is sometimes tricky. The page that has all the publisher's information has a copyright date. Has the work been translated? If so, that date is probably the date of the translation. Is there more than one date listed on the page? In that case, you probably have a newer edition. If so, the author wrote most of the book at the time of the first date of publication, although new information may have been added since then.

Objectivity

After analyzing the text, you may find some bias. That does not mean you should discard it. Perhaps the author thanks an anti-homosexual religious organization for funding his research on same-sex marriages. You may be tempted to toss the book aside because you feel that a biased work will not provide the 'facts.' But you may be missing out on some good evidence. No secondary work is going to give you the 'facts.' Secondary sources provide interpretations of primary data. Every interpretation is influenced by the author's context. Find out where the author is coming from and use the evidence accordingly. For example, the book about same-sex marriages funded by the Southern Baptist Convention may provide a clear presentation of the conservative side of the issue. Paired with a book that provides a liberal interpretation, the conservative book may provide valuable information about the various positions within the discussion.

Evaluating an argument

Analyzing the author, publisher, and age of the text provides a good place to start your analysis. You should not stop there, however. You have to move beyond the appraisal of the text and begin to analyze the content. To do this, you can use the same technique of asking questions and searching for responses.

Applicability

Is the work applicable to your study? The first place to look for answers is the table of contents. A book can have a great title but then can be full of tangential ideas or take an approach that simply may not add to your study. The next place to check out is the index. The index is a wonderful resource for researchers. You can use it to quickly jump to particular passages if your topic is well defined. More often, you'll scan the index to get a feel for the authority and scope of the text. Often you can learn most of what a book can tell you by reading the preface and the introduction and scanning the table of contents and index.

Argument

Analyzing the argument gets to the heart of a critical approach to your sources. While this task may seem daunting at first, here are some tips and techniques you can learn to make it a lot easier.

• Is the information supported by evidence? Take a good look at the footnotes or endnotes. What kinds of sources did the author use? Does the bibliography mention the important books in the field?
• What is the major claim or thesis of the book or article? Is it clear what the author is trying to prove?
• What are the primary assumptions on which the author bases the argument's main claim? Do you agree with those assumptions? Is the author taking too much liberty in making those assumptions?
• Check out the Book Review Index in the Reference section of the library. Read what other scholars have written about this book. Are the reviews generally positive? Do they consider the book useful or important to the field? This is not considered cheating. On the contrary, it will enable you to read the book with your eyes open, so to speak.

Audience

An analysis of the audience can tell you a lot about how much authority a book or article can claim. Most of what you uncovered in your analysis of the text will inform your judgment of the intended audience. You can find out more by looking at how the book is written and what type of format it is written in. Is the work full of technical terms or graphs? Then the audience may be academic. Is the language very simple with lots of pictures? Then the audience may be a younger crowd, or the book may be intended for light reading. If you are reading a newspaper or magazine, look at the advertisements. Who does the publisher hope will read the source? An advertisement for Lexus automobiles or Johnny Walker Red scotch in "Newsweek" may indicate a wealthy, educated (and possibly male) audience. An advertisement in "People" for Tommy Hilfiger or Pepsi may indicate a different audience.

Tone

The tone of a book is how the author represents himself or herself through language. Strong and impassioned language may indicate to you that the author is too emotionally connected to the work to provide an objective analysis. Most academic authors try to appear impartial in their writing by always writing in the third person and staying away from loaded adjectives. Here are some questions you can ask about the author's tone:

• Does the author's language seem impartial to you? Are wild claims made? Is a lot of emotional language used?
• Does the author remain focused on the argument? Does he or she jump from point to point without completing any thoughts?
• Does the author seem objective? Does the information appear to be propaganda to you? Is a specific agenda put forth through the selection of data or the manipulation of evidence? Remember, finding a bias does not necessarily mean you should discard the book. Take it in stride and use it accordingly.

Authority

Answers to all the questions posed above will help you determine whether you can accept a source as an authority. Can you trust it? What can you trust about it? There is no easy way to answer that question, but by carefully approaching both the text and the argument you can feel more confident about the source.

Following the trail

It may happen that you come up with a topic and go to the library to find sources. You sit down with ten books that you gleaned from a keyword search on the library's online catalog. You put all ten books through the critical analysis steps outlined above, and only one fits all your criteria. What do you do now? Go back to the library catalog? Browse the shelves near where you found the first ten? Those methods may work, but a quicker way is to follow the trail of sources in the one book you have decided to use. Look at the footnotes and bibliography. Note titles that the author relies on or refers to as pillars of the discipline. Then look up those book or articles in the library catalog and begin the critical analysis process all over again. This time, however, you know what one author thinks about the book, so it already has achieved a level of authority or importance. Following the trail from one book or article to others can lead to an understanding of the entire structure of the literature on a particular topic.

Apply what you've learned

Now that you know the key terms and what questions to ask, put your newfound knowledge to the test. What questions would you ask of this handout?

• Is the author an authority?
• Is the author biased?
• Can I learn anything from this handout?

How would you go about finding out the answers to these questions? For the first question, go to the UNC Writing Center Homepage. There you will find out who funds the Writing Center and who works there. The answer to the second question is yes, I do have biases, although I am probably not aware of all of them. Do they affect what I write? Of course. Is that necessarily bad? Of course not. The answer to the third question is more difficult. There is no table of contents because this is a short work, but the bold section breaks and bulleted lists should help you scan the document for applicability. Everyone approaches a learning situation from a different angle, and what is useful to one person might not be for the next. That is an assessment you must make from your own perspective.

