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Chapter 22 covers the first five of the seven essential skills you need to be an effective research writer. By the end of the chapter, you should understand the following: 1. You need to take charge of your own writing, pose your own research question, and write a thesis-based argument in your own voice. You can test the feasibility of your research question by asking specific questions about it. 2. There are several different roles you can play as a research writer, ranging from reporter, through advocate, to narrator of your own research process. Your research will have a dual purpose: to find information and to situate yourself in a conversation. 3. Three major kinds of sources are books, periodicals, and Web sites, and each of these kinds exhibits a range of types, from scholarly to popular and profit-oriented. 4. You will need purposeful strategies for searching libraries, databases, and Web sites; you should understand subject searches, keyword searches, and Boolean operators, as well as how to view the home directory of a given Web page. 5. You should read sources rhetorically, take effective notes, and evaluate sources for credibility and bias. You should view the Web as a unique rhetorical environment that presents its own peculiar challenges to rhetorical reading and evaluation.
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