Back to keywords – I am skeptical about the thesaurus idea for this reason – because I don’t think getting students to understand that there are different keywords that get at the same concept is the issue.

I think the issue is that they have trouble predicting WHICH of those keywords will be most useful in the scholarly discourse. So what we need to do is figure out a way they can be working from a scholarly article on their topic as they do this exercise. That’s what I’ve been playing with today.

Thanks all – keep those ideas coming :-) !

And also, we could do some in-class work with the index of our textbooks – could even be a fun challenge – who can fastest find whether the index has a listing for XYZ etc. “Does Easy Writer mention Toulmin? where would you find it?” that sort of thing.

Which doesn’t get us to the question of keywords. I wonder if we could do anything with a thesaurus. Students often use it – incorrectly often, substituting a perfectly good word with some stilted latinate marsh bird – but they do use the tool – would there be a way to tap into that? Is there an online thesaurus that has enough variety? What about Online Etymology.com online etymology

One resource that I know I have underutilized are the Works Cited’s and Bibliographies provided by published scholars. I don’t think that a lot of students realize they can turn to the back of the book or article and immediately find 20+ other resources on the subject.

You are absolutely right, Anne-Marie, that students cannot be expected to find general and specific source materials on their topic at the outset of their research. Perhaps we could put more emphasis on the process of getting from general to specific….for example…(1) find a book/article that seems like a good overview of the topic (keeping in mind that it is general enough that it may not make it as a quoted source in your paper) (2) follow the bibliography, and keywords found in chapter headings, suggested further reading, index, etc. (3) track down the second wave of more specific, more focused sources.

Best, Peter

So, ummmm… Wr 121 students can either 1) swim around in the scholarly literature they already know about / have, 2) chat with more knowledgeable scholars (talking to their instructor, as Julie will invite hers to do in the fall; skimming other scholars’ blogs like I did, etc), and/or 3) find some kind of keyword dictionary in their field (didn’t you say, Anne-Marie, there were such things?).

But I’ll keep thinking re ways to work something along those lines into the ILP. Tough.