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This article is from the UNC website.

How To Write a Thesis Statement

Almost all of us—even if we don’t do it consciously—look early in an essay for a one- or two-sentence condensation of the argument or analysis that is to follow. We refer to that condensation as a thesis statement.

Why Should Your Essay Contain a Thesis Statement?

• to test your ideas by distilling them into a sentence or two
• to better organize and develop your argument
• to provide your reader with a “guide” to your argument

In general, your thesis statement will accomplish these goals if you think of the thesis as the answer to the question your paper explores.

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How to Generate a Thesis Statement if the Topic is Assigned

Almost all assignments, no matter how complicated, can be reduced to a single question. Your first step, then, is to distill the assignment into a specific question. For example, if your assignment is, “Write a report to the local school board explaining the potential benefits of using computers in a fourth-grade class,” turn the request into a question like, “What are the potential benefits of using computers in a fourth-grade class?” After you’ve chosen the question your essay will answer, compose one or two complete sentences answering that question.
Q: “What are the potential benefits of using computers in a fourth-grade class?”
A: “The potential benefits of using computers in a fourth-grade class are . . .”

OR

A: “Using computers in a fourth-grade class promises to improve . . .”
The answer to the question is the thesis statement for the essay.

How to Generate a Thesis Statement if the Topic is not Assigned

Even if your assignment doesn’t ask a specific question, your thesis statement still needs to answer a question about the issue you’d like to explore. In this situation, your job is to figure out what question you’d like to write about.
A good thesis statement will usually include the following four attributes:

• take on a subject upon which reasonable people could disagree
• deal with a subject that can be adequately treated given the nature of the assignment
• express one main idea
• assert your conclusions about a subject

Let’s see how to generate a thesis statement for a social policy paper.
Brainstorm the topic.
Let’s say that your class focuses upon the problems posed by changes in the dietary habits of Americans. You find that you are interested in the amount of sugar Americans consume.
You start out with a thesis statement like this:
Sugar consumption.
This fragment isn’t a thesis statement. Instead, it simply indicates a general subject. Furthermore, your reader doesn’t know what you want to say about sugar consumption.
Narrow the topic.
Your readings about the topic, however, have led you to the conclusion that elementary school children are consuming far more sugar than is healthy.
You change your thesis to look like this:
Reducing sugar consumption by elementary school children.
This fragment not only announces your subject, but it focuses on one segment of the population: elementary school children. Furthermore, it raises a subject upon which reasonable people could disagree, because while most people might agree that children consume more sugar than they used to, not everyone would agree on what should be done or who should do it. You should note that this fragment is not a thesis statement because your reader doesn’t know your conclusions on the topic.
Take a position on the topic.
After reflecting on the topic a little while longer, you decide that what you really want to say about this topic is that something should be done to reduce the amount of sugar these children consume.
You revise your thesis statement to look like this:
More attention should be paid to the food and beverage choices available to elementary school children.
This statement asserts your position, but the terms more attention and food and beverage choices are vague.
Use specific language.
You decide to explain what you mean about food and beverage choices, so you write:
Experts estimate that half of elementary school children consume nine times the recommended daily allowance of sugar.
This statement is specific, but it isn’t a thesis. It merely reports a statistic instead of making an assertion.
Make an assertion based on clearly stated support.
You finally revise your thesis statement one more time to look like this:
Because half of all American elementary school children consume nine times the recommended daily allowance of sugar, schools should be required to replace the beverages in soda machines with healthy alternatives.
Notice how the thesis answers the question, “What should be done to reduce sugar consumption by children, and who should do it?” When you started thinking about the paper, you may not have had a specific question in mind, but as you became more involved in the topic, your ideas became more specific. Your thesis changed to reflect your new insights.

How to Tell a Strong Thesis Statement from a Weak One

1. A strong thesis statement takes some sort of stand.

Remember that your thesis needs to show your conclusions about a subject. For example, if you are writing a paper for a class on fitness, you might be asked to choose a popular weight-loss product to evaluate. Here are two thesis statements:
There are some negative and positive aspects to the Banana Herb Tea Supplement.
This is a weak thesis statement. First, it fails to take a stand. Second, the phrase negative and positive aspects is vague.
Because Banana Herb Tea Supplement promotes rapid weight loss that results in the loss of muscle and lean body mass, it poses a potential danger to customers.
This is a strong thesis because it takes a stand, and because it's specific.

2. A strong thesis statement justifies discussion.

Your thesis should indicate the point of the discussion. If your assignment is to write a paper on kinship systems, using your own family as an example, you might come up with either of these two thesis statements:
My family is an extended family.
This is a weak thesis because it merely states an observation. Your reader won’t be able to tell the point of the statement, and will probably stop reading.
While most American families would view consanguineal marriage as a threat to the nuclear family structure, many Iranian families, like my own, believe that these marriages help reinforce kinship ties in an extended family.
This is a strong thesis because it shows how your experience contradicts a widely-accepted view. A good strategy for creating a strong thesis is to show that the topic is controversial. Readers will be interested in reading the rest of the essay to see how you support your point.

