Customer Reviews

The Curious Researcher: A Guide to Writing Research Papers

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

My college students have really responded well to this book. The brainstorming exercises in the first chapter are great. The info. and other exercises throughout the book are very helpful as well. I highly recommend this short text to college English instructors teaching the long research paper in their various classes. It's a textbook students will actually read, learn from and use productively.

This review is a collaborative writing project completed by a section of ENGL/135 students at DeVry University in beautiful Colorado Springs, Colorado. It is based on the students' experiences in using Ballenger's book as a textbook during the first three weeks of the class.

We give this book an ecstatic thumbs up! Here are just a few examples of its excellencies:

* Includes good examples.
* Focuses specifically on formal research papers.
* Provides up-to-date guidelines for both internet and library research.
* Presents the reader with a step-by-step guide to writing research papers.
* Is easy to read and well formatted.
* Demystifies its subject.
* Maintains a friendly tone.
* Contains comprehensive instructions on both APA and MLA formats.
* Explains exactly how to format footnotes, citations, and references.
* Discusses ways to find a topic and includes a large list of examples.
* Helps ESL students to master the complexities of formal English writing.

Our only suggestion for improvement: we'd like to see Ballenger elaborate more on such matters as punctuation and grammar in research papers.

Overall, we have found this book to be very useful in our ENGL/135 composition class.

This book is a great asset! It helped me so much! I used it in my English 102 class for a 10 page essay, it walked me through the whole process from beginning to end, just amazing!!

I purchased the book because it was a textbook for a research class. Ballenger has written a great book. While some of the exercises seem redundant, doing everything and finding out what works for YOU, and learning what works for different papers will help immensely because not every paper should be researched and written in the same manner. He discusses the importance of ensuring your paper is written for the correct audience, and shows how students can give their own voices to the paper. The Curious Researcher is current and up-to-date, so earlier editions might be as useful if one remembers that his basic concepts can translate forward. The best thing... okay, the concept of the book is the best thing, but the book is a joy to read and use because everything is so well presented in an informal manner that it seems he's right there tutoring you.

I come to bury The Curious Researcher, not to praise it.

This was a required text for my research writing class. It is yet another overpriced 'how-to' guide rebadged as a textbook that would never have sold a single copy if released into the open market. The ideas presented are trite and insulting, and add layers of confusion to what is already a confusing topic for most people.

The author encourages you to read his essays for pleasure, and then deconstruct them using his helpful guidelines. I've written and critiqued research papers before and I found his guidelines either excessively strict or very vague.

I acknowledge that Ballinger's insistence that you need not be excessively formal in research writing is refreshing, and that I agree with many of his reasons why people are afraid of good research.

My review comes from the fact that my instructor relies so heavily on this text to teach us what we need to know, and use the exercises to practice research writing. If it was used less extensively I might be willing to give it a better grade. As it is, used heavily, I I wish I didn't have to depend on the criteria he uses to earn a grade in my class!

I purchased this book for a college English class. Over the course of taking the class I realized that this is a wonderful resourse for any papers that need to be written throughout my time in college ... and beyond.

I highly recommend this book!!!

This is an excellent book for teachers and students. It thoroughly explains the process of writing a research paper and how to teach it. I highly recommend Ballenger's book for English Composition studies, especially English 1213. Students will learn all about researching, evaluating sources, and the writing process. I read the book over a weekend and used it to write two research papers. It is fantastic! I plan to incorporate it in my own English Composition classes when I become a teacher.

The title says it all! If you have ever struggled with MLA formatting then this is the right book for you!

I ordered this book as a requirement for my English class. I was expecting a boring and confusing handbook. I'm so glad now that our professor required us to use it! It is amusing and written well with the audience in mind. It isn't like a textbook at all. The author puts interesting stories that keep me glued to the page instead of drifting off into daydream land. I will definitely be keeping my copy of the book, cause it is definitely worth the buy.

Forget all the reviews beneath that say this book isn't for college students. These stodgy English Professor types are exactly the audience who are guarenteed to hate a book that promotes and teaches, passion, curiousity, and most important, voice in student research papers. For the rest of us the Curious Researcher is a breath of fresh air. Bruce Ballenger comes at us from a writers, not a teachers point of view. He illustrates how to transform what is traditionally known in the trade as a "terminal paper" into an exploration, brimming with life, fact and literary panache.
He also manages to squeeze in all the fundamental research skills and gives teachers exercizes on how to teach them. Any teacher who sees this book as a "huge waste of time," (see review below) might want to take their cue from UCLA basketball coach John Wooden. "No one is too old to learn the fundamentals." Ballenger brilliantly teaches the fundamentals of teaching voice in non-fiction writing and demonstrates his lessons on each page throught the example of his own writing. This is the Best Book on Research Writing for College or High School ever written. Bravo Bruce!