Chapter 1 Summary - The Bedford Researcher

In chapter 1 of Mike Palmquist's book, The Bedford Researcher, Palmquist focuses on starting your research paper with confidence and an appropriate topic; which, he thinks can be the hardest part of a research paper. The first half of the chapter he goes into detail on how to take ownership in your topic, understanding and developing your position on a topic, sharing your position on a topic, how to work with information, understanding the relationship between you and your readers, understanding the genre and design of your paper, and how to manage your time. This may seem like a lot of information and rules for writing a research paper, especially if you are a beginner at writing, but the way that Palmquist presents the information with examples and diagrams makes it easy to understand and read. The last half of the chapter is all about choosing an appropriate topic. Palmquist writes about how to identify what kind of document are you writing, who are your readers and why, and how context will affect you during this process of writing. Then he goes into coming up with a topic to write about. Palmquist uses real writers and their projects as examples of methods for finding topics, things like, clustering, freewriting, looping, and brainstorming. After reading the first chapter of The Bedford Researcher I feel confident in my ability to come up with and choose an appropriate topic because I better understand my topic and how to use it to my advantage when writing a research paper.