Persuasive sources. That phrase probably seems very a little strange to a lot of students who are looking through sources because they are probably thinking, why would a source need to be persuasive? Sources are just facts right?
This is the issue Margaret Kantz addresses in the article, “Helping Student Use Textual Sources Persuasively,” as she points out the mistakes students make when conducting their own researching. The biggest issue that Kantz discusses is that students often view history and sources just as stories or narratives, as she uses a students named Shirley as an example. She analyzes how students like to state just “facts” in research papers, rather than arguing what the facts might be.
However, Kantz does not just focus on the negative aspects of students writing. She also uses a student, Alice, as an example of what a student should do; and that is, argue. Kantz really could not be more clear that she believes that students need to use sources to form his or her own argument on the subject matter by challenging others views and fighting for his or her personal views and interpretations of the topic.
I’ll just wait until I am entertained by some fights.
In relation to my research, I truly valued the advice Kantz had to offer. When I read that most students view sources as stories and that sources are nothing more than “facts,” it really made me think about my own research habits. I feel as though I really only utilize sources as facts. However, I do believe I also use sources to formulate my own arguments and questions towards my topic of research.
That being said, I really do believe Kantz has a good point. I think that one of the only reasons as to why I actually build arguments based off the sources I find is because I have been taught to do so in my English classes. So I sympathize with what she is trying to say when she says that students will just analyze and report the information they come across because they probably don’t realize that they can build a profound argument from the information. Also, Kantz then goes on to discuss finding and realizing the gaps of communication when looking up information. Personally, I have just been exposed to this concept when researching so I am now conscious of it when looking up information, but by no means am I an expert of locating the gaps. Moving forward with my research, I am going to keep all the reiterated and newly introduced information given by Kantz in mind while I analyze my sources to build my next argumentative paper.