3. A strong thesis statement expresses one main idea.

Readers need to be able to see that your paper has one main point. If your thesis statement expresses more than one idea, then you might confuse your readers about the subject of your paper. For example:
Companies need to exploit the marketing potential of the Internet, and Web pages can provide both advertising and customer support.
This is a weak thesis statement because the reader can’t decide whether the paper is about marketing on the Internet or Web pages. To revise the thesis, the relationship between the two ideas needs to become more clear. One way to revise the thesis would be to write:
Because the Internet is filled with tremendous marketing potential, companies should exploit this potential by using Web pages that offer both advertising and customer support.
This is a strong thesis because it shows that the two ideas are related. Hint: a great many clear and engaging thesis statements contain words like because, since, so, although, unless, and however.

4. A strong thesis statement is specific.

A thesis statement should show exactly what your paper will be about, and will help you keep your paper to a manageable topic. For example, if you're writing a seven-to-ten page paper on hunger, you might say:
World hunger has many causes and effects.
This is a weak thesis statement for two major reasons. First, world hunger can’t be discussed thoroughly in seven to ten pages. Second, many causes and effects is vague. You should be able to identify specific causes and effects. A revised thesis might look like this:
Hunger persists in Glandelinia because jobs are scarce and farming in the infertile soil is rarely profitable.
This is a strong thesis statement because it narrows the subject to a more specific and manageable topic, and it also identifies the specific causes for the existence of hunger

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This article is from Indiana University

Developing a Thesis

What is a thesis?

A thesis is the main point of your paper. Everything else in your paper should contribute to explaining and proving the main point. Your thesis may be a single sentence, but it can be much longer. In a large paper, you might need a paragraph or more to state your thesis. A thesis is more specific than either a subject area or a topic. Here are some examples of subjects and topics, and a thesis statement that could be written about one of the topics.

Subject Area	Topic
Homelessness	The causes of homelessness
Northwestern's alcohol policy	Student reactions to NU's alcohol policy
The narrator in Jane Austen's novels	The narrator's stance in Emma

Sample Thesis

Contrary to much public opinion, the growth of the homeless population has not been caused by mass deinstitutionalization of mental patients. Instead, the increase in homelessness has resulted from the combination of two circumstances in the 1980's: the decrease in traditional jobs in industry and destruction of low-income housing.

Why is this a good example of a thesis?

It is specific.

The thesis focuses on two clearly-stated factors of a narrowly defined topic.

It makes an arguable point.

Unless you are writing a factual report, your thesis should make a point that needs to be further proved or explained.

It prepares the reader for more information.

The thesis helps the reader define his or her expectations. From this thesis, a reader could expect to learn more about why these two factors cause homelessness, how they combine, and why the deinstitutionalization of mental patients is not the primary cause.

Does every paper need a thesis?

Yes. Every paper needs a controlling idea that helps you select and organize the details. However, not every paper needs the same kind of thesis. Here is an example of a thesis that summarizes factual information rather than arguing a position:

Users may search the university library's catalog by author, title, subject, or keyword. The keyword function is a new addition to the library catalog that allows the user to search for words or combinations of words appearing anywhere in the book's title. Several specific commands enable users to combine keyword search terms.

This thesis prepares the reader for more information about searching the library catalog using the keyword function. Even though this thesis does not argue a position in the same manner as the previous one, it still organizes and controls the flow of information.

Where does the thesis belong in a paper?

In general, the thesis belongs at the beginning of the paper. If the thesis is at the beginning of a paper, it can set reader expectations and organize the information. Good places for a thesis: the first sentence, the end of the first paragraph, or the end of the opening section.

How do I develop a thesis?

You may find it very valuable to consult with your instructor during the process of formulating a thesis.

1. Choose your subject area (the professor may choose it for you).
2. Select a topic (the professor may ask you to write on a specific topic).
3. Narrow your topic by asking yourself the following questions:
• What questions in class have interested you the most?
• What points has the professor made that you found intriguing?
• Have you uncovered any controversies in the readings?
• What have you found most surprising about the course material?
4. Find a question that you want to answer, or a problem you want to solve. Write down as specific an answer as possible and use that answer as a thesis to organize your details.
5. Assess the thesis you have found:
• Are these questions and answers relevant to the course material?
• Am I interested developing and supporting my answer to this question?
• Will my readers be interested in my answer?
• Can I find appropriate material to support my answer in the amount of time I have to work on this assignment?
• Can I ask and answer my question in the number of pages asked for?

 

From thesis to paper

• Try reading your thesis aloud to a friend.
• If that person understands what you are talking about and why, your thesis probably makes sense.
• Try writing an outline of points that might follow logically from your thesis.
• This may help you figure out how to support the claims or promises of information that you make in your thesis.
• Write a rough draft to test your main idea.
• You may discover that your thesis needs to be changed or replaced.
• If you write an early draft that doesn't stick to the main point you have chosen, it may mean that you really want to write about something else. In that case, change your thesis.
• Revise your draft to support your thesis.
• When you are confident your thesis reflects the point you really want to make, review each paragraph of the paper to see how it relates to the thesis.
• Make an outline of the paper's points and compare it to the thesis. You may decide to add, omit, or rearrange material to make your paper more persuasive and informative.

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This article is from the Northwestern University website.

Argument

This handout will define what an argument is and explain why you need one in most of your academic essays.

