When we're talking about PSAs, it's important to focus only on the primary source. But as you look to expand your paper and develop it into an analytical research project, you'll have to use secondary sources.
Secondary sources, according to Writing Analytically, have a number of uses, some of which include:
1) To provide context
2) To deepen understanding
3) To provide contrasts
4) To invite comparisons
5) To broaden the scope of your research beyond the primary source
As an example, we looked at the music video for Foster the People's "Pumped Up Kicks" (the primary source). Imagining that we were doing the Method on this video, we analyzed the images and tried to come up with some ideas about what the choices made in the video are trying to represent.
Looking at the lyrics to the song (a secondary source), we were able to better understand what the songwriter may have meant, and to use that as a reflective surface to re-evaluate our own judgement about the video.
As is often the case when secondary sources are introduced, our first impressions or ideas may have turned out to be quite different from our new reading/viewing/listening of our primary source.
As we complete our Annotated Bibliography project (the first step in the introduction of secondary sources into our papers), think and reflect on your experience finding sources for your PSA.
Was it challenging, and why?
Did you expect to take your research in the direction it went? What happened?
Do you see a value in the introduction of secondary source? If so, what? If not, why?
Any other comments/questions are welcomed.
Remember: like our secondary sources, we want to have a conversation in the comments, not just post for the sake of posting.
Finding secondary sources for my PSA was a little challenging. I just did not know where to take my paper. I had to go through several sources just to find one that even remotely related to my topic. I am still not sure in what direction I want to take my paper; I am stuck between two options.
ReplyDeleteSecondary sources help any research paper because they provide evidence. One person's take on a topic is not nearly enough evidence to write a research paper. Evidence and contradicting sources make a paper more interesting and reliable.
Totally agree!Finding secondary sources sometimes leads me to another direction which is not the original one.
DeleteI have a similar view on the secondary sources as Bojana. I found that incorporation secondary resources into my PSA was tedious. I found many different potential sources but the majority of them didn't have the particular material I was looking for.
ReplyDeleteI didn't expect to take my research in the direction it is headed because initially I had a mindset of what I was looking for. When I couldn't find enough of what I was looking for I had to take my research in multiple different directions before finding viable secondary sources to back up my point.
I believe that secondary sources are important to a research paper because they provide the main "push" behind a research paper. Without the secondary sources, a paper would just be statements without any sort of support behind them to enforce their ideas.
I have the same feelings as Bojana and Mwang when it comes to secondary sources. It is harder than you think going in because you feel confused on exactly what to look for when searching for a secondary source. I found it challenging to get peer reviewed articles that dealt with my topic and the point that I was trying to get across. I expected to take my paper in the direction that I am going it just took a decent amount of time to find the evidence and info to go in that direction. As Bojana put before adding the secondary source gives you the back up and supporting evidence to give what you are saying more credibility.
ReplyDeleteI think that finding secondary sources is very challenging because the paper can go in so many directions that it is hard to focus on one main point.I expected to search more gerneral about substance abuse and fame as opossed to my more specific searches of alcohalism and musicians. I do find value in the secondary source introduction because I appreciate the step by step process that we have been doing. If we had to combine all of the information in one step it would be alot more overwhelming and messy than how it is now.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with the point of view that looking for secondary sources is very tedious. Especially because of the fact that finding something very specific is difficult when dealing with scholar articles. I ended up going a different way with my research than i previously thought. It was frustrating because my first idea for research was too broad and not bound to a specific genre. But now I am able to see the value of places the secondary research in this project because it gives a "so what" to the primary analysis.
ReplyDeleteI think that looking for secondary sources is really necessary but difficult.When I was trying to find something related to my primary source,I got two main problems.First was that I found something pretty good but the source probably didn't have enough credibility.And the other one was it is really hard to find secondary sources that are closely related to primary source and its question.So I choose to make my topic broader so that I can get much more information.
ReplyDeleteI believe that secondary sources,to some degree,is useful to open my mind and give supporting experiment and evidence.
A common theme I'm seeing in all the responses is the difficulty in finding the sources, that being because nothing really seems to be exactly what they're looking for. I have the same problem; I have this idea of where I want to go with my research, but everything I seem to find only kind of relates to what I wanted it to be. This leads to confusion, as my research takes many new directions and my main idea begins to change. I think what a lot of people, myself included, are finding challenging is beginning to synthesize all this new information into their original idea. This is one of the purposes of secondary sources, so that new information, ideas, and viewpoints can be added, all the while making the main point more credible and more convincing.
ReplyDeleteYou've got it right Aaron. I am completely lost on this project now. It wasn't hard to find a primary source to analyze. I just picked a song that I liked and decided to analyze it with these rhetoric tools. Now, There are a hundred different ways to take each of these ideas and I can't find something to relate for any of them.
DeleteNeedless to say, it is a really rare situation that you enter some keywords and then you got what you want for the secondary sources. My primary source is a short story and my research question focuses on the "how does cities in literatures present themselves". I realized that this did not seem to be "good" research question since I searched "kw: city in literature" and cannot find something that was of real use. For some reason there lacked a description for these article so I had to click into them and see what was going on...
ReplyDeleteAnd unfortunately those scholar article took a long time to read and chances are that I cannot figure out what they are talking about. Eventually I came up with 6 sources, all of which I got from WorldCat. All this info gives expanded my thoughts so I may consider coming up with a new (or maybe revised?) research question so it could be easier to absorb ideas in these sources.
