Better English Writing - Geddes Grosset Webster’s Word Power 2014
Research skills
Writing for learning
You need to have good research skills to be able to produce essays and theses. Here are some points to help you.
What information are you looking for?
It sounds obvious, but it’s worth saying - you need to know what you’re looking for before you start looking for it. Make sure you understand the question you are answering, or the task set by your essay or thesis title. Then you can go on and find the appropriate material to research.
Where can you find that information?
There are many different types and source of information, but the three main ones are books, journals and the internet.
Looking for information can be daunting, so use all the help you can get. When you are looking for books and journals in the library, try the following:
✵ Ask your tutor or teacher for recommendations - which books, journals or periodicals are good for your particular essay or thesis? Is there a reading list for your subject?
✵ Look through the contents page and index - this will tell you quickly whether the information you are looking for is there.
✵ Ask the librarian for help if you are having problems using the library cataloguing system.
When you are looking for information on the internet, try the following:
✵ Ask your tutor or teacher for recommendations - which websites are good for your particular essay or thesis?
✵ Stay focused. Don’t go wandering off onto websites that have nothing to do with your project.
✵ Avoid experiencing information overload by writing a list of questions you want to find answers to, and reject the information that doesn’t answer them.
✵ Stick to two or three sources at one time. You can come back for more.
✵ Don’t go past the first page of your search engine.
✵ Don’t believe everything you read on the internet - stick to reputable sites and those that list traceable sources. If in doubt, check with your tutor or teacher.
Organising your information
Now that you have found your information, don’t let it overwhelm you. Organise it and you’ll be able to use it effectively:
✵ Keep going back to the question ’What is it asking?’ What information are you looking for?
✵ Find out how much you are expected to write, so you know when to stop.
✵ Plan your essay or thesis, so you know what to look for in each section.
✵ As you are reading, look for the answers to your questions.
✵ Look for points that agree or disagree with these answers.
✵ Take notes and summarise the ideas or main points from each piece of information.
✵ Link these ideas using a mind map, highlighter pens, stickers - whatever you feel comfortable with.
✵ Ignore any information that is too detailed or not relevant.
✵ Remember to write down the author, title, place of publication, publisher, date of publication and page numbers for articles from books, journals, periodicals and encyclopedias, and web addresses and date of access for online sources. Make sure that web links are current at the time of writing, and convert them to working hyperlinks. This way, you will build a bibliography as you go along - much easier than trying to track down everything you've consulted at the end.
Acknowledging sources/copyright
This last point is very important. You must identify all the material in your essay or thesis that is not your own - no matter where it comes from or what it is. Colleges and universities have strict plagiarism r ules which forbid using another person’s work without a proper citation. Moreover, if you copy text, diagrams, photographs, art, music or web pages without acknowledging their source, then you are infringing copyright law, and could be prosecuted.
Copyright stays with the originator during his or her lifetime, and with the heirs to their estate for 70 years after their death.
References
Because of the copyright issue, you should make a list of all the references to books, journals, periodicals and websites you have used in your work. Providing a list of references also provides evidence of how much reading you have done and supports the statements and arguments you make.
You should put references in the main text when you are quoting an author and their work, and also list them separately in a bibliography. Try to avoid using footnotes, unless specified by your institution - they will make your text cluttered.
The Harvard referencing system is probably the most common one, although you should check this with your school, college or university - they might use another system instead.
Main text
Here’s an example of a reference or citation of an author’s quote in the main text:
’[Welsh is] by far the oldest language spoken in Britain today and is among the oldest in Europe ...’ (Edwards, 2012, p. 11).
If you quote an author directly like this, you need to show clearly where the quotation begins and ends by using quotation marks. The text in square brackets indicates where you have changed the exact words used by the author in order to suit your sentence (without altering the sense of what was said by the writer). The closing ellipsis indicates that the end of your quote is not the end of the author ’s statement. If you are quoting the entirety of an author ’s sentence or statement, this should not be included.
If you aren’t quoting the author directly, but want to show that you have read their work, you could write:
Edwards (2012, p. 11) points out that Welsh is the oldest language spoken in Britain today, as well as being among the oldest in Europe.
Bibliography
Here’s how a reference for a book would look in the bibliography:
Edwards, D. I., 2012. English-Welsh Phrasebook. Glasgow: Waverley Books, p. 11.
Here’s how a reference for a journal would look in the bibliography:
Bernard, G. W., 1993. Anne Boleyn’s Religion. The Historical Journal,
36(01), pp.1-20.
Here’s what an internet reference would look like in the bibliography:
Bernard, G. W., 1993. Anne Boleyn’s Religion. The Historical Journal, [online] 36(01). Available from: Cambridge Journals Online http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X00016083 [Accessed 29 March 2013].
Beware of cut and paste and plagiarism
Copying and pasting text into your own work without using quotation marks or citing it appropriately is a form of plagiarism.
Plagiarism is when you take somebody else’s ideas or writing and present them as your own. If you do this, you will probably fail your essay or thesis, if not face disciplinary action.
When you are taking notes, decide what information you need from your source, and then write or summarise it in your own words. That way, you won’t be tempted - consciously or subconsciously - to copy the source, word for word.
Don’t cut and paste. You can easily forget that you have taken somebody else’s work and put it into your own - especially if you change the font to the one you are using.
Remember that plagiarism is cheating.