Chapter Three

In the reading of chapter three, it starts off by explaining what a research question is.  A research question is a brief question that directs you to collect, critically read, evaluate, and take notes on your sources.  An effective research question focuses on one specific issue, reflects the writing situation, and is narrowed down enough to where you are able to collect information in enough time to meet your standards.  Important questions to start off asking begin with the five who's and how.  Reflecting on your writing situation is the first step.  After reading though your sources, you should have gained some sort of understanding on the information, ideas, and arguments that form a conversation.  It's common if your your initial thoughts end up changing on your topics.  if that's the case, you'll want to ask yourself if what you've learned has changed your understanding on your writing situation.  Next, ask what you would like to learn next.  Lastly, ask yourself how strongly your initial understanding has shaped the exploration of your topic.  Your next step includes forming a list of questions that you have decided to address.  Those may include information, history, assumptions, goals, outcomes, and lastly policies.  Questions followed by that contain definition, evaluation, compare and contrast, cause and effect analysis, problem and solution analysis or advocacy, and so on and so forth.  Chapter three had also covered compiling a working or annotated bibliography.  A working bibliography lists the sources you've collected so far.  An annotated bibliography is a brief description on each source which they will then be used in whichever format is assigned.  In my case, it would contain MLA Formatting.