Learning to Love the Research Paper Or … at least write a great one!

1. Learning to Lovethe Research PaperOr… at least write a great one! APA Made Easy

2. Focus: 1. Getting Started 2. The Importance of a First Draft 3. Doing Research 4. Bringing Research Into Your Paper • Quoting, Paraphrasing, Summarizing • Avoiding Plagiarism 5. APA-Style Documentation

3. Getting Started • Finding a Topic—For the final paper, this topic is a position on a current social or political issue. You will be using the mode of “Argumentation” • Developing an Effective Research Question

4. Finding a Topic • Write about what you know. • Whenever possible, seek out a research topic that interests you and that you care about • Have a core understanding of a topic before undertaking a formal research project • Aim to build-on knowledge that you already have • If the topic is assigned, try to develop an angle that will interest you; then, run the idea by your instructor

5. Why should you write about what you know? • Starting with your own views and opinions will motivate you • Writing about a topic familiar to you will help you to ask the right questions • If you care about the topic, you will care about your paper • Composition Assignments aren’t “busy work” or something to just “get through.” They prepare you for the sort of research and writing that you’ll do in your field of study and occupation. • Keep the BIG PICTURE in mind!

6. Developing an Effective Research Question • The best prewriting for research papers begins with a question because… • Questions help you to find direction. Answering your question actually creates your Thesis statement. • Questions help you to narrow your scope. • Be careful of questions that are too broad. • Make sure that your question is relevant to the length of your paper. • Most students use research questions that are not focused enough. That’s why so many have difficulty getting started.

7. Too Broad: ---- What is Attention Deficit Disorder? More Focused: ---- Is a gluten-free diet an effective treatment for Attention Deficit Disorder in adults?

8. The Importance of a First Draft • Techniques to Help You Start Writing (The Writing Process, Step One) • Brainstorming • Free-writing • Clustering • Using Drafts

9. Brainstorming • Before you begin doing any research, take some time to brainstorm. • When you brainstorm, list everything that comes to mind about your topic, all of your thoughts and ideas, in the order in which they occur to you. • Let your mind free associate and make connections. • Write down everything—even those things which appear silly and unimportant at first.

10. A good research paper comes from wanting to know more about something. • A good research paper contains facts and quotes and statistics—yes, but these have been integrated with and filtered through the writer’s own ideas and experiences. • IMPORTANT:A good research paper is not a fact-finding mission; it is a synthesis of what you already know and what you learn in the process of your research. • Most instructors assign topics that ask you to examine a topic more deeply than a fifteen week course can allow. Use class notes, lectures, and textbooks as starting points for your early drafts.

11. Your FIRST DRAFT: • Whatever the technique you use, the goal is to try to get all of your thoughts down on paper: • what you already know about your topic • what you want to know more about • why you’ve chosen the topic • questions you have • how you plan to answer those questions • You will be surprised how helpful this first draft will be when you start to gather your research.

12. Doing Research • There is one piece of advice that is worth gold: • GO TO THE LIBRARY WHEN YOU ARE WRITING A RESEARCH PAPER!

13. Go to your local public library; go to any library. • Librarians are great people who are there to help you. • They can show you how to… • search for books on your topics; • search for journal and magazine articles; • use reference materials; • access electronic data bases, such as EbscoHost and Infotrac, using key word searches • evaluate web sites.

14. The Internet has been called an information highway. TRUE. • It is free. • It is vast. • It is democratic. • It is accessible 24 hours a day. • Anyone can post anything. • You can believe everything you read on the Internet . FALSE.\ For this reason, it is crucial that you integrate more than Internet-based sources into your academic papers. The key is to vary your source types with more weight and value (in your paper) given to sources that were created by academics, published by professional publications, and subject to critical evaluation prior to distribution.

15. Bringing Research Into Your Paper • Points to Remember • What Are Sources? • What Are Citations? • Quoting • Paraphrasing • Summarizing • Avoiding Plagiarism

16. Points to Remember(About Writing a Research Paper) • Writing a research paper is like writing any other academic paper--with the difference that you are bringing into your essay the words, ideas, and theories of others, often experts in that field of study. • The focus, however, is STILL your own writing. The sources are there as additional support. • In the process of writing your research paper, you will learn a new set of vocabulary words and concepts. • What follows is a list of these words/concepts and their definitions. Becoming familiar with them will help you in the research process.

17. What Are Sources? • A source is what you turn to for information about your topic. • A source can include any of the following: • a book • a magazine or newspaper article • a scholarly journal article • a film, television show, or radio program • a web site • a personal interview • Sources generally fall under “print sources, non-print sources, and electronic sources.”

18. Print Sources • A print source can be a periodical or a non-periodical. • A periodical is a publication that is issued periodically (or on an established timeline), such as any of the following: • a newspaper (The Boston Globe); • a magazine (Newsweek); • a journal (Journal of Naturopathic Medicine). • A non-periodical most often refers to a book.

