

Harrison High School/Jamison
Answers the question, “Why
do we have to do this?”
 Write
to Remember: Experienced researchers
first write just to remember what they’ve read.
When you don’t take notes on what you read,
you’re likely to forget, or worse, misremember it.
 Write to Understand: See the larger patterns in
what you read. Careful researchers write from
the beginning of their project to help them
assemble their information in new ways.
 Write to Test Your Thinking: Get your thoughts
out of your held and onto paper, where you’ll
see what you really can think.
 Research
exists in everyday life and
encompasses infinitely more than just an
assignment for school.
o Most successful people are also effective researchers. Oprah,
Yahoo creator Jerry Yang, or the manager of every pro sports team
has to be an expert on research and in using research from others
(Booth 3).
o Learning how to research helps us to understand what we read, the
validity of what other people say and report, and how to better
understand the world around us.




“Whenever we read about a scientific breakthrough or a crisis in
world affairs, we benefit from the research of those who report it,
who in turn benefited from the research of countless others.
When we log on to the Internet, we can read millions of reports
written by researchers who have posed questions beyond
number, gathered untold amounts of information from the
research of others to answer them, then shared their answers
with the rest of us so that we can carry on their work by asking
new questions and, we hope, answering them.
Teachers at all levels devote their lives to research. Governments
spend billions on it, businesses even more.
Research reported by others, in writing, is the source of most of
what we believe”(Booth 9).

The purpose of a
research paper or
researched argument is
not to gather a ton of
facts and hope the
teacher will reward those
facts. In a research
report, you must think of
your reader as someone
who doesn’t know it but
needs to.

Before you write
anything, whether it is a
literary analysis or a
scientific report, you
must consider that there
must be a need for that
knowledge and an
interest on your part. If
you approach it as only
another assignment, you
will not write to your full
potential.
1.
2.
3.
I’ve found some new and interesting information.
I’ve found a solution to an important practical problem.
I’ve found an answer to an important question.
4.
See the handout #1 (Understanding Your Role) for
students. This activity would work for a pre-writing session
(25 minutes?)
5.
Link to handout
Topic. Question. Problem.
 After
you pick your topic, don’t just start
collecting data. Now is the time to turn your
topic into a question whose answer solves a
problem that you can convince readers to
care about.
 What
is the difference between a question
and a problem?
Activity: Students will evaluate
each other’s topics and
questions. Do the topics logically
progress toward a problem that
needs to be solved?
Questions and problems are not quite the same. Some
questions raise problems; others do not. A question
raises a problem if not answering it keeps us from
knowing something more important than its answer.
 For example: If we cannot answer the question Are
there ultimate particles? We cannot know something
even more important: the nature of physical existence.
 On the other hand, a question does not raise a
problem if not answering it has no apparent
consequences. For example, Was Abraham Lincoln’s
right thumb longer than his nose? What would readers
gain by knowing this?

Students should reword their
existing topics into more
focused ones.
A
topic is probably too broad if you can state
• The conflict of free will
it in four or five words:
inevitability in
Free will in and
o Free will in Tolstoy Tolstoy’s description of
Tolstoy
three battles in War
and Peace
o The history of commercial
aviation
A
topic too broad will be impossible to
• Thewe
contribution
of it:
the
The Here’s
history how
research!
narrow
military in developing
of
the DC-3 in the early
commercial years of commercial
aviation
aviation
The best way to begin
working on your specific
topic is not to find all the
data you can on your
general topic, but to
formulate questions that
point you to just those
data that you need to
answer them.
 Students should look at
Handout From Focused
Topic to Questions

Ask about the history of
your topic
 Ask about its structure
and composition
 Ask how your topic is
categorized
 Turn positive questions
into negative ones
 Ask What if? and other
speculative questions

 Without
a research question to answer, with
out a topic to guide your way, you will gather
data aimlessly and endlessly, with no way of
knowing when you have enough.
 To avoid this, you need a research problem
that focuses you on finding just those data
that will help you solve it. It might take
awhile to figure out what that problem is, but
from the outset, you have to think about it.


