Descriptive Writing - Change the research cycle

Okay, your assignment came back. You received a C-. The markers said you were writing descriptively. You're puzzled. What is descriptive writing? The marker also said that your paper was well-researched. How do you fix this problem and turn your C- paper into a B or possibly an A? What have you done wrong?

Well, the first answer is that you haven't done anything wrong. You've taken the first step but you've failed to complete the job that you began with your research. In short, your paper has lots of information but doesn't follow up that information with critical analysis and thinking. Thinking critically is the next step you must take. You need to explain the significance of every citation you put into your assignment.

You would be mistaken to think that your paper shouldn't have citations. Citations are there to provide support for your arguments. For example, let's say you are using Porter's Five Forces Model to discuss the textile industry in Egypt. You would need to use citations to advance your argument and support your claims about this industry. Your textbook will probably be the best source material on the Five Forces model itself but you would need to find out more about the textile industry in Egypt itself. If you wanted to make a point about "competitive rivalry within the industry", you would need to use journal articles and books and examples from the industry environment to back up any assertions you need to make about this "competitive rivalry."

At this point I need to say a word about the kind of information a student paper doesn't need. Many students, when faced with a topic such as the one above, are not sure what they should write for their three page assignment. This is their work cycle for the paper:
1. Read the assignment topic
2. Go onto the internet and look up Porter's Five Forces
3. Amass a battery of quotations on Porter's Five Forces
4. Look up basic information about an industry, in this case Egypt's textile industry
5. Begin writing

There are a number of problems with this research cycle. First and foremost, all the information you need on Porter's Five Forces is in your textbook and in your head. Information from a lot of internet sources is likely to result in "poor scholarship", "bad referencing", or even "plagiarism" on your assignment sheet. When the student is presented with a failing grade and the words "bad referencing" or "referencing problems", this student will usually try desperately to rewrite their assignment by changing the words or looking for more citations.

It is important to see here, in the bad work cycle I presented above, that the problem really is the use of the internet. Sure, there's lots of information on Porter's Five Forces on the internet. However, the question wants you to explain how each of these forces affect an industry. Internet information on the Five Forces is not going to help you here. What you need is your head, your textbook (that doubtless describes these forces) and good articles that you can reference on the textile industry in Egypt. You can see, by reading articles on this industry, what threats the textile industry in Egypt faces or the power of suppliers.

Students should know the purpose of every citation that is used in their assignments. The work cycle should look like this:
1. The student receives the assignment question

2. The student reads it over several times to understand every aspect of the assignment

3. The student takes a highlighter and marks the important terms

4. For terms they don't really understand, they use the textbook to understand the terms

5. Discuss the question on blackboard with other students

6. Make a mind map with the terms if you are confused. A mind map places the central topic in the middle on a blank sheet of paper and puts the other terms around it in a wheel structure. When you do this, you also try and think of things that you're going to need when you do this assignment. For example, if you were doing this topic, the Egyptian textile industry would be in the middle with the Five Forces all around it. You would have questions about each force in terms of the textile industry that would need to be addressed by good research. In short, you would need to understand how a force such as "power of suppliers" works in this industry. Note: that if you did research on the Five Forces, this wouldn't answer the question being asked and would probably provide a lot of confusing detail that the module tutor is assuming you know.

7. Begin your research on the Egyptian textile industry using a. The University of Leicester Digital Library and b. a search engine such as Google. Of course, you may be lucky and have a good academic library nearby as well.

The final step is to write an outline of the paper. We'll discuss this in another posting.

KB