ON DEMAND: Articulate The Purpose: International Grad Students Meet Their Subject Librarians

Abstract

International Graduate students at INTO Mason take courses that help them transition into the American academy as well as a multi-disciplinary research writing course that shows them the conventions of writing in their specific disciplines. This assignment touches on many different goals at once. The students must not only interact with their subject librarians at Mason, but also be able to discuss their topics with their librarians and be able to articulate their ideas. This assignment occurs at the point in the semester when students are beginning to formulate their research questions so they can do more targeted research. The students have to be able to fully articulate their ideas and how they work in concert in order to ask for help in identifying articles or chapters to review to support those ideas. This is the assignment sheet for the meeting, annotated to show the research behind its inception.