Upon picking my primary source I thought I was going to go in one direction. As I keep thinking about it, my ideas would change bit by bit till it was going in a completely different direction. I enjoy the mind process of figuring out what I'd like to learn more about, sometimes I forget to pick a topic that the teacher might want to read about; but I enjoy the topic! Picking secondary sources has helped move my ideas to be more ordered and given me more answers about a topic that I've never researched. I think my secondary sources are better than my primary; but, to my mind my primary source still links to my secondary sources.
ReplyDeleteI agree 100%, when I started doing my research I had a very straight forward approach and knew exactly what I wanted to write about. However, the more I researched, the more I realized that taking my paper in a different direction might be more thought provoking and interesting. At first, I was not thrilled about having to do the research assignment, I typically find that kind of stuff extremely tedious and mind numbing. But after looking at more and more topics, I actually started to enjoy it!
DeleteWhen I started my search for my secondary sources I had a rough time finding anything. I thought I would never find anything. As I continued to search and change the keywords I was typing into the search box, I began to find article after article I could use. After finding these article I now know the exact direction I want to take my paper. As someone said above the articles I have found give a "so what" to my primary source that I had never noticed before finding them.
ReplyDeleteIt was a little challenging at first to find my secondary sources. The topics I was searching wasn't giving me good information that I needed to expand my paper. Once I stepped back and examined my options with an open mind I found the larger picture of how the movie industry uses love. I didn't realize I was taking my research in a new direction until a sentence caught my eye. "Romantic movies influence couples." This relates to my primary source and I started to look more in depth with the statement.
ReplyDeleteI believe secondary sources are very important to your paper. It gives you more information and support to make your paper better. I think using secondary sources allows you to think with a open mind and look further into what your primary source means.
I totally agree with CyrusKinkead’s opinion. “I ended up going a different way with my research than I previously thought”, because my argument always changing by the source I can access on the website or book. Not all the source I searched can exactly support my subtopic, so sometimes I have to change my previous idea a little bit to use those source, especially the topic are very narrow. There are not lots of eligible article I can cite. So choosing a board topic or interesting topic is very important too, because you need to make sure you have enough enthusiasm to write the paper. Otherwise, the creating process would be torturous.
ReplyDeleteThere is no doubt that secondary sources are important. That is what this whole project and possibly writing analytically is about, right? Writing analytically probably takes it furthur than just a secondary source.
ReplyDeleteFinding my sources was quite challenging. It was hard to find sources that match up exactly with my topic. Because of this, my reaserch pulled me in a little bit of a different direction. I guess this could be that value of a secondary soure; to have a new look at you topic and try and find ways to expand upon it.
ReplyDeleteI did not have to much trouble finding most of my secondary sources, though I will need more than just the four I handed in and they appear to be somewhat more challenging to find. On the importance of secondary sources; they are very important. Without them, an analysis is can simply be a twisting of words. Other information from outside sources is required to develop a complete idea and come to a resulting truth. As of right now, my sources hold with the idea I am trying to write about. Hopefully that will continue.
ReplyDeleteWhat I found difficult in this part of the assignment was finding sources that could actually go along with my primary source. It took me some time before I actually found some items that could be useful, but sometimes after reading them they just could not fit within my paper. The value that I see in the introduction to secondary sources is that we can use them as reliable forms of information to back up any claims we developed from the primary source.
ReplyDeleteAt first I thought it was going to be difficult to find sources that would support my primary source analysis. Luckily I was able to find 4 solid sources without great difficulty. One of my sources I didn't expect to use but then realized that it could take my paper in a more interesting direction. I think secondary sources are very valuable because they support and expand on the primary source.
ReplyDeleteI thought that for the broad range of topics my research question covers it would be easy to find sources. On the contrary, it was quite difficult to sift through and find scholarly information because of the amount of attention it received.
ReplyDeleteMy research question, although a good one, left a lot of options open. I can't say I was surprised at the direction my secondary sources took me, and I'm certainly not unhappy about it. I definitely think that adding in secondary sources gave me several new perspectives on my primary source analysis.
I found it very challenging to find sources like most of you seemed to as well. I just couldn't find many credible sources that support or opposed my ideas and it was alarming at first. I eventually found some sources that really only proved different statistics but I could not get my specific questions very well. I ended up having to find a source that simply supported my idea that the color red stands for passion because I couldn't find anything better. So really the research didn't go in the exact direction that I wanted it to go because I couldn't find anything on my specific questions. I do see why it is important to add information to my analysis and to have people smarter than myself support my ideas or for me to be able to draw better conclusions from the secondary sources.
ReplyDeleteWhen I first started to find sources for my reserach paper I found it difficult to locate sources that followed my view of my topic. I found alot of sources that opposed it but few that followed it. Then, I took a turn a went to sources that were completely not credible but that led me to better sources that made up my secondary source analysis. These new sources brought alot of light onto my research and made my PSA and secondary source analysis much better
ReplyDeleteI found it difficult to find secondary sources which were directly related to the claims that I made about my primary source. However, after finding which sources I wanted to use and organizing the way I wanted to incorporate them into my paper, writing the secondary source integration was somewhat simple. I found that the three secondary sources that I used in my SSI worked well together and did a good job in supporting the claims I made in my PSA. I think that adding secondary sources helps create a stronger paper with more evidence from different people than myself.
ReplyDeleteMy biggest issue when hunting for sources was finding credible souces that were focused and relevant to my primary source and general topic idea. Surprisely, finding opposing sources to "talk" with each other throughout my analysis was incredibly easy. It just took a while to figure out exactly what I was trying to discuss. By filtering through relevant and irrelevant sources, I was able to create a more broad, yet unique topic that fit well the sources I discovered.
ReplyDelete