Greetings! My name is Chrissine. I’m a Writing Center tutor, and I’m pleased to present

Research Writing Basics. This workshop is being recorded for future use and display.

Research Writing Basics

Thursday, July 14, 2016 @ 7 pm ET

Presenter – Chrissine Rios, MA

Kaplan University Writing Center

Access the recording of the live workshop here:

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http://khe2.adobeconnect.com/p64k33kwv4g/

You’ve been assigned a research paper. What do you do first?

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Research Basics - Key Concepts

Before you begin a research writing project, there are some concepts to understand about research and about the research writing process. In this workshop, I’ll review these. They include writing to learn and think, selecting and discovering your topic, and planning and organizing for research. We’ll also look at some reading and writing strategies to use during the research process and how to use and cite sources, and before we conclude, I’ll provide you links to research writing resources in the Kaplan Online Library and the Writing Center.

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Writing to Learn and Think

When you are assigned a research writing project, you are being asked to learn about a

subject and think about it, so you can then write your thoughts on it. Physicist Albert Szent-

Gyorgyi (1958) expressed this idea well when he said “Research is to see what everybody

else has seen and to think what nobody else has thought.” Research writing is therefore

not to only report on your findings but to analyze them, make new connections, and come

up with new ideas that expand the body of knowledge on a subject.

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Selecting a Topic

Assignment:

Oftentimes you will be assigned a topic to research. But even when you are assigned a

topic, you will have some room to narrow your focus to an area that is interesting to you or

relevant to you. Finding that relevance is part of your work in writing about a topic. You’ll

want to think about how it relates to you, how it matters, where it intersects in your personal

or professional life, and how it matters to others.

The assignment instructions will help you narrow your topic selection by how long or short

the paper has to be. Research writing is detailed; you are analyzing, which means you are

breaking something down into parts, so you will need a topic, which you can go into detail

about and still meet the assignment requirements.

For example, if you wanted to write about space travel, and you researched just that: space

travel, you would find so much information that unless you were writing a book, which

would be long enough to go into detail, you will end up writing very dull paper full of general

ideas and common knowledge or what a Wikipedia search could easily provide.

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For an academic research paper, you will need a narrow topic for it to be interesting to you

and to your readers. If you like space travel, then you will want to pick an interesting aspect

of it or issue that will allow you to explore it in detail such as a new technology that is

changing the the way communication happens in space.

A narrow topic is one that provides specific details, which are nuggets of thought. When you

are working with specifics, you can see them as parts and how the parts fit together and

where they don’t or where there is room for variation and wonder, and how they are

important in the bigger context of space travel. You don’t have to lose site of the bigger

category; research writing will usually entail taking something small or not well known and

showing readers why it matters in the big picture.

The types of sources you need will also help you narrow your topic. If you are required to

use peer-reviewed journals, you’ll need a topic that is being talked about by experts or

professionals. If you are required to use Internet-only sources, not published anywhere in

print, you’ll need a topic that is being talked about in social media or pop culture. For

example, if you were interested in gaming, this difference between doing scholarly research

in the library and web research will be the difference between a paper on the technology that

makes gaming happen and the rarest Pokemon one can capture. Of course, research

papers can also include a mix of scholarly and creative sources. Each source should be

used intentionally, which is part of planning, which we will discuss next.

Purpose:

Whether you are writing to persuade or inform will also help you narrow your topic.

Informative essays bring attention to something that exists or is happening. It describes a

problem or explains interesting aspects or connections between the topic and the people it

affects. Informative essays raise awareness.

Persuasive essays challenge people’s beliefs. They propose solutions, new policies, and

convince people to see something a different way or to take action. So going back to the

topic of a communication technology for space travel, the difference between an informative

essay and a persuasive one would be the difference between telling someone that a new

technology exists and telling someone a certain technology shouldn’t be used or that is

should be used differently than it is.

Audience:

When selecting and narrowing a topic, you have to also consider your intended audience:

who would care, who is affected, and who is involved. If you are writing for new

professionals in a field, you might chose a current trend in that field. If you are writing for the public at large, you might write about a social problem. If you are writing for a business management team, you might write about a new computer system. Knowing your audience will help you to focus on the relevant aspects of your topic, the level of details, and the terminology to use. So the first step in selecting a topic is to understand your assignment, its purpose, and the intended audience.