Arguments are everywhere

You may be surprised to hear that the word "argument" does not have to be written anywhere in your assignment for it to be an important part of your task. In fact, making an argument—expressing a point of view on a subject and supporting it with evidence—is often the aim of academic writing. Your instructors may assume that you know this and thus may not explain the importance of arguments in class.
Most material you learn in college is or has been debated by someone, somewhere, at some time. Even when the material you read or hear is presented as simple "fact," it may actually be one person's interpretation of a set of information. Instructors may call on you to examine that interpretation and defend it, refute it, or offer some new view of your own. In writing assignments, you will almost always need to do more than just summarize information that you have gathered or regurgitate facts that have been discussed in class. You will need to develop a point of view on or interpretation of that material and provide evidence for your position.
If you think that "fact," not argument, rules intelligent thinking, consider an example. For nearly 2000 years, educated people in many Western cultures believed that bloodletting—deliberately causing a sick person to lose blood—was the most effective treatment for a variety of illnesses. The "fact" that bloodletting is beneficial to human health was not widely questioned until the 1800's, and some physicians continued to recommend bloodletting as late as the 1920's. We have come to accept a different set of "facts" now because some people began to doubt the effectiveness of bloodletting; these people argued against it and provided convincing evidence. Human knowledge grows out of such differences of opinion, and scholars like your instructors spend their lives engaged in debate over what may be counted as "true," "real," or "right" in their fields. In their courses, they want you to engage in similar kinds of critical thinking and debate.
Argumentation is not just what your instructors do. We all use argumentation on a daily basis, and you probably already have some skill at crafting an argument. The more you improve your skills in this area, the better you will be at thinking critically, reasoning, making choices, and weighing evidence.

Making a claim

What is an argument? In academic writing, an argument is usually a main idea, often called a "claim" or "thesis statement," backed up with evidence that supports the idea. In the majority of college papers, you will need to make some sort of claim and use evidence to support it, and your ability to do this well will separate your papers from those of students who see assignments as mere accumulations of fact and detail. In other words, gone are the happy days of being given a "topic" about which you can write anything. It is time to stake out a position and prove why it is a good position for a thinking person to hold.
Claims can be as simple as "Protons are positively charged and electrons are negatively charged," with evidence such as, "In this experiment, protons and electrons acted in such and such a way." Claims can also be as complex as "The end of the South African system of apartheid was inevitable," using reasoning and evidence such as, "Every successful revolution in the modern era has come about after the government in power has given and then removed small concessions to the uprising group." In either case, the rest of your paper will detail the reasoning and evidence that have led you to believe that your position is best.
When beginning to write a paper, ask yourself, "What is my point?" For example, the point of this handout is to help you become a better writer, and we are arguing that an important step in the process of writing effective arguments is understanding the concept of argumentation. If your papers do not have a main point, they cannot be arguing for anything. Asking yourself what your point is can help you avoid a mere "information dump." Consider this: your instructors probably know a lot more than you do about your subject matter. Why, then, would you want to provide them with material they already know? Instructors are usually looking for two things:

1. Proof that you understand the material, AND
2. A demonstration of your ability to use or apply the material in ways that go beyond what you have read or heard.

This second part can be done in many ways: you can critique the material, apply it to something else, or even just explain it in a different way. In order to succeed at this second step, though, you must have a particular point to argue.
Arguments in academic writing are usually complex and take time to develop. Your argument will need to be more than a simple or obvious statement such as "Frank Lloyd Wright was a great architect." Such a statement might capture your initial impressions of Wright as you have studied him in class; however, you need to look deeper and express specifically what caused that "greatness." Your instructor will probably expect something more complicated, such as "Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture combines elements of European modernism, Asian aesthetic form, and locally found materials to create a unique new style," or "There are many strong similarities between Wright's building designs and those of his mother, which suggests that he may have borrowed some of her ideas." To develop your argument, you would then define your terms and prove your claim with evidence from Wright's drawings and buildings and those of the other architects you mentioned.

Evidence

Do not stop with having a point. You have to back up your point with evidence. The strength of your evidence, and your use of it, can make or break your argument. You already have the natural inclination for this type of thinking, if not in an academic setting. Think about how you talked your parents into letting you borrow the family car. Did you present them with lots of instances of your past trustworthiness? Did you make them feel guilty because your friends' parents all let them drive? Did you whine until they just wanted you to shut up? Did you look up statistics on teen driving and use them to show how you didn't fit the dangerous-driver profile? These are all types of argumentation, and they exist in academia in similar forms.
Every field has slightly different requirements for acceptable evidence, so familiarize yourself with some arguments from within that field instead of just applying whatever evidence you like best. Pay attention to your textbooks and your instructor's lectures. What types of argument and evidence are they using? The type of evidence that sways an English instructor may not work to convince a sociology instructor. Find out what counts as proof that something is true in that field. Is it statistics, a logical development of points, something from the object being discussed (art work, text, culture, or atom), the way something works, or some combination of more than one of these things?
Be consistent with your evidence. Unlike negotiating for the use of your parents' car, a college paper is not the place for an all-out blitz of every type of argument. You can often use more than one type of evidence within a paper, but make sure that within each section you are providing the reader with evidence appropriate to each claim. So, if you start a paragraph or section with a statement like "Putting the student seating area closer to the basketball court will raise player performance," do not follow with your evidence on how much more money the university could raise by letting more students go to games for free. Information about how fan support raises player morale, which then results in better play, would be a better follow-up. Your next section could offer clear reasons why undergraduates have as much or more right to attend an undergraduate event as wealthy alumni—but this information would not go in the same section as the fan support stuff. You cannot convince a confused person, so keep things tidy and ordered.

