Andruw Wittels

          This week's reading was a continuation of last week's Praxis reading, which is researching rhetorically. Praxis talks about different ways to start researching and ways to evaluate sources. One way, for example, is how Praxis offers that research should start before you even start writing your paper. It states that "in order to make an effective argument, you must research the topic beforehand." The book also suggests utilizing stasis theory and using your points that you found through researching in order to make an effective thesis and paper. When it comes to evaluating sources, the book has a couple of questions you should ask yourself. For example, Praxis says to ask "Who is the author?" or other questions like "What do others think of the text?" when debating on whether to use a source when developing a strong paper. Finally, the book offers sample bibliographies, suggesting writing a brief summary of the source, or using a direct quote underneath the source information to indicate how it would be used within your paper. I can relate to this way of writing bibliographies, because I had to do this for every single paper I wrote in English Composition in High School. Lastly, Praxis offers some points on how to avoid plagiarism within your work. This can be useful, since it is becoming more prevalent in student's writings.

         Finally, another piece of reading for this week was Karen Rosenburg's "Reading Games." In her piece, she explains how one can better understand and read scholarly pieces of text. She brings up things about how she "gazed over paragraphs while thinking about Joel's elbows." I can relate to this point because I always find myself slowly moving away from the reading and thinking about all of the homework I have and random other parts of my life when I suddenly realize I've moved onto the next page without even understanding what I just read. When it comes to reading that is important to my studies, this piece helped open a new insight. She talks about how "reading scholarly articles is like joining a conversation" stating that "reading academic texts is a social activity." Another topic she brings up is when reading rhetorically, one should "consider the audience." She brings up how when you're reading for an academic audience, you might not completely understand what you're reading. I believe that this article contributes a necessary and good amount of advice for students in general, because reading academic texts that you aren't completely interested can get you off topic quite easily and being able to start paying attention, as Rosenburg states it, will help improve your understanding of the book at hand.