Handout #2: From Question to Significance
See Handout #2
 Activity: Work through the following three steps in order to discover your topic’s
significance.
 Step 1 – Name Your Topic: If you are beginning a project with only a topic and
maybe the glimmerings of a good question or two, start by naming your project:
 I am trying to lean about _________________________.
 Step 2 – Add an Indirect Question: Add an indirect question that indicates what
you do not know or understand about your topic:
 I am studying/working on_____________________ because I want to find out
who/what/where/when/whether/why/how_____________________.


Step 3 – Answer So What? by Motivating Your Question: This step tells you
whether your question might interest not just you but others. To do that, add a
second indirect question that explains why you asked your first question.
Introduc4e this second implied question with in order to help my reader
understand how, why, or whether:
I am studying __________________ because I want to
discover__________________ in order to help my reader understand
__________________________.
Help students avoid this
common problem.
No one can solve the world’s great problems in a five
or even a fifty-page paper. But you might help us better
understand a small part of one, and that can move us
closer to a practical solution. So if you care deeply
about a practical problem, such as destructive forest
fires, carve out of it a conceptual question that is small
enough to answer but whose answer might ultimately
contribute to a practical solution: How important are
fires to the ecological health of a forest? How do local
fire codes affect the spread of a forest fire?
1. Thinking
about
your “problem”
early will save you
hours of work in
the long run.
2. Ask for Help: Do
what experienced
researchers do: talk
to teachers,
classmates, relatives,
friends, neighbors –
anyone who might be
interested.
3. Look for Problems as
You Read: Where in your
sources do you see
contradictions,
inconsistencies,
incomplete
explanations?
4. Look at your Own
Conclusion: We usually
do our best thinking in
the last few pages we
write. It is often only
then that we begin to
formulate a final claim
that we did not
anticipate when we
started.





Get control over your topic by writing about it along the way.
Don’t just retype or photocopy sources: write summaries,
critiques, questions, responses to your sources. Keep a
journal in which you reflect on your progress. The more you
write, no matter how sketchily, the more confidently you will
face that intimidating first draft.
Know that uncertainty and anxiety are natural and
inevitable.
Count on your teachers to understand your struggles.
Set realistic goals.
Recognize that this struggle is a huge learning experience!
Keep reviewing, writing, and persevering.


Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary.
Primary Sources:
These provide the raw data that you use first to test your
working hypothesis and then as evidence to support your
claim. In history, for example, primary sources include
documents from the period or person you are studying,
objects, maps, even clothing; in literature or philosophy, your
main primary source is usually the text you are studying, and
your data are the words on the page. In such fields, you can
rarely write a research paper without using primary sources.

Some examples of sites that allow free viewing of
primary sources:




The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History:
http://www.gilderlehrman.org/collection/treasures1.html
How to find primary sources:
http://www.library.mun.ca/guides/howto/primary.php
New York Times Archive: 1894 Article about Grammar School:
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archivefree/pdf?res=9A0DE2DE1531E033A25751C1A9619C94659ED
7CF
Walt Whitman’s Death 1892:
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archivefree/pdf?res=9502E2DC1F39E233A25754C2A9659C94639ED
7CF

Secondary sources are research reports that use primary
data to solve research problems, written for scholarly and
professional audiences. Researchers read them to keep up
with their field and use what they read to frame problems of
their own by disputing other researchers'’ conclusions or
question their methods. You can use their data to support
your argument, but only if you cannot find those data in a
primary source. A secondary source becomes a primary
source when you study its argument as part of a debate in a
field, such as whether patriotic historians deliberately
distorted Alamo stories.


Information about Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Sources
http://www.lib.umd.edu/guides/primary-sources.html#secondary
Comparison Across the
Disciplines
University Libraries, University
of Maryland, College Park, MD
20742-7011 (301)405-0800
SUBJECT
PRIMARY
SECONDARY
TERTIARY
Art and Architecture
Painting by Manet
Article critiquing art piece
ArtStor database
Chemistry/Life Sciences
Einstein's diary
Monograph on Einstein's life
Dictionary on Theory of
Relativity
Engineering/Physical Sciences Patent
NTIS database
Manual on using invention
Humanities
Letters by Martin Luther King
Web site on King's writings
Encyclopedia on Civil Rights
Movement
Social Sciences
Notes taken by clinical
psychologist
Magazine article about the
psychological condition
Textbook on clinical
psychology
Performing Arts
Movie filmed in 1942
Biography of the director
Guide to the movie

These are books and articles that synthesize and report on
secondary sources for general readers, such as textbooks,
articles in encyclopedias and mass-circulation publications
like Psychology Today, and what standard search engines
turn up first on the Web. In the early stages of research, you
can use tertiary sources to get a feel for a topic. But if you
use what you find in a tertiary source to support a scholarly
argument, most of your readers won’t trust your report – or
you.