Counterargument

One way to strengthen your argument and show that you have a deep understanding of the issue you are discussing is to anticipate and address counterarguments or objections. By considering what someone who disagrees with your position might have to say about your argument, you show that you have thought things through, and you dispose of some of the reasons your audience might have for not accepting your argument. Recall our discussion of student seating in the Dean Dome. To make the most effective argument possible, you should consider not only what students would say about seating but also what alumni who have paid a lot to get good seats might say.
You can generate counterarguments by asking yourself how someone who disagrees with you might respond to each of the points you've made or your position as a whole. If you can't immediately imagine another position, here are some strategies to try:

• Do some research. It may seem to you that no one could possibly disagree with the position you are arguing, but someone probably has. For example, some people argue that the American Civil War never ended. If you are making an argument concerning, for example, the outcomes of the Civil War, you might wish to see what some of these people have to say.
• Talk with a friend or with your teacher. Another person may be able to imagine counterarguments that haven't occurred to you.
• Consider your conclusion or claim and the premises of your argument and imagine someone who denies each of them. For example, if you argued "Cats make the best pets. This is because they are clean and independent," you might imagine someone saying "Cats do not make the best pets. They are dirty and needy."

Once you have thought up some counterarguments, consider how you will respond to them—will you concede that your opponent has a point but explain why your audience should nonetheless accept your argument? Will you reject the counterargument and explain why it is mistaken? Either way, you will want to leave your reader with a sense that your argument is stronger than opposing arguments.
When you are summarizing opposing arguments, be charitable. Present each argument fairly and objectively, rather than trying to make it look foolish. You want to show that you have seriously considered the many sides of the issue and that you are not simply attacking or caricaturing your opponents.
It is usually better to consider one or two serious counterarguments in some depth, rather than to give a long but superficial list of many different counterarguments and replies.
Be sure that your reply is consistent with your original argument. If considering a counterargument changes your position, you will need to go back and revise your original argument accordingly.

Audience

Audience is a very important consideration in argument. A lifetime of dealing with your family members has helped you figure out which arguments work best to persuade each of them. Maybe whining works with one parent, but the other will only accept cold, hard statistics. Your kid brother may listen only to the sound of money in his palm. It's usually wise to think of your audience in an academic setting as someone who is perfectly smart but who doesn't necessarily agree with you. You are not just expressing your opinion in an argument ("It's true because I said so"), and in most cases your audience will know something about the subject at hand—so you will need sturdy proof. At the same time, do not think of your audience as clairvoyant. You have to come out and state both your claim and your evidence clearly. Do not assume that because the instructor knows the material, he or she understands what part of it you are using, what you think about it, and why you have taken the position you've chosen.

Critical reading

Critical reading is a big part of understanding argument. Although some of the material you read will be very persuasive, do not fall under the spell of the printed word as authority. Very few of your instructors think of the texts they assign as the last word on the subject. Remember that the author of every text has an agenda, something that he or she wants you to believe. This is OK—everything is written from someone's perspective—but it's a good thing to be aware of. (For more information on objectivity and bias, please read our handout on evaluating print sources).
Take notes either in the margins of your source (if you are using a photocopy or your own book) or on a separate sheet as you read. Put away that highlighter! Simply highlighting a text is good for memorizing the main ideas in that text—it does not encourage critical reading. Part of your goal as a reader should be to put the author's ideas in your own words. Then you can stop thinking of these ideas as facts and start thinking of them as arguments.
When you read, ask yourself questions like "What is the author trying to prove?" and "What is the author assuming I will agree with?" Do you agree with the author? Does the author adequately defend her argument? What kind of proof does she use? Is there something she leaves out that you would put in? Does putting it in hurt her argument? As you get used to reading critically, you will start to see the sometimes hidden agendas of other writers, and you can use this skill to improve your own ability to craft effective arguments.

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 This article is from the UNC website

Brainstorming

This handout discusses techniques that will help you start writing a paper and continue writing through the challenges of the revising process. Brainstorming can help you choose a topic, develop an approach to a topic, or deepen your understanding of the topic's potential.

Introduction

If you consciously take advantage of your natural thinking processes by gathering your brain's energies into a "storm," you can transform these energies into written words or diagrams that will lead to lively, vibrant writing. Below you will find a brief discussion of what brainstorming is, why you might brainstorm, and suggestions for how you might brainstorm.
Whether you are starting with too much information or not enough, brainstorming can help you to put a new writing task in motion or revive a project that hasn't reached completion. Let's take a look at each case:
When you've got nothing: You might need a storm to approach when you feel "blank" about the topic, devoid of inspiration, full of anxiety about the topic, or just too tired to craft an orderly outline. In this case, brainstorming stirs up the dust, whips some air into our stilled pools of thought, and gets the breeze of inspiration moving again.
When you've got too much: There are times when you have too much chaos in your brain and need to bring in some conscious order. In this case, brainstorming forces the mental chaos and random thoughts to rain out onto the page, giving you some concrete words or schemas that you can then arrange according to their logical relations.

Brainstorming techniques

What follows are great ideas on how to brainstorm—ideas from professional writers, novice writers, people who would rather avoid writing, and people who spend a lot of time brainstorming about…well, how to brainstorm.
Try out several of these options and challenge yourself to vary the techniques you rely on; some techniques might suit a particular writer, academic discipline, or assignment better than others. If the technique you try first doesn't seem to help you, move right along and try some others.

