I conduct a writing programme at an undergrad hours course in a local college. The students are new to social sciences and have little exposure to research or social science writing. We set them to undertake small research-based investigations on a number of local issues viz., how malls affect local small stores; the pattern of use of mobile phones among students; the changing profiles of food vendors and cafes around the institutional, markets for bottled water and its economics, and so on.
While the research itself was exciting and students were able to conduct investigations with some rigour; the difficulty was really in writing it.
We decided to do break up the writing task into sections. Their first assignment was in writing about their field and about the participants of the study. This they did with great enthusiasm and verve.
The exercise turned out to be a revelation to students and the faculty alike. These student observations and the descriptions of participants are fascinating. Admittedly, they are not just observations. That is, students tended to interpret their observations simultaneously. This led to discussion on how while the reading of signs is important we need to make a distinction between what we actually see and how we ‘read’ what we see.
More importantly, all this made a big difference to their writing and at this point I am hoping that their research reports will be very different from the dry and humdrum content and style of our usual reports. I am almost certain that these will be richer, deeper and certainly more interesting research reports than the usual student research. That is not, of course, to vouch for the quality of their research---these are, after all, undergrad students with little previous exposure to research!
It might be a good idea to mandatorily get Ph.d/ M .Phil scholars in the social sciences to write down their systematic observations of the field before they even attempt to identify their research question! We tend to put so much emphasis on the preliminary literature survey; should we not be getting them to review the field systematically as well? Perhaps if we got them to write about the field and what they perceive as problems worth investigating, they will be better connected to the field, be able to capture the excitement of research, and develop writing skills too.
Padma Prakash
padma@esocialsciences.com
