A Reflection Paper On Research Writing
I’ve always been a wordy kind of guy. My teachers used to opine that I was talkative but I have always maintainted that I was merely verbose. I tend to have a way with words. This has been true in the way that I used to write as well. For as long as I could remember, I would always look forward to writing reflection papers for school. I loved it. I could just go on and on talking and writing about something. Being assigned a required number of pages was no big deal for me. Ten pages? Done. Twenty pages? Hold my root beer. Done.
This knack for being wordy served me well, too, when I was taking my first two formal degrees. My undergraduate was in philosophy, which meant that I had to write a lot of descriptive and persuasive essays. When I got to seminary for my MDiv, the same thing held true. I enjoyed doing research and doing papers for the various courses that I took. While my peers dreaded the required number of pages, not knowing where to pull the words to fill those pages, I instead struggled to stay within the page limit.
I used to think that I knew how to do research. After all, I have had many an occation to consult books and articles for my papers, even quoting various authors at length to support my arguments. However, I’ve since realized that this former mode of research was actually more descriptive than constructive, more a parroting of what other people said, than an actual interface with their ideas in a critical and informed manner. My former mode of ‘research’ writing, I now realize, was merely a more sophisticated version of writing reflection papers, a skill that I learned to do as a young schoolboy.
Since taking my first MTh module three years ago, I’ve been introduced to a different and more demanding kind of research writing. The mode of ‘research’ that we are being trained to do in my current program takes a completely different approach. The aim now is not volume of words but clarity of thought coupled with an economy of words.
It surprises many people that I speak with that for an FHEQ Level 7 master’s program, the output requirement for our each of our modules is only:
- four short essays with a 1,500 word limit, and
- one final research essay with a 3,000 word limit
That’s a total of only 9,000 words for each 30 CATS (equivalent to 300 hours of work) module. After all, 1,500 is just five pages of font sized 12 text, double spaced. Six pages if you include the reference list. Sounds easy peasy lemon squeezy for a wordy guy like myself — not!
I’ve learned that it’s actually so much harder to write 1,500 words than to fill 15 pages! You see, as one of our academic tutors has said, with a 1,500 word limit, the researcher cannot afford to waste words. Every single word in the short piece should be doing something to advance the essay’s thesis statement. Add to this the fact that for a 1,500 word essay we are expected to have a reference list of about twelve to fifteen sources — books, book chapters, journal articles, etc. This translates to needing to read about fifteen chapter-length references and thoughtfully to be confident enough to understand the essay question and to give a well-informed answer that interfaces with the various new conversation partners that one has just made through thoughtful reading of these sources.
As well, for a 1,500 word essay, block quotes are to be minimized drastically. You see, one cannot afford to be so foolish as to waste words by quoting other authors at length. Unless absolutely crucial for a point that one is advancing in the essay, block quotes are — as a rule of thumb — to be avoided. Instead, the expectation is for us with every essay is to synthesize all the reading and research that we’ve done and then to craft a short but deliberate essay demonstrating our mastery of the subject matter and the entailments of going one way or another with the material.
I am currently just one 3,000-word research paper away from finishing my fourth and last module. Next up is my program’s capstone research dissertation which will have a 15,000 word limit. If there’s anything that I’ve learned about research and writing these past three years or so of study, it is that it requires a lot (and I mean a lot) of involved reading and research to produce write in a constructive manner. This is the case in theology but I think the same could be applied more broadly to other fields of study as well.
These days it’s so easy for people to just publish their opinions online ala reflection paper style (I am very aware that this blog post is an example of this, hence the title). Not that there is anything wrong with writing in this mode. However, I do think that there is a need for people to recognize that a social media ‘reflection paper’ is not a research paper. I also hope that my present reflections in this piece can serve to challenge and encourage my fellow students and aspiring scholars to keep pressing on in the task of research and writing. Let’s aim for a less is more approach clarity of thought and an economy of words substitutes mere wordiness, no matter how witty or eloquent.