Freewriting

When you freewrite, you let your thoughts flow as they will, putting pen to paper and writing down whatever comes into your mind. You don't judge the quality of what you write and you don't worry about style or any surface-level issues, like spelling, grammar, or punctuation. If you can't think of what to say, you write that down—really. The advantage of this technique is that you free up your internal critic and allow yourself to write things you might not write if you were being too self-conscious.
When you freewrite you can set a time limit ("I'll write for 15 minutes!") and even use a kitchen timer or alarm clock or you can set a space limit ("I'll write until I fill four full notebook pages, no matter what tries to interrupt me!") and just write until you reach that goal. You might do this on the computer or on paper, and you can even try it with your eyes shut or the monitor off, which encourages speed and freedom of thought.
The crucial point is that you keep on writing even if you believe you are saying nothing. Word must follow word, no matter the relevance. Your freewriting might even look like this:
"This paper is supposed to be on the politics of tobacco production but even though I went to all the lectures and read the book I can't think of what to say and I've felt this way for four minutes now and I have 11 minutes left and I wonder if I'll keep thinking nothing during every minute but I'm not sure if it matters that I am babbling and I don't know what else to say about this topic and it is rainy today and I never noticed the number of cracks in that wall before and those cracks remind me of the walls in my grandfather's study and he smoked and he farmed and I wonder why he didn't farm tobacco..."
When you're done with your set number of minutes or have reached your page goal, read back over the text. Yes, there will be a lot of filler and unusable thoughts but there also will be little gems, discoveries, and insights. When you find these gems, highlight them or cut and paste them into your draft or onto an "ideas" sheet so you can use them in your paper. Even if you don't find any diamonds in there, you will have either quieted some of the noisy chaos or greased the writing gears so that you can now face the assigned paper topic.

Break down the topic into levels

Once you have a course assignment in front of you, you might brainstorm:

• the general topic, like "The relationship between tropical fruits and colonial powers"
• a specific subtopic or required question, like "How did the availability of multiple tropical fruits influence competition amongst colonial powers trading from the larger Caribbean islands during the 19th century?"
• a single term or phrase that you sense you're overusing in the paper. For example: If you see that you've written "increased the competition" about a dozen times in your "tropical fruits" paper, you could brainstorm variations on the phrase itself or on each of the main terms: "increased" and "competition."

Listing/bulleting

In this technique you jot down lists of words or phrases under a particular topic. Try this one by basing your list either

• on the general topic
• on one or more words from your particular thesis claim, or
• on a word or idea that is the complete opposite of your original word or idea.

For example, if your general assignment is to write about the changes in inventions over time, and your specific thesis claims that "the 20th century presented a large number of inventions to advance US society by improving upon the status of 19th-century society," you could brainstorm two different lists to ensure you are covering the topic thoroughly and that your thesis will be easy to prove.
The first list might be based on your thesis; you would jot down as many 20th-century inventions as you could, as long as you know of their positive effects on society. The second list might be based on the opposite claim and you would instead jot down inventions that you associate with a decline in that society's quality. You could do the same two lists for 19th-century inventions and then compare the evidence from all four lists.
Using multiple lists will help you to gather more perspective on the topic and ensure that, sure enough, your thesis is solid as a rock, or, …uh oh, your thesis is full of holes and you'd better alter your claim to one you can prove.

3 perspectives

Looking at something from different perspectives helps you see it more completely—or at least in a completely different way, sort of like laying on the floor makes your desk look very different to you. To use this strategy, answer the questions for each of the three perspectives, then look for interesting relationships or mismatches you can explore.

1. Describe it: Describe your subject in detail. What is your topic? What are its components? What are its interesting and distinguishing features? What are its puzzles? Distinguish your subject from those that are similar to it. How is your subject unlike others?
2. Trace it: What is the history of your subject? How has it changed over time? Why? What are the significant events that have influenced your subject?
3. Map it: What is your subject related to? What is it influenced by? How? What does it influence? How? Who has a stake in your topic? Why? What fields do you draw on for the study of your subject? Why? How has your subject been approached by others? How is their work related to yours?

Cubing

Cubing enables you to consider your topic from six different directions; just as a cube is six-sided, your cubing brainstorming will result in six "sides" or approaches to the topic. Take a sheet of paper, consider your topic, and respond to these six commands.

1. Describe it.
2. Compare it.
3. Associate it.
4. Analyze it.
5. Apply it.
6. Argue for and against it.

Look over what you've written. Do any of the responses suggest anything new about your topic? What interactions do you notice among the "sides"? That is, do you see patterns repeating, or a theme emerging that you could use to approach the topic or draft a thesis? Does one side seem particularly fruitful in getting your brain moving? Could that one side help you draft your thesis statement? Use this technique in a way that serves your topic. It should, at least, give you a broader awareness of the topic's complexities, if not a sharper focus on what you will do with it.

Similes

In this technique, complete the following sentence:
____________________ is/was/are/were like _____________________.

In the first blank put one of the terms or concepts your paper centers on. Then try to brainstorm as many answers as possible for the second blank, writing them down as you come up with them.
After you have produced a list of options, look over your ideas. What kinds of ideas come forward? What patterns or associations do you find?

