Philosophy 5: Critical Thinking and Composition

Pierce College

Department of History, Philosophy, & Sociology

 

 

 

 

 

Lecture Notes for "Chapter 7" "Locating, Mining, and Citing Sources"     

 

Behrens, Laurence and Leonard J. Rosen.  A Sequence for Academic Writing. 5th Ed. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Research Question     

Your research question should fulfill the relevant requirements and should be of interest to you. 

   

The Research Answer        

When you arrive at an answer to your research question, you have the thesis to your research paper. 

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Healthy, Initial  Naïveté    

"By working with a research question (as opposed to a thesis) early in the research process, you acknowledge that you still have ideas and information to discover before reaching your conclusions and beginning to write." 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Searching

 

1) "Focus on a noun"

 

2) Narrow with another noun, or modifier

 

3) Substitute words

 

4) "Use 'advanced' features to refine your research"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"As a [general] rule [of thumb], use several search services ... in any given search to ensure that you don't miss important sites and sources of information."

 

"Because each service uses a different method to catalog Web sites, each service will return a different results list for searches on the same term."