What advice would you give next year’s FASTrack Writing 102 students about the research unit (annotated bib AND causal argument) based on your experiences in the last 7 weeks? Please include specific examples of your “lessons learned.”
I would tell them to choose a topic that actually interests them instead of trying to pick a topic that seems easy to them. Just because it seems easy doesn’t mean they’ll actually like it and this whole unit takes up a lot of time so if they hate what they’re researching it’s going to make it so much harder. I used the same topic from the synthesis essay all the way to the casual argument and the fact that I was so interested in the topic made it so much easier to sit down and do hours worth of research and then write the 2000 words for the paper. I would also tell them that anecdotal evidence is totally okay and just as credible as another evidence. As I researched I continuously found anecdotal evidence and it freaked me out because most of the examples we were shown were very number based and not at all really experienced based. By talking to Mrs. B she showed me that my evidence is just as credible and just as good as any other research.