The Engaging Process of the Research Paper

The concept of how a research paper is developed has become programmed as a generic task. This is because we've learned at an impressionable age in our life that there is a set way of researching for a paper; library books, Internet, etc. In Richard Larson's article "The 'Research Paper' in the Writing Course: A Non-Form of Writing", he implies to us that the "Research Paper" needs to be more recognized as an engaging process of finding information.

To begin any research paper, you might want to start with a research question or a hypothesis. By starting with a question or hypothesis, you narrow your search to locating materials that would answer the question or confirm or deny the hypothesis. It becomes a step-by-step process of developing a research paper. The use of a question to start also may lead you to more questions and will turn you into a detective, so to speak, where you are trying to unlock the clues from your sources that will give you the information you need. As you progress from one step to the next, it is commonly necessary to backup, revise, add additional material or even change your topic completely. The research process itself involves identifying, locating, assessing, analyzing, and then developing and expressing your ideas.

Larson says that "research is a specialized activity that one engages in...to help students familiarize themselves with ways of gathering, interpreting, drawing upon, and acknowledging data from outside themselves in their writing" (815). We need to uses the basic tools of the engaging process of doing research to help us form a great "research paper" that we will benefit from personally. Once we get into the specific discipline that we desire we will know how to research and immerse our self into it.

Research is the going out and seeking the useful knowledge of a specific discipline research topic because it will help you when you go into that specific discipline by having more clear perspective on what you will be using in life. When we're young we don't know what to do for finding information, so that's why we are taught a generic way of the "research paper" to help us as basic use. This engaging process starts out with teachers at the impressionable age where, as Larson says, that "[teachers] pretend to prepare students to engage in the research appropriate to their chosen disciplines" to help "relieve [discipline] specific teachers of that responsively, [English teachers] do not and cannot do so" (815). He means that certain disciplines require different types of research according to that specific discipline. A person needs to realize that not every research paper uses the same type of sources.

Larson does a good job on telling us that we need to immerse our self into our research but he needs to realize that not all "research papers" are ones that we want to put full effort in to. This is because most students don't care at all for the research and its benefits, they just want a good grade and to move on to the next class. Students shouldn't have that attitude and realize that doing the research will be beneficial in the real world.

There are some types of information that you would gather out in the field, so to speak. If you were going to interview someone, observe something, or distribute a survey or questionnaire, you would need to go to the people and places where this information gathering would take place. You would