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Discovering the Topic: Prewriting

Once you’ve chosen a topic based on your assignment requirements and personal interest, you will still be hazy about it until you start writing. Like meeting someone new, before you make a date or plan to get together, you need to have an initial conversation with the person to know if you even want to get together and to know where to go or what to do. In research writing, that initial conversation is done with prewriting. You take 20 minutes or so and write down what you already know and think about the topic. This is informal writing just for you to see. It can be freewriting—just a stream of thoughts, or it can be a list of phrases like a scratch outline. There are many prewriting techniques. I’ll provide you links to resources at the end of the presentation.

When prewriting about a topic for research, regardless of the technique, just as we use our past experiences and past relationships to form our understanding and interest in a new person in our lives, we use our existing knowledge and thoughts to initially discover or get a sense of the topic and how we fit with it. You prewrite to see what the topic reminds you of or what you have in common with it or where there is a connection to something you already know well. Prewriting can expose the biases you may have about it or your assumptions about it, and ultimately, prewriting will lead you to questions you have about the topic that will require research.

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Discovering the Topic: Questions

Ultimately, prewriting will lead you to ideas and questions about the topic that will require research. Consider all the question words when you are coming up with research questions: Who does the topic affect or involve? What specifically is the topic—can you describe it in a few words? Where can you see this topic? When? How and why does it matter? Your thoughts and questions will guide your research and they will also lead you to one dominant idea that will become your thesis for the paper. In this early stage, any dominant idea you that you want to explore or prove with your research will be a “working thesis” as it may change as you learn more about your topic. It’s common at this stage to still have multiple questions and thoughts about your topic, and this is good. This is when you need to get organized and make a research plan.

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Planning and Organizing for Research

When you’ve done adequate prewriting and you have some thoughts and questions to

research, your next step is organize those thoughts and plan for how you will research

them and where you will find the answers to your questions.

Kaplan Online Library Director, Matt Stevons, recommends the TORCH method for

planning and conducting research, and librarians are research experts, so I will provide

you a link to the library tutorial on the TORCH method at the end of this workshop;

however, we’ll also cover some of the key concepts of TORCH and then move onto

reading and writing strategies for research.

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Planning and Organizing for Research

Teach yourself about the topic:

Before you jump into searching for sources on your topic, you’ll want to teach yourself

about the topic by doing some preliminary research.

Define terms:

This is the time to Google your topic, talk to others about it, search Wikipedia or a

dictionary to see what definitions of your topic exist, and to find synonyms and related

terms. This is not the research you’ll necessarily use in your paper; it’s an initial search to

make sure you understand what you looking for and that you are using the right wording

when you look for it.

Generate search terms:

You will want to make a list of search terms at this stage too. To generate search terms,

you will want to go from the general category of your topic to more specific aspects or

subtopics. You’ll want a few search terms at least to get started, taking the purpose of

your writing into consideration and the level of detail. Keep in mind that when you

research, your results will have those terms in the titles, abstracts, or first paragraphs, or

the results will have those terms as key words or tags added by

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the writer or publisher of the source. You want to make sure your search terms are

spelled correctly and are the same key words that others are using to talk about the

subject.

Questions and answers:

When planning and organizing for research, you will want to also think about the

questions you had after prewriting and where you will find the answers. Look at your

list of questions and note the types of sources that could answer those questions. Do

you need statistics? Do you need examples? Do you need opposing viewpoints?

What you need will help you to plan whether you will need books, peer-reviewed

journals, newspapers, websites, or a variety of sources.

Books provide the most detail on a topic. You may not have time to read an entire

book, but you can read relevant chapters and search e-books for key terms to go

directly to the page or section that relates to your topic.

Peer reviewed articles will be written by experts on the topic, and they do not take as

long to write and publish as books do, so they will provide more current information.

Newspaper articles are written by journalists who are not necessarily experts but are

professional researchers and writers, and these articles do go through a formal

editing and fact-checking process. Also, newspapers are published daily, so they will

provide the most current information on a topic. You can find good, relevant, local

examples of issues in newspapers to provide an anecdote or illustration of a point you

are making.

Web pages do not always go through an editing or fact-checking process beyond

what the writer alone does unless you are using a .gov or .edu website, so you

always have to evaluate these sources to make sure the author is reliable, or the

website is credible.