19. Non-Print Sources • A non-print source can include, but is not limited to, any of the following: • a television or radio program • a film • a personal interview • a class lecture • a recording

20. Electronic Sources • An electronic source can refer to a source found on the Internet, such as a personal or professional web site. • There are some electronic sources that originally appeared in print form. These include articles found on databases such as EbscoHost and Infotrac and articles in newspapers and magazines that publish on the web and in print.

21. What is a Citation? • When you bring research (quotations, paraphrases, facts, statistics, etc.) into your paper, you must give credit to the source and its author(s). • Giving credit to a source is also called citing a source. • You do this with in-text or parenthetical citations. They are called parenthetical citations because the bibliographic information goes inside parentheses.

22. What to Cite • Quotations: Someone else’s exact words, enclosed in quotation marks. • The ideas, opinions, and theories of someone else—even if you restate them in your own words in a paraphrase or summary. • Facts and statistics—unless they are common knowledge and are accessible in many sources.

23. Common Knowledge is information that can be found in many sources and that no one can claim owning. It is information that “belongs” to everyone. Often, it is the stuff of encyclopedias. Examples: • 6 million Jews perished in the Holocaust. • The Empire State Building is 1,454 feet tall. • The Civil War ended in 1865. • You may not have known this before you started your research, but it is still common knowledge. Often, you will encounter knowledge that is common in your field of study, even if the general population may not know it.

24. Quoting • When you quote, you borrow an author’s exact words. • Use a quotation when… • the wording is so memorable or expresses a point so well that you cannot improve or shorten it without weakening it; • when the author is a respected authority whose opinion supports your own ideas; • when an author challenges or disagrees profoundly with others in the field.

25. Paraphrasing • Paraphrasing is putting material (including major and minor points) into your own words and sentence structure. • You can paraphrase a theory, an idea, the results of a study, or a passage in an original source, as long as you use your own words to describe it. • A paraphrase is often the same length as the original, but it is in your own words.

26. Example of a Paraphrase • Original Text(from James C. Stalker, “Official English or English Only”) “ We cannot legislate the language of the home, the street, the bar, the club, unless we are willing to set up a cadre of language police who will ticket and arrest us if we speak something other than English” (21). • Paraphrase Stalker points out that in a democracy like the United States, it is not feasible to have laws against the use of a language and it certainly would not be possible to make police enforce such laws in homes and public places (21). Example taken from Pocket Keys for Writers by Ann Raimes

27. Summarizing • Summaries are often less detailed than paraphrases. • In a summary, you provide your reader with the gist of the most important sources you find in your own words. • Summaries give readers basic information and are always in your own words. • When you include a summary in your paper, introduce the author’s name and/or the work.

28. What is Plagiarism? • It is fine to bring the words and ideas of other writers into your paper. • However, when you do so, you must acknowledge your debt to the writers of these sources. • If not, you are guilty of plagiarism, a serious academic offense.

29. The Most Egregious Form • The most blatant and egregious form of plagiarism is putting your name as the author of a paper you did not write. • The Internet has certainly made it easier for students to find papers on any number of topics. There are numerous sites available that will “sell” you an essay on just about any topic. • Professors also know how to use the Internet and are quite adept at searching the same sites that students use. If it’s easy for you to buy it, trust that it’s easy for us to find it.

30. The Subtle Forms • Other types of plagiarism are more subtle and include any of the following: • failure to cite quotations and borrowed ideas; • failure to enclose borrowed language in quotation marks; • failure to put summaries and paraphrases into your own words. • Most students who plagiarize are simply unaware of the proper way to document sources in academic writing.

31. Avoiding Plagiarism • In order to avoid plagiarism, be sure that you not only give credit where credit is due, but that you follow the appropriate formats, often either MLA (Modern Languages Association) or APA (American Psychological Association) styles of documentation. • There are also several good publications available with which students should be familiar. They will be mentioned later in this presentation.

32. APA-Style Documentation • What is APA? • How To Integrate Research Into the Body of Your Paper • How to Create a“References”Page

33. What is APA? • If you are writing a paper for the sciences or social sciences, follow APA-style documentation. • APA stands for the American Psychological Association. This organization publishes the The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, which offers complete guidelines for manuscript style and citation in APA.

34. This presentation condenses the most important elements of APA and illustrates how to document commonly used sources. • If you still have questions after this presentation, consult the APA manual or check out their web site at http://www.apastyle.org/.

35. Points to Remember(About APA-Style Documentation) • All written material (the body of your paper and the list of references) is double-spaced. • APA-style requires parenthetical or in-text citations in the body of your paper when you quote, paraphrase, summarize, or use other borrowed material. • These parenthetical citations correspond to the full bibliographic entries on the reference page at the end of your paper.

36. The reference page is a separate page and carries the heading “References.” This is where you list your sources, alphabetically. • When listing sources, indent every line after the first line five spaces or one-half inch, as shown in the upcoming examples. • Capitalize only the first word of an article title and of the subtitle (if any) and all proper names. • On the references page, do not underline the title of an article or place quotation marks around it.

37. Capitalize significant words in the title of a journal.  • Underline or italicize journal titles and volume numbers. • Capitalize only the first significant word and only proper names within book titles. • Capitalize the first significant word of the subtitle (if any) of a book. • Underline book titles.

