Response to "Developing a Search Strategy," "Researching the Web Wisely," & "Using Sources and Avoiding Plagiarism"

I think that with previous research projects, like the ones that I did in high school, I had trouble with getting a good search strategy. I think that if I work on my research early in my project, it will give me a lot less stress and developing a good search strategy is probably one of the keys to this. I think that the Questioning Method, described in the section 28a will be very useful to me. This strategy involves asking smaller questions and looking for answers to them. This sounds like it will be easy for me to do and it will make the researching process less overwhelming. I think it will also help me to keep on task while looking for information on my topic, since sometimes I do get distracted with my research, or look too far into a part of the subject that has nothing to do with what I am trying to accomplish with the research.

I think that it would be really interesting to include a primary source in any research project; I have never done that before with previous projects. I think that it would make it more authentic and reliable. I am familiar with secondary sources and have always used those for my research purposes. They are useful, but I don’t think they contain as much of an impact on your audience if your audience does look at what kind of research you did.

I think that including some filed research as a primary source in a research project would not only be fun to collect but would also improve any argument tremendously. I have actually done surveys for classes in high school for my statistics class, and I thought it was fun polling students and finding out their opinions. Interviewing would also be really helpful to a project, especially if the person interviewed is an expert on the subject. This could establish a lot of trust for your audience and give the writer good credibility.

I think that with the research that I do from now on, I am going to try and do a working bibliography. I have never done this before in the past, and I have noticed that it is very frustrated to, at the end of the project, have to go back and find all of the sources I used and log all of the information down.

Before reading this section on researching the web, I did not know that there was such thing as subject directories. I think that this could be very helpful, especially when you know what your topic is and you just want to find general or even specific information on the subject.

I believe that it is very important to know who wrote what on the internet too. As this section in the book was saying, anyone can write anything they want on the internet, so it does not mean at all that the information could be true. It could be anyone pretending to be a doctor or an expert or anything and they could give you any information that they want to about whatever subject. To make sure that I do not include any information that could be inaccurate in any research project, I always try to find two reliable sources that confirm what I am using in my writing. One random website with whatever information does not mean that it is a fact. It’s also helpful to look at what the ending of the web address is, as stated in the Quick Access book. The website ending can be a clue as to if the information should be trusted or not. It also helps if the author’s name is listed and to find out if they are reliable and if the publication source is reliable. I am definitely going to look for these things when doing research online now.

Plagiarism is something that I am scared of accidentally committing while doing research papers, so I hope that I never do it. I kind of knew about the different forms of plagiarism before, but I did not know that phrases could even get you in trouble for plagiarism.

When I did research projects in high school, we had to use footnotes and endnotes in our papers, and I think that these helped with knowing not to plagiarize. It made you consciously think about what information you were using and what part of the paper was not yours.

I’ve always felt weird about summarizing or paraphrasing material that I include in my paper. I never know how much I need to change the words so that I do not have to include quotations, but I know that I will have to include a citation. I guess that any ideas that I do not come up with myself need to be cited and that is important so I don’t plagiarize.

With quotations, I sometimes have trouble with intergrading them into my work smoothing. It’s hard to not make it awkward in your writing when adding quotations. I think it’s difficult to also add who said it and put your citations in while simultaneously working the quotation smoothly into your essay. I am familiar though with editing quotations with brackets and ellipsis, and I have used this a few times in my writing of essays and in research papers.

I found the section on using certain verbs to help add your sources into your essay to have some potential. I think that I do have a lot of trouble with trying to find what words to use when saying that someone else said “this.” I never know what word to use other than, for example, “so and so stated this,” and that gets very boring. So hopefully, I will use these words, such as “refutes,” “confirms,” “asserts,” and “proves” more often, as they will help me with this part of my writing.