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Evaluate Your Sources

When evaluating sources to know if they are reliable and appropriate to use, ask

“Who wrote it or who is taking responsibility for the accuracy of this information?” Ask

“What is the source? Does it meet your assignment guidelines? Is it a .com site trying to

sell something? Is it a .org site trying to get you to believe something?” Sources that have

agendas for how readers are to think and behave will be biased, which also goes to asking

“Why was the source published; what’s its purpose?” Also look where it was published and

when to ensure you have a relevant, recent, and reliable source.

The Kaplan Online Library has a video tutorial on evaluating sources that I recommend. I

will provide you the link at the end.

For every source you find, you want to evaluate whether or not it’s an appropriate one to

use. Your evaluation of a source may be important to mention in your paper too. For

example, you might provide data in which you want to emphasize the expertise of the

writer, so knowing the credentials of the writer or that it was published by a prominent

researcher would be important for your readers to know. And of course, you will have to

provide the date in your citations too, so knowing who and when and where will also be

important when it comes time to cite the sources you use.

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Reading Strategies During Research

When you are researching and looking for sources to use in your paper, you are reading. When reading, it’s important to think about what you are reading as you read and check that you are understanding. This is called metacognition—thinking about what you are doing as you are doing it. There are several reading strategies that will improve your metacognition and therefore also your comprehension of a text, so you can more easily use it in your paper, write about it, and link it to other ideas.

First, when you come upon an article, book, chapter, or webpage that you want to read, you’ll want to scan it for its organization—look at the beginning, middle, and end, the section headings and the first sentences of the paragraphs to see the topics being discussed and the general development of the piece. This will help you to know what to expect when you go to read it. The next step is to read each section of the text, one at a time, taking breaks between each to process the information and take notes. Also pause as you read look up words and ask questions when necessary. Finally, a good way to stay on track and engage your brain fully is to read out loud. Reading out loud works well because it engages both visual and auditory preferred learning styles. I have an archived workshop for you that goes into more depth on reading strategies, so I’ll provide you that before we finish.

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Note-Taking Techniques for Research

In addition to absorbing the text with active reading strategies, note-taking will help you comprehend and retain what you are reading. Some excellent methods for note-taking are highlighting a text, writing notes in the margins, writing notes on a separate page, and/or composing a double-entry journal, which I’ll also show you an example of.

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Double-Entry Journal

To make a Double Entry Journal, you begin by drawing a line down the middle of a sheet of paper or make a table in a word processing program with just two columns and plenty of rows. On the left side of the page, put at the top “Quotation, summary, or paraphrase from source” and on the right side, put “My questions, agreements, disagreements, and other comments.” Now you have an instant way of recording what you found notable from the text and your own thoughts in response to that text. Again, this is very important when writing a research paper since most of the paper should be what you think about the research.

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Using and Citing Sources

The next step in this process is to use the research in your writing and to cite that research

appropriately. These are topics for whole workshops, so I’m providing you links to three of

them to get you started. You can also download a copy of this presentation with the links

for future reference.

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Resources for Research Writing

The other resources I recommend for research writing are listed here.

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Reference

Szent-Györgyi, A. (1957). Quote. Retrieved from

http://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/07/04/seen/

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For more writing support, connect with the KUWC’s new public webpage. You can actually Google and find this page. This is also a great way for you to stay connected to the KUWC through Facebook and Twitter. Many of our resources are here as well.

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The best time to do a paper review in the Kaplan University Writing Center is after you have written your first draft. When you come to us early, we can help you the most by helping you with the structure of your paper. Many students send papers at the last minute because they want us to simply proofread their paper. However, KUWC writing tutors do not simply proofread the paper for you; we want to help you learn to write and proofread your own papers. You can submit a first draft, and then submit a later draft if you need further help on an assignment. If you need help before you write the first draft, you can use live tutoring. During live tutoring, you can ask questions and brainstorm with a tutor. Live tutors can help you with other stages in the paper writing process as well. Come visit us. We can be found under the My Studies tab, then under Academic Support Center.

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On the main Academic Support Center page, you will see the Writing Center links. These include Live Tutoring, Paper Review Service, the Writing Reference Library, Citation Guidelines, Workshops, English Language Learner, and Fundamental writing help. Notice, you can access the Kaplan Guide to Successful Writing on the right hand side in both print and audio form. Come visit us.

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