38. Integrating Research • With APA, there are generally two pieces of information that need to go inside the parentheses of an in-text citation: • the author’s last name • the year the article, book, research, etc. was published • If giving a direct quote, include also the page number. • The information in the parentheses refers readers to the full bibliographic information on the “References” page.

39. Why give the year of publication in the parenthetical citations for APA? • In the sciences and social sciences, current research is valued highly; therefore, the year that the research was conducted is important to note in the body of your paper. • In the humanities, which follows MLA-style documentation, current research is certainly valued; however, criticism of a piece of literature, for example an essay by T.S. Eliot on Hamlet (written nearly a century ago), can still be of value to a researcher.

40. A basic in-text citation of a direct quotation looks like this: • (Davis, 1978, p. 26) • If there is no page number, give the paragraph number: • (McKnight, 2000, para. 10) • For a paraphrase or summary, follow this (note that there is no page number given): • (Davis, 1978) • If there are two authors when paraphrasing, give both last names: • (Jones & Ellis, 1996)

41. If there are three to five authors, list all authors: • (Levy, Bertrand, Muller, Viking, & Majors, 1997) • Note: For the first reference to a study with more more than two authors, list all authors. For all subsequent references, include only the surname of the first author, followed by “et al.” • (Levy, et al., 1997) • If there is no author, give the first word of the title: • (“Strange Encounter,” 1997)

42. Examples • “If the existence of a signing ape was unsettling for linguists, it was also startling news for animal behaviorists” (Davis, 1978, p. 26). • As Davis (1978) reported, “If the existence of a signing ape was unsettling for linguists, it was also startling news for animal behaviorists” (p. 26). • According to Davis (1978), when they learned of an ape’s ability to use sign language, both linguists and animal behaviorists were taken by surprise.

43. Important to Note • In the first example on the previous page, the author’s name was included in the parentheses because it was not mentioned when introducing the quotation. • In the second example, the author was mentioned when introducing the quotation; therefore, only the page number needed to be given in the parentheses. • The third example was a paraphrase of the original quotation. (No page number was needed in the parentheses.)

44. More Examples • Patterson and Linden (1981) agreed that the gorilla Koko acquired language more slowly than a normal speaking child. • Researchers found a marked improvement in the computer skills of students who took part in the program (Levy, Bertrand, Muller, Viking, & Majors, 1997). • Several studies provide support for the idea that spanking is not an effective method of disciplining preschool aged children (Kames, 1983; Miller, 1977; Smith, 1993; Tower, 1988).

45. Signal Phrases • As with MLA-style documentation, it is helpful to the reader if you introduce a quotation or other piece of research with a signal phrase. • Signal phrases help you to transition from your words and ideas to the words and ideas of others.

46. Often in your research you will encounter the quotes, facts, statistics, etc. of someone other than the author of the piece you read. Give the name of the author(s) of the work when you introduce the information, and give the secondary source in the parenthetical citation: • Seidenberg and McClelland’s study (as cited in Coltheart, Curtis, & Haller, 1993) indicates that… • NOTE: On the “References” page, you will include the bibliographic information of the source you read, not the original source—since you didn’t read the original.

47. Creating a “References” Page • A “References” page contains the full bibliographic information to which you have been referring in the body of your paper. • The “References” page is… • the last page of your paper • double-spaced • alphabetized

48. There are many different ways to cite sources on your “References” page, depending on whether your source is a book, an article, a web page, etc. • You are not expected to memorize each way; you are expected to know how to find the format you need for your particular sources. • Once you find the format, follow it to the letter. Do not add information not in the example. • The following is an example of a “References” page. (On the left is the name of the kind of source; this is only to help you in the presentation and does not appear on your “References” page.)

49. journal article one author Reference Bekerian, D. A. (1993). In search of the typical eyewitness. American Psychologist, 48, 674-576.   Borman, W. C., Hanson, M. A., Oppler, S. H., Pulakos, E. D., & White, L. A. (1993). Role of early supervisory experience in supervisor performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 78, 443-449. Retrieved October 23, 2000, from PsycARTICLES database. Fox, R. W., & Lears, T. J. J. (Eds.). (1993). The power of culture: Critical essays in American history. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.   Greater New Milford (Ct) Area Healthy Community 2000. Task Force on Teen and Adolescent Issues. (n.d.) Who has time for a family meal? You do! Retrieved October 5, 2000, from http//:www.family mealtime.org journal article five authors from a database book with editors online document private organization no date

50. corporate author References National Head Start Association. (1990). Head Start: The nation's pride, a nation's challenge. Report of the Silver Ribbon Panel. Alexandria, VA: Author.   National Institute of Mental Health. (1990). Clinical training in serious mental illness (DHHS Publication No. ADM 90-1679). Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. New drug appears to sharply cut risk of death from heart failure. (1993, July 15). The Washington Post, p. A12.   Odom, S. L., & McEvoy, M. A.  (1990).  Mainstreaming at the preschool level: Potential barriers and tasks for the field.  Topics in Early Childhood Special Education, 10 (2), 48- 61. report from gov’t printing office daily news- paper article, no author journal article two authors