Writing
with Style | Elements
of Written Communication | The
Writing Process | |
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THE RESEARCH PROCESS Topic selection The form
of your research depends on your audience and purpose.
If your teacher asks you to give a one-minute speech on
“weapons used during World War II” to provide the class with
background knowledge, then your topic, audience, and purpose have been
determined for you. If you
decide to research chemistry departments at West Coast colleges for
yourself, then your research process will probably be very different. However,
there are some general
guidelines for topic selection:
2.
Think about your topic: Before
running to the computer and typing your topic into a search engine,
think about what you already know and what you need to find
out. Are you interested
in the who, what, when, where, why, or how of the issue? Do you know where to look to find that information?
(See Types of Sources below.)
4. Revise and/or limit your topic: Now that you know what information is out there, make sure your topic fits your purpose. You might have to expand or contract your topic depending on whether you’re writing a business proposal, a persuasive speech, or an eight-page essay. At this point, it’s appropriate to write a research question or thesis statement that will guide the rest of your research. Types of sources Once you have a
working research question or thesis statement, it’s time to continue
your research. Here are the
types of sources that you might use: A
primary source is an original source that gives
information directly. That
means that the information has not been summarized, interpreted, or
explained by someone else. Primary
source documents include personal interviews, surveys, experiments, and
original-source documents like the Constitution, a novel, or an
autobiography.
Print
Sources
Internet
& electronic versions of print sources (databases)
Searching
the Internet
A search engine
(such as Google http://www.google.com)
will find specific key words within web pages.
Many web directories have search engines built in to their systems.
To use a search engine, follow the guidelines for keyword searching below. Keyword
searching To search the
Internet or a database by keyword, you type in the important word or words
you are looking for. Do not
include articles, prepositions, or other small words. When searching by
keyword, you should be as specific as possible.
You might need to try several different terms in order to find
useful information. Example:
cloning
Shakespeare
World War II If you are looking
for words in a particular order, for example, a phrase, title, or name,
you should put the entire phrase in quotation marks. Remember that the search engine will look for EXACT matches
for anything in quotation marks, so make sure that spelling and
capitalization are correct. Example:
“American Heart Association”
“Romeo and Juliet”
“stem cell”
“Pearl Harbor” If you type in
several words in a keyword search, your results will often include pages
that have only one of the words, not all.
If you want all of the terms to appear in the results, then type
AND or + between each word. If
you want either of the words to appear, use OR. Example:
heart AND diet “Romeo
and Juliet” OR Shakespeare If you want to
exclude certain terms from your results, type NOT or – before the word
you don’t want. Example:
nirvana AND Buddhism NOT Cobain Once you find a
useful site, some search engines have a “Find Similar Pages” option.
You can also look on the site itself for other links to useful
resources.
Evaluating sources Many sources,
particularly on the Internet, aren’t legitimate for research use.
Some are out-of-date; others come from non-expert sources; still
others are created for shock value. Use
the following checklist to evaluate the quality of the sources you’re
using: ·
·
Is the information
complete? ·
Is the information
accurate? ·
Is the source an
expert? ·
Is the source biased? By doing this you
can determine what type of organization is sponsoring the website and
maybe even predict potential bias before looking at the site. The best research sites are usually posted by universities,
government agencies, and other reputable organizations, as opposed to
individuals’ personal sites. ·
.edu -- educational site (usually a university or college) ·
.gov – U.S. governmental/ non-military site ·
.com -- commercial business site, includes news organizations ·
.mil – U.S. military sites and agencies ·
.net -- networks, internet service providers, organizations ·
.org – U.S. non-profit organizations and others The Internet
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) http://www.icann.org/tlds/
has also designated the following domains for use: ·
.aero
-- restricted use by air transportation industry ·
.biz
-- general use by businesses ·
.coop
-- restricted use by cooperatives ·
.info
-- general use by both commercial and non-commercial sites ·
.museum
-- restricted use by museums ·
.name
-- general use by individuals ·
.pro
-- restricted use by certified professionals and professional entities
Hint:
You can include a domain name in your web search.
For example, searching for cloning
.gov would bring up
all the cloning sites sponsored by government agencies.
Note taking
Once you find good
sources, you should begin taking notes.
Some teachers require students to use one particular note-taking
method to ensure that they have research tools for future assignments.
However, whether you’re jotting notes on napkins or on your
laptop, some guidelines are the same: Include a key
word or phrase as a topic or “slug” so you’ll remember what
you were thinking when you wrote information down.
page number where
you found the information. This
should make parenthetical documentation easy when you sit down to write.
