Summary
Kleine writes about witnessing students in the library at night and their strategies for writing research papers. He calls this sight a nightmare vision. The students he sees were talking and laughing instead of doing real work. After witnessing this he came up with the "hunter and gatherer" analogy for writing. He explains this process by saying that a hunter is someone who knows what they are looking for and goes out to find it. A gatherer is someone who discovers what might be suitable for what they are trying to accomplish. This is a strategy for collecting data before you write. He conducted interviews to test this. He wanted to find the benefits and the drawbacks of this method. He found that all eight of the people he talked to wrote out of interest instead of being made to do it. He explains that all the subjects agreed that the hunter/gatherer model was a good way to explain what academic writers do. All in all he believes that this method is useful.
Connections
I think just about all of the authors from the readings I have read would agree with Kleine. Either you know what you are looking for, or you have no idea and hope to stumble upon what you need. Berkenkotter wrote a lot about analyzing and editing. The hunter/gatherer method could also show how a person would edit their paper. Either they know what they need to fix and go fix it, or they would have to read through and hope to find a way to make their writing better.
QDJ #3
Sources play a role in every piece of writing. It is important to know where your work comes from. If not it is considered plagiarism. The only difference between Kleine and my personal experiences is that he would technically be the source. I read things and cite them, and he is the one who would be cited.
Opinion
I agree strongly with Kleine and his method. I myself have been a hunter and a gatherer. If I write on a subject I know a lot about, I would be a hunter. When I write about a topic I am very unfirmiliar with, I am then a gatherer. This article was a great explanation of how people find their information while writing research papers
Good response, Joe. I like how you articulate the contexts in which hunting and gathering would be most effective. In the future, I would like to see you make more specific connections between authors we've read.
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