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Relevance (if your source is a
book):
Skim its index for your key
words, then skim the page on
which those words occur (this
is very easy to accomplish on
Google Books).
Skim the first and last
paragraphs in chapters that
use a lot of your key words.
Skim prologues, introductions,
summary chapters, and so on.
If the source is a collection of
articles, skim the editor’s
introduction.
Check the bibliography for
titles relevant to your topic.

1.
2.
3.
4.
If your source is an article:
Read the abstract, if it has
one.
Skim the intro and conclusion,
or if they are not marked off by
headings, skim the first six or
seven paragraphs and the last
four or five.
Skim for section headings, and
read the first and last
paragraphs of those sections.
Check the
bibliography for titles
relevant to your
project.
Checking the bibliography can
help you find useful sources
quicker! Why start from scratch
when someone else has already
done the work for you?


From Working in the Archives by Elizabeth Yakel


Comprehensive searching requires scholars to master
different search strategies than they have previously
employed.
Online Sources of Archival Materials: When using primary
sources a sound research methodology includes a
systematic search for archival and manuscript materials on
a given subject. The following (in increasing order of detail)
are sources with information about archives and
manuscripts:
 Directories
for archival
repositories
o Repositories of Primary
Sources, which provides
links to archival
collections around the
worls at
http://www.uidaho.edu
/specialcollections/Other.Repos
itories.html.
 Web
Sites: Three key
details to keep in mind:
o Is the database or
listing of collections
complete?
o Is there information
about searching for
collections in their
systems?
o Whom do you contact
for more information?



Primary and secondary
sources are integrated online
Catalog records contain brief
descriptions of collections
including the author, title,
date, access or use
restrictions, etc.
The major bibliographies
database is the OCLC’s
WorldCat.

1.
2.
3.
4.
Three ways to search
WorldCat:
Free version on the web at
http://www.worldcat.org/.
WorldCat database, which
most colleges and
universities subscribe to
Library of Congress offers
free WorldCat at
http://www.loc.gov/coll/nuc
mc
Copyright Law:
http://www.copyright.gov/tit
le17/92chap11.pdf
When students say “I can’t
find any good information on
my topic!”







Online archive of California: http://www.oac.cdlib.org/
Rocky Mountain Online Archive:
http://rmoa.unm.edu
Northwest Digital Archives
http://nwda.wsulibs.wsu.edu/
For example, say you want to dig in the archives of Theodore
Roethke:
http://nwda-db.orbiscascade.org/nwdasearch/fstyle.aspx?doc=WAUMSS0418_0653_1484_1624_192
2_1923.xml&t=k&q=New+Media+and+Composition+Theory
Each of these is freely available on the web.



Most of the archival resources available online have
organized the boxes and files of many documents (some
hundreds of years old). The Internet makes it easy for
researchers to know what is out there.
Whatever you do, take notes as you research. It is easy to
forget where we have “surfed” on the Web, especially since
there are so many web sites and resources available to us.
The old-fashioned paper and pen never hurts. Record your
Research!
Why bring up Archival Research? Because there is so much
more available to researchers on the Internet than just
Google or Wikipedia (although both of these resources are
quickly growing in scope and credibility).
Booth, Wayne C., Gregory G. Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams. The Craft of
Research. Chicago: University of Chicago, 2008. Print.
Common Core State Standards. 2011. Web. 2 Aug. 2011.
<https://eboard.eboardsolutions.com/meetings/Attachment.aspx?
S=1262&AID=245075&MID=15932>.
Jenkins, Henry. Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media
Education for the 21st Century. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2009. Print.
MacNealy, Mary Sue. Strategies for Empirical Research in Writing. Boston:
Allyn and Bacon, 1999. Print
Yakel, Elizabeth. Working in the Archives: Practical Research Methods for
Rhetoric and Composition. By Alexis E. Ramsey. Carbondale:
Southern Illinois UP, 2010. 102-18. Print