Category: Key Terms

• Data
• Sources
• Backing

BEAM

In “BEAM: A Rhetorical Vocabulary for Teaching Research-Based Writing,” Joseph Bizup advocates for a new vocabulary around the use of evidence and sources for students. Instead of primary, secondary, and tertiary as the main classifications of sources, Bizup proposes the acronym BEAM:

• Background for materials a writer relies on for general information or for factual evidence;
• Exhibit for materials a writer analyzes or interprets;
• Argument for materials whose claims a writer engages; and
• Method for materials from which a writer takes a governing concept or derives a manner of working.

Work Cited

Bizup, Joseph. “BEAM: A Rhetorical Vocabulary for Teaching Research-Based Writing.” Rhetoric Review 27.1: 2008. 72-86.