silly me.

Chapter 6 was all about being a researcher. A "re-search"er, as in again and again. This chapter leads us through a passage of 1. developing a question about what you want to find out 2. use it to help you find out what you need to look up or research 3. carry out your research 4. use the research to make a test design plan & 5. produce and test your communication. I've done research papers before, but non in this odd fashion. So this was of course a bit of a surprise because it seems like such a long and tedious routine. I hope if Cathy has us do this whole process that she walks us through it and explains it a whole lot better than the book does. But what really surprised me was more in the begging of the chapter, having to do with ethics. "But antoher way to look at what you do when you research is that with new knowledge you strengthen your ties to other people because knowing more about what something is, about what happened, or about how something works changed how you go about living with other people. Knowledge has effects-praticle and moral- on yourself and other people. Given what we've been saying about ethics, it should be clear that each step in this chapter has an ethical dimension." I never ever ever ever realized this. It totally just smacked me across the face. But its so true, and vital in our writing. I guess its just something that comes naturally, but i believe that now knowing that we as writers do this, it will greatly help with some of the writing to audience issues.