As both a writer and a professor, Larry Patriquin has consumed thousands of pages of academic writing. With THE DREADED RESEARCH PAPER: A Writing Guide for Busy Students, he contributes to the existing literature on style with a focus on “busy students” in particular—those most challenged both to learn the basic skills of thoughtful analytical writing, and also to develop as thinkers and writers.
Those “busy students” of the subtitle may not like it, but the implicit argument of THE DREADED RESEARCH PAPER rings true: though the key points can be summarized in a slim, brisk volume like this one, there are no shortcuts to better writing. The text is clear from the start that a solid foundation only comes from regular reading—of both well-crafted prose and works about well-crafted prose—and improvement only comes from regular writing. THE DREADED RESEARCH PAPER, therefore, acts as a reference guide for those engaged in those complementary processes, rather than as a pedagogical program.
Patriquin has decades of experience as a professor to inform the text, so it’s hard to argue with the inclusion of some startlingly basic but necessary material. Students require an understanding of research to write a research paper, for instance, but some of the early remarks on what to do—such as the specifics of how to search for articles in academic databases, or the recommendation to ask a librarian for assistance—can only speak to firsthand experience of the troubling state of writing skills at the undergraduate level. However, the text hits its stride in its middle chapters, which are filled with concrete examples of common errors and how to amend them. This material is clearly laid out and self-evidently valuable, even for experienced writers.
Some decisions seem unusual or idiosyncratic. The text leads with remarks about research, and, in the course of its flow, discusses the writing of thesis statements in the introduction of a research paper. However, only after this section on thesis statements (as sentences) does the text actually discuss what a thesis is, how a thesis organizes the larger project, and how to form one in the first place—ideas which seem more logical to put near the beginning, due to their centrality to the writing process. With its diverse subject matter, THE DREADED RESEARCH PAPER also seems to shoehorn in some of its reference material. A brief, modern discussion of pronouns (the gender-neutral “they” in particular) is necessary and well-considered, but it’s less clear that it should be found at the end of the chapter “Paragraphs and Sentences” rather than elsewhere.
Quibbles with structure and flow aside, there’s no arguing with the import of the material or the text’s value as a quick reference guide for any writer.
Larry Patriquin’s THE DREADED RESEARCH PAPER: A Writing Guide for Busy Students is a clear, concise guide to better academic writing.
~Dan Accardi for IndieReader