Developing Source Dialogue—Revising Researched Writing
Purpose: This exercise focuses on research article revision.
Description: This revision exercise helps students identify source-heavy writing and work towards viewing source material as a "person" with whom they carry on a conversation. You'll want to have an excerpt, short essay, or film clip ready for Part 2. Choose one with an overtly opinionated bent/bias that is sure to elicit a response. For a video clip, something like Michael Moore's interview with Marilyn Manson would work.
Suggested Time: 35 minutes to full class period
Procedure:
Part 1:
Ask students to bring two different-colored highlighters to class with their drafts. They’ll likely be in the later stages of drafting the research article, using a lot of source material.
Talk about tone and narrative voice (probably a topic you dealt with at the beginning of drafting). Can they easily identify different "voices" in writing? More importantly, can they identify the voice of a source over their own?
Now, have them take out the first highlighter color and find all the sentences on at least the first two or three pages that contain source material and highlight the from-source portions. Even if they have paraphrased the source, highlight it.
They’ll probably start to notice their pages turning pink, orange, yellow, or green – depending on the color of the highlighter! This is an indication that there’s too much source and not enough author-source dialogue. Explain that there should be no more than 20 percent strict source material in any article – the author’s voice and focus should always predominate.
Now, take out highlighter color two. Ask them to go through and mark those passages containing strictly author opinion, viewpoint, unique ideas, or thoughts. Most students will find this color a bit underused, but others will notice too much highlighter here if their source material was seriously lacking.
Take a moment to diagnose the different problems these papers may be suffering from. Too much color one means source overload. Too much color two means empty opinion and guesswork. A comfortable balance means they’re probably doing well – but they can still benefit from developing smooth narrator-source dialogue.
Part 2:
Tell students that you’re going to play the part of a talking source by reading your chosen excerpt allowed (or playing your video clip). Read or play the sample, statement-by-statement, pausing at each point to allow students to write their honest, opinionated, conversational response to what the "source" has just said. They should pretend that they’re talking face-to-face with the author or speaker replying naturally and intelligently.
Once you feel you’ve got sufficient conversation/dialogue generated on paper, ask a few students to read their replies as you reread the "source" (like a script), creating an actual conversation. Discuss handling sources as if in dialogue with them. Have students try this with highlighted source sections of their drafts.