Chapter 12 of The Bedford Reseacher

The twelfth chapter of The Bedford Researcher, which is titled Developing Your Argument, is split into two sections. The first section has you looking at how to support your thesis statement. they do this by splitting up this section into three steps. The first step is choosing which reasons will be supporting your thesis statement, and making sure that those reasons are supported by evidence from the your sources. The second step is to choose which evidence you will use to support each of your reasons. Finally, they give the reader a list of different appeals (appeals to authority, appeals to emotion, etc.) and the third step is having the reader decide what appeals to use based on what kind of document you are writing.

The second section of the chapter talks about assessing the integrity of your argument. This section begins by splitting up the different fallacies that can be used up into a number of different categories, and having the reader look through each of the categories to make sure that none of the fallacies are being used in their own work.  

Chapter 11 of The Bedford Researcher

The eleventh chapter of The Bedford Researcher, which is titled Developing Your Thesis Statement, is split into two sections. The first section talks about how to use your sources and position statement. They have the reader go over their position statement and any notes they have. They then have the reader consider those while also looking at what the purpose of the document is supposed to be, and what role you are using as a writer, such as informing of or solving a problem. Finally, they have the reader reflect on their readers and what they would want from this document.

The second section of this chapter talks about drafting your thesis statement. This section begins with having the reader identify what the important information, ideas, and arguments associated with your position are. They then have the reader draft some ideas for what the thesis will be, and have them consider what kind of document they are writing. Finally, they have the reader focus in on just one statement, and refine it to be a thesis statement for their paper.

Chapter 19 of The Bedford Researcher

The nineteenth chapter of The Bedford Researcher, which is titled Designing Documents and Presentations, is split into seven sections. The first four sections of this chapter all use the same steps to figure out how to design four different documents. The documents in question are an academic essay, a multimodal essay, an article, and a website. They then have the reader figure out how to design these documents by considering what your purpose for writing the document is, considering what the readers will expect in the design of the article, and viewing other documents like the document you are attempting to write in order to get clues as to how they are designed.

The fifth section of this chapter goes into how to make an oral presentation. They have the reader consider what the purpose of the presentation is and what the audience of the presentation will be. They then have the reader begin constructing an outline of what the presentation will contain and go over a few helpful tips for what to do when speaking, such as maintaining eye contact, varying the pitch of your voice, and articulating every word clearly. The last two sections of this chapter follow nearly the same layout for how to design the documents in question (a multimedia presentation and a poster presentation) as the oral presentation, and have you consider what the audience will expect the presentation will looks like.

Chapter 18 of The Bedford Researcher

The eighteenth chapter of The Bedford Researcher, which is titled Understanding Design Principles, is split into two sections. The first section talks about how to design your document effectively. It begins with talking about different design principles, such as balance, emphasis, and placement, and how to use them for best effect. This section then closes with talking about how to design your document for different genres and how your readers will expect different designs depending on the genre, as that affects how easily the reader will be able to find the information in your document.

The second section talks about different elements that can be used in designing a document. This section goes into a number of specific details about what elements that can be changed on your document and how to change the elements mentioned to make the document fit a specific genre, such as how to use photographs and charts for maximum effect. This section also briefly goes over how to align your document, what fonts to use, and how much line spacing you want for your document.  

Chapter 16 of The Bedford Researcher

The sixteenth chapter of The Bedford Researcher, titled Writing With Style, is split into two sections. The first section begins with how to write concisely, specifically by getting rid of unneeded modifiers and introductory phrases that will just make your writing style more clunky as a whole. This section then goes into when to use active and passive voices, as well as how to use an active voice while still remaining passive. Finally, this section finishes up with reminding the reader to choose their words carefully, specifically by making sure that your word choice is formal enough for the audience, the language in your writing is such that the audience would understand, and that there is a variety of words used to say the same thing in your writing.

The second and final section of this chapter talks about how to polish your writing style, and gives a number of things to improve upon. It begins with telling the reader that one of the easier areas to being polishing their style is by varying their sentence structure. The section then goes into creating effective transitions between topics and how to introduce other authors effectively. The section takes a turn here, and begins to talk about how to avoid sexist language (such as referring to a profession as male only) before finishing up the section by basically saying to read everything for examples of what you would and wouldn’t want to write like.

Chapter 15 of The Bedford Researcher

The fifteenth chapter of The Bedford Researcher, titled Using Sources Effectively, is split into three sections. The first section begins talking about how to use sources to complete your purpose as a writer. This section begins by talking about how to introduce an idea into your work, and then lists different ways to analyze those ideas, such as contrasting the idea or providing evidence to prove the ideas merit. After that, this section goes into how to amplify your points and defining different concepts in such a way that is easily understood.

The second section of chapter fifteen talks about how to integrate sources into your draft. This section begins with telling you to clearly define when information in your draft is not your own by providing in-text citations and letting the reader know that what is to come is not your work. This section then goes into how to quote strategically, telling you what different quotes are and how to use them correctly. This section finishes with how to put in non-text quotes (such as pictures) and numerical information.

The final section of this chapter talks about how to document different sources. IT covers the four main documentation system and what they are used for. This section also reminds you to make sure to double check your work to make sure that all the work in your draft is yours, or is labeled when it is not.

Chapter 9 of the Bedford Researcher

The ninth chapter of The Bedford Researcher, titled Searching for Information with Print Resources, is split into three sections. The first section goes briefly into how to look through library shelves to find sources for your topic. This section also suggests using interlibrary loans to get materials you will need for your topic delivered to your library from other libraries. The second section then goes into using the libraries periodicals room to find more sources, specifically by going through the sources used by the periodical’s writer.

The third and final section of this chapter goes into extreme detail for using a library’s reference room to gather sources. It begins this section with having you look through library bibliographies and knowing what the difference is between different bibliographies, such as what a trade bibliography contains versus a general bibliography. This section then goes into how to locate different bibliographies, and looking through indexes to find what sources are used in many different periodicals at once. After that, this section finishes off the chapter by mentioning a number of other areas to check in a library to find more sources, such as handbooks, encyclopedias, and almanacs.