Clustering/mapping/webbing:

The general idea:
This technique has three (or more) different names, according to how you describe the activity itself or what the end product looks like. In short, you will write a lot of different terms and phrases onto a sheet of paper in a random fashion and later go back to link the words together into a sort of "map" or "web" that forms groups from the separate parts. Allow yourself to start with chaos. After the chaos subsides, you will be able to create some order out of it.
To really let yourself go in this brainstorming technique, use a large piece of paper or tape two pieces together. You could also use a blackboard if you are working with a group of people. This big vertical space allows all members room to "storm" at the same time, but you might have to copy down the results onto paper later. If you don't have big paper at the moment, don't worry. You can do this on an 8 ½ by 11 as well.
How to do it:

1. Take your sheet(s) of paper and write your main topic in the center, using a word or two or three.
2. Moving out from the center and filling in the open space any way you are driven to fill it, start to write down, fast, as many related concepts or terms as you can associate with the central topic. Jot them quickly, move into another space, jot some more down, move to another blank, and just keep moving around and jotting. If you run out of similar concepts, jot down opposites, jot down things that are only slightly related, or jot down your grandpa's name, but try to keep moving and associating. Don't worry about the (lack of) sense of what you write, for you can chose to keep or toss out these ideas when the activity is over.
3. Once the storm has subsided and you are faced with a hail of terms and phrases, you can start to cluster. Circle terms that seem related and then draw a line connecting the circles. Find some more and circle them and draw more lines to connect them with what you think is closely related. When you run out of terms that associate, start with another term. Look for concepts and terms that might relate to that term. Circle them and then link them with a connecting line. Continue this process until you have found all the associated terms. Some of the terms might end up uncircled, but these "loners" can also be useful to you. (Note: You can use different colored pens/pencils/chalk for this part, if you like. If that's not possible, try to vary the kind of line you use to encircle the topics; use a wavy line, a straight line, a dashed line, a dotted line, a zigzaggy line, etc. in order to see what goes with what.)
4. There! When you stand back and survey your work, you should see a set of clusters, or a big web, or a sort of map: hence the names for this activity. At this point you can start to form conclusions about how to approach your topic. There are about as many possible results to this activity as there are stars in the night sky, so what you do from here will depend on your particular results. Let's take an example or two in order to illustrate how you might form some logical relationships between the clusters and loners you've decided to keep. At the end of the day, what you do with the particular "map" or "cluster set" or "web" that you produce depends on what you need. What does this map or web tell you to do? Explore an option or two and get your draft going!

Relationship between the parts

In this technique, begin by writing the following pairs of terms on opposite margins of one sheet of paper:

Whole		Parts
Part		Parts of Parts
Part		Parts of Parts
Part		Parts of Parts

Looking over these four groups of pairs, start to fill in your ideas below each heading. Keep going down through as many levels as you can. Now, look at the various parts that comprise the parts of your whole concept. What sorts of conclusions can you draw according to the patterns, or lack of patterns, that you see?

Journalistic questions

In this technique you would use the "big six" questions that journalists rely on to thoroughly research a story. The six are: Who?, What?, When?, Where?, Why?, and How?. Write each question word on a sheet of paper, leaving space between them. Then, write out some sentences or phrases in answer, as they fit your particular topic. You might also answer into a tape recorder if you'd rather talk out your ideas.
Now look over your batch of responses. Do you see that you have more to say about one or two of the questions? Or, are your answers for each question pretty well balanced in depth and content? Was there one question that you had absolutely no answer for? How might this awareness help you to decide how to frame your thesis claim or to organize your paper? Or, how might it reveal what you must work on further, doing library research or interviews or further note-taking?
For example, if your answers reveal that you know a lot more about "where" and "why" something happened than you know about "what" and "when," how could you use this lack of balance to direct your research or to shape your paper? How might you organize your paper so that it emphasizes the known versus the unknown aspects of evidence in the field of study? What else might you do with your results?

Thinking outside the box

Even when you are writing within a particular academic discipline, you can take advantage of your semesters of experience in other courses from other departments. Let's say you are writing a paper for an English course. You could ask yourself, "Hmmm, if I were writing about this very same topic in a biology course or using this term in a history course, how might I see or understand it differently? Are there varying definitions for this concept within, say, philosophy or physics, that might encourage me to think about this term from a new, richer point of view?"
For example, when discussing "culture" in your English 101, communications, or cultural studies course, you could incorporate the definition of "culture" that is frequently used in the biological sciences. Remember those little Petri dishes from your lab experiments in high school? Those dishes are used to "culture" substances for bacterial growth and analysis, right? How might it help you write your paper if you thought of "culture" as a medium upon which certain things will grow, will develop in new ways or will even flourish beyond expectations, but upon which the growth of other things might be retarded, significantly altered, or stopped altogether?

Using charts or shapes

If you are more visually inclined, you might create charts, graphs, or tables in lieu of word lists or phrases as you try to shape or explore an idea. You could use the same phrases or words that are central to your topic and try different ways to arrange them spatially, say in a graph, on a grid, or in a table or chart. You might even try the trusty old flow chart. The important thing here is to get out of the realm of words alone and see how different spatial representations might help you see the relationships among your ideas. If you can't imagine the shape of a chart at first, just put down the words on the page and then draw lines between or around them. Or think of a shape. Do your ideas most easily form a triangle? square? umbrella? Can you put some ideas in parallel formation? In a line?

Consider purpose and audience

Think about the parts of communication involved in any writing or speaking event act: purpose and audience.
What is your purpose? What are you trying to do? What verb captures your intent? Are you trying to inform? Convince? Describe? Each purpose will lead you to a different set of information and help you shape material to include and exclude in a draft. Write about why you are writing this draft in this form.
Who is your audience? Who are you communicating with beyond the grader? What does that audience need to know? What do they already know? What information does that audience need first, second, third? Write about who you are writing to and what they need.

