Matakuliah
Tahun
Versi
: G1112, Scientific Writing I
: 2006
: v 1.0 rev 1
Module 2
What is inside
a research paper?
1
The anatomy
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Finding a Topic
Gathering data
Conducting research
Organizing ideas and setting goals
Writing
2
Finding a topic
Step one
Have faith in your own smarts and
course work . Nobody's expecting you to
be an expert or get your paper published
in a journal, so just start jotting down
ideas about things related to your topic.
You may even want to keep a journal to
keep everything in one place.
So. . . Step one is to relax.
3
Finding a topic
Step two
Find your motivation:
1. Think of yourself “Is this something you believe in? that
sounds fun? that you sincerely want to learn more about? that intrigues
you? Even when you're given a set topic in advance, you can always
frame it to suit your needs and style--so get something out of it.”
2. Think of the audience “will other people familiar
with this subject care to read what you're writing? Do you have
something to say or are you babbling and wasting space? Use
common sense and intuition”
4
Finding a topic
Research papers were never
intended to be useless torture, so
let them work for you as well as for
your readers.
5
Tips to find a topic
•
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Invention techniques
Freewriting
Brainstorming
Clustering/Webbing/Mapping
Cubing
Heuristics
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/workshops/hypertext/ResearchW/invent.html
6
Getting Started
Before writing:
• Start thinking early. Is there a particular subject area within your
discipline that you're interested in? Have you recently heard something in
class or read something in the textbook that piqued your curiosity? Did a
tutorial discussion really seem fascinating? Is there something worth
exploring that will help you with a future course or even an upcoming exam
for the present course? After all, who says you can't use a research paper
as an in-depth study tool?
• Make use of your readings. Material you covered in lecture.
Facts or subheadings from the textbook. Your own notes or doodled
questions in the margins of your page. Insights brought up in tutorial
discussions. Or browse through an index of topics such as The Library of
Congress Subject Headings or the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature,
or through more subject-specific catalogs easily found in most libraries.
• Don't write anything down just yet. The idea is to get
words, associated topics, and abstract concepts floating around your brain
before you even start to touch a pen or keyboard. You want to get the
mental juices, if not flowing, at least uncapped.
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Getting Started
Start Writing (some real refining of your topic.)
You have to consider:
• The amount of resources
• The popularity of the subject area or
topic itself.
What you have to do:
1. Narrowing
2. Broadening
8
Getting Started
Narrowing
(example) one of the sample keywords we mentioned on the
preliminary research page was "Postcolonialism.”
• " How could that be narrowed?”
• What about changing it to an adjective and then asking one of our 5
Ws? Now we have: Postcolonial what? Maybe postcolonial
ATTITUDES is something you're interested in.
• A natural question to follow what could now be who, or in this
example, where are those attitudes originating from? So from just
straight "Postcolonialism" you now have a specific topic like
"Postcolonial attitudes in India" or "Postcolonial attitudes in
Canadian fiction."
• Of course, that would be way too specific to type into a computer
database, but at least you have more than one word to find
resources for.
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Broadening
• Example: I'm thinking of doing a paper on "fashion." This topic
could develop in many different ways.
• Hint: Ask Yourself Questions About Your Topic:
• What do you know about it? What don't you know?
• What aspects of your topic interest you: historical, sociological,
psychological, etc.?
• What time period do you want to cover?
• On what geographic region do you want to focus?
• What kind of information do you need?
– a brief summary or a lengthy explanation?
– periodical articles, books, essays, encyclopedia articles?
– statistics?
10
Broadening
Sample Topic Narrowing Chart:
General Topic
Fashion
Time span
1920s
Place
US, urban, big cities
Person of group
Young age, college
Events of aspects
Sexual, attitudes, behavior,
sociological
Narrowed research questions
What did American youth fashion
of the 1920s say about sexual
mores?
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Creating an Introduction
Preliminary research
1. Go to the computer catalog terminal (which may or
may not be just an Internet search screen off the
library's WWW home page) and enter in some
keywords that have to do with your subject.
2. With that information in hand, now physically go to the
appropriate stacks and do some scanning to get a
better sense of how your topic is being treated by other
scholars. Flip through the pages. Look at headers,
bolded and italicized words, captions, figures (or
pictures if you should be so lucky!), tables, table of
contents, and indices.
12
Quotation
Which should you use?
Ask each of your teachers which style they want you to
use. If they have no preference, you can use any or follow
these guidelines:
•
APA: psychology, education, and other social
sciences.
•
MLA: literature, arts, and humanities.
•
AMA: medicine, health, and biological sciences.
•
Turabian: designed for college students to use with all
subjects.
•
Chicago: used with all subjects in the "real world" by
books, magazines, newspapers, and other nonscholarly publications.
http://www.liunet.edu/cwis/cwp/library/workshop/citation.htm
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Other Issues
A Checklist for evaluating
print sources of information
To determine if a print source is appropriate for your research, look at
the following criteria:
• Does the author have expertise to write on this
topic?
• Is the information in this source up-to-date?
• Does the publisher affect the information in the
source?
• What do reviewers say about the source?
• Is the source appropriate for your research?
http://www.liunet.edu/cwis/cwp/library/workbook/evaluate.htm#citing
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Other Issues
A Checklist for evaluating online information
To determine if online source is appropriate for your research, look at
the following criteria:
1. Is it credible?
2. Is it accurate?
3. Is it timely?
4. Is it objective?
5. Does the site provide details that support the data?
http://www.liunet.edu/cwis/cwp/library/workbook/evaluate.htm#citing
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Conclusion
“To get started, don't worry about your
subject--start writing. Let the process
get messy and complicated. Allow
yourself freedom to make mistakes.
http://www.powa.org/discover/index.html
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