(You will need to cite your sources, even if you paraphrase someone
else’s ideas.) ·
Use quotation marks
whenever you copy information word-for-word. ·
Only write down relevant
information. (Your goal isn’t to fill a notecard quota.) ·
Use ellipses
(…) whenever you leave words out of a quotation. ·
Use [square
brackets] whenever you add words to a quotation. Documenting
Sources It’s important
to write down all of the relevant bibliographic information for each
source before you return it or forget where you found it.
You will need this information later when you cite your sources in
your paper. If you are taking
notes on a sheet of paper or on your computer, you should write this
information at the top of each page or section. If you are using notecards,
make a separate bibliography card for each source. Bibliography
cards A bibliography
card lists the publishing information of each source in MLA format on a
separate notecard. This
information will be used for your Bibliography or Works Cited page.
You should number your source cards and use these same numbers in
your research notes, an efficient way of matching notes and sources.
bibliography citation in proper MLA format Notecards Using 3x5 or 4x6
notecards allows researchers to write down information whenever and
wherever they find it and then organize that information by rearranging
the cards. Traditional
notecards have a designated space for researchers to write down their
source, page numbers, and a key word (or slug). Notecard
with direct quote
Notecard
with paraphrase
Notecard
with secondary quotation (attributed)
slug source number
Cornell Notes You might have
learned how to take Cornell Notes during lectures, and the same method can
be used for taking research notes. These
notes are written on the right hand side of a regular-size piece of paper,
and the “slug” and other notes are written on the left side.
This note-taking method gives the researcher more space to write
commentary and is an alternative to writing on note cards.
The disadvantage of this method is that the information is not easy
to rearrange, but this arranging can be done during the drafting process.
Sample
Cornell Notes: Daunt, Tina. “A War on Soda and Candies in Schools.” Los
Angeles Times. 26 August 2001: B-1. Gale Group Student Resource
Center. 2 Sept. 2002. <http://www.galenet.com>.
There are two ways
of taking notes on someone else’s work, either quote the source directly
or paraphrase it. Paraphrasing
is not a play-by-play retelling of everything that happened in a
selection and is not just a process of substituting synonyms for
the words of the original. A paraphrase
captures a source’s main ideas in your own words yet is more detailed
than a summary (see Forms of Writing) Here are some
guidelines for paraphrasing: ·
Only include the essential information ·
State important ideas clearly and concisely ·
Use quotation marks around key words or phrases taken directly from
the source ·
Arrange the ideas in a logical order that’s easy for the reader to
understand ·
Avoid plagiarism (see below) Plagiarism According to the MLA
Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, “Plagiarism is the act of
using another person’s ideas or expressions in your writing without
acknowledging the source. The
word comes from the Latin word plagiarius
(‘kidnapper’)” (21). Plagiarism
includes:
1.
cutting and pasting from the internet (or any other source) 2.
copying word-for-word without using quotation marks 3.
lifting particularly apt phrases from the original and including
them in your writing without quotation marks 4.
replacing a few words with synonyms but keeping the basic sentence
structure (syntax) the same 5.
paraphrasing information but not indicating its source within the
text of your paper using parenthetical citations; simply putting a
bibliography citation at the end is not enough
The
major concerns of Dickenson’s poetry, early and late, her “flood
subjects,” may be defined as the seasons and nature, death and a
problematic afterlife, the kinds and phases of love, and poetry as the
divine art. Gibson and Williams. The
Literary History of the United States.
Vol. 1. (906) Plagiarized Passage The
chief subjects of Emily Dickenson’s poetry include nature and the
seasons, death and the afterlife, the types and stages of love, and poetry
as the divine art. Acceptable Use Gibson
and Williams suggest that the chief subjects of Emily Dickenson’s poetry
include nature, death, love, and “poetry as the divine art” (901). Five Ways to Avoid Plagiarism: 1.
Don’t wait until the last minute to do your assignment.
2.
When copying information from original sources, be careful to use
quotation marks around direct quotes and include page numbers.
This is especially important in the note-taking phase.
3.
Read through the material you are researching and make sure you
understand it. Then put it
aside and write down the key ideas without looking at it. 4.
Don’t write your paper with the original sources in front of you.
Use note cards with paraphrases of source material instead.
5.
Understand what you are trying to say before you start to write. Outlining Outlining helps
writers to organize their research and their ideas before and during
drafting. A working
outline might start off as a simple list of ideas that are chunked
together into groups. This
outline should evolve throughout the research and writing process as the
researcher discovers new information and narrows/expands the research
topic (see example below).
Some writers like to create this outline after doing preliminary
research, so that they can use key words from their outline as the key
words on their notecards. A formal
outline is often required after research has been done and before
drafting begins. This
outline usually uses Roman numerals, capital letters, numbers, and
lower-case letters to show subordinate ideas (see example below).
In addition, parallel structure is required (see parallel
structure). | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Do
preliminary research:
Is the
information current?
Paraphrasing
Original
Passage