Dictionaries, thesauruses, encyclopedias

When all else fails…this is a tried and true method, loved for centuries by writers of all stripe. Visit the library reference areas or stop by the Writing Center to browse various dictionaries, thesauruses (or other guide books and reference texts), encyclopedias or surf their online counterparts. Sometimes these basic steps are the best ones. It is almost guaranteed that you'll learn several things you did not know.
If you're looking at a hard copy reference, turn to your most important terms and see what sort of variety you find in the definitions. The obscure or archaic definition might help you to appreciate the term's breadth or realize how much its meaning has changed as the language changed. Could that realization be built into your paper somehow?
If you go to online sources, use their own search functions to find your key terms and see what suggestions they offer. For example, if you plug "good" into a thesaurus search, you will be given 14 different entries. Whew! If you were analyzing the film Good Will Hunting, imagine how you could enrich your paper by addressed the six or seven ways that "good" could be interpreted according to how the scenes, lighting, editing, music, etc., emphasized various aspects of "good."
An encyclopedia is sometimes a valuable resource if you need to clarify facts, get quick background, or get a broader context for an event or item. If you are stuck because you have a vague sense of a seemingly important issue, do a quick check with this reference and you may be able to move forward with your ideas.

Closing

Armed with a full quiver of brainstorming techniques and facing sheets of jotted ideas, bulleted subtopics, or spidery webs relating to your paper, what do you do now?
Take the next step and start to write your first draft, or fill in those gaps you've been brainstorming about to complete your "almost ready" paper. If you're a fan of outlining, prepare one that incorporates as much of your brainstorming data as seems logical to you. If you're not a fan, don't make one. Instead, start to write out some larger chunks (large groups of sentences or full paragraphs) to expand upon your smaller clusters and phrases. Keep building from there into larger sections of your paper. You don't have to start at the beginning of the draft. Start writing the section that comes together most easily. You can always go back to write the introduction later.
We also have helpful handouts on some of the next steps in your writing process, such as organization and argument.
Remember, once you've begun the paper, you can stop and try another brainstorming technique whenever you feel stuck. Keep the energy moving and try several techniques to find what suits you or the particular project you are working on.

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This article comes from the UNC website.

Writing 3 Resources

Dear Parents and Students,

I've had a few questions about the kind of handbook that would be helpful for this class and for the students. I mentioned the books that was using for the class, including the Write for College book (from the Write Source series.) If you have this book already, it's a good resource for the topics concerning writing. However, it doesn't have grammar or mechanics reviews.

I think there are a lot of good resources out there. What I think would be most helpful is a book that includes a good review of grammar, correct formatting for footnotes and bibliographies, and some good priniples about style and organization. I really haven't found a "best" book .... I have a selection of them and home and find them all good and helpful.

Below are some books that I bought today at Half Price Books. If you don't have a book and one of these interests you, let me know. I've included an Amazon link. Writing 3 is my last class on Tuesday, and I can be available for a little while after class.

The Penguin Handbook, Second Edition, 2006 (paperback) for $7.99

MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, Seventh Edition (paperback) for $10.98

The Pocket Wadsworth Handbook, Fourth Ediction (spiral) for $6.99

A Pocket Style Manual, Fifth Edition (spiral) for $9.99

The Scott Foresman for Writers, Seventh Edition (hardcover) for $7.98

The New Century Handbook, Third Edition (hardcover) for $5.48

Thesis Articles

Below are some excerpts from a UNC handout.  Follow the link for the full information.

Introduction

Writing in college often takes the form of persuasion—convincing others that you have an interesting, logical point of view on the subject you are studying. Persuasion is a skill you practice regularly in your daily life. You persuade your roommate to clean up, your parents to let you borrow the car, your friend to vote for your favorite candidate or policy. In college, course assignments often ask you to make a persuasive case in writing. You are asked to convince your reader of your point of view. This form of persuasion, often called academic argument, follows a predictable pattern in writing. After a brief introduction of your topic, you state your point of view on the topic directly and often in one sentence. This sentence is the thesis statement, and it serves as a summary of the argument you'll make in the rest of your paper.

What is a thesis statement?

A thesis statement:

• tells the reader how you will interpret the significance of the subject matter under discussion.
• is a road map for the paper; in other words, it tells the reader what to expect from the rest of the paper.
• directly answers the question asked of you. A thesis is an interpretation of a question or subject, not the subject itself. The subject, or topic, of an essay might be World War II or Moby Dick; a thesis must then offer a way to understand the war or the novel.
• makes a claim that others might dispute.
• is usually a single sentence somewhere in your first paragraph that presents your argument to the reader. The rest of the paper, the body of the essay, gathers and organizes evidence that will persuade the reader of the logic of your interpretation.

If your assignment asks you to take a position or develop a claim about a subject, you may need to convey that position or claim in a thesis statement near the beginning of your draft. The assignment may not explicitly state that you need a thesis statement because your instructor may assume you will include one. When in doubt, ask your instructor if the assignment requires a thesis statement. When an assignment asks you to analyze, to interpret, to compare and contrast, to demonstrate cause and effect, or to take a stand on an issue, it is likely that you are being asked to develop a thesis and to support it persuasively.