Conversation Practice/ Research Skills

1. Conversation Practice/Research Skills British Education

2. Plan for today (Thursday 21 July) • 9-10.30 • Conversation Practice (Families) • 11-12 • LECTURE in Queen Anne 180 • 12-12.50 • Portfolio Task, Research Project and Group Presentations (in Queen Anne 180) • (If time) discussions about money

3. Lecture – Research Skills • Research at Greenwich • Library Catalogue • E-Journals • Research outside Greenwich • British Library • Google Scholar • M25 Library Catalogue • SCONUL access • Senate House Library • Creativity exercises • Referencing/Plagiarism

4. Research at Greenwich • Library Home Page • http://www.gre.ac.uk/offices/ILS

5. Library Catalogue (NB you won’t have borrowing rights yet) • http://prism.talis.com/greenwich-ac/

6. Electronic Resources at Greenwich • For e-books: • Consult Nadine Edwards (e-librarian) • For e-journals: • Enter your ID on the Portal • Select the Library & IT tab • Then the databases, journals and e-books link in the eLibrary channel. 

7. Research at Greenwich (cont.) • For Subject Guides– offering quick access to most relevant material for your subject (Business, Finance etc.) • ROUTE ONE (requires Portal ID) • Enter your ID on the Portal • Select the Library & IT tab • Then the subject guides channel. • ROUTE TWO (doesn’t require Portal ID) • Go to http://www.gre.ac.uk/offices/ILS/ls/guides • Go to ‘Library Subject Guides’ • You can then access e-journals (although some links are currently non-functional). For example you can go to ‘The Journal of Electronic Commerce Research’ http://www.csulb.edu/journals/jecr/ • For Progression in Information Skills (offers many handy links on one page) • Go to www.gre.ac.uk/ils/progression • You will see the link to the course in the Information Skills channel on the My Learning tab

10. Research outside Greenwich • British Library • Google Scholar • M25 Library Catalogue • SCONUL access • Senate House Library

11. The British Library (www.bl.uk) • Good for: • Getting bibliographies together (they hold – with very few exceptions – everything!) • Not so good for: • Quick work • Borrowable material • Photocopying

12. Google Scholar • Good for: • General look-ups • Seeing whether a book could be useful, via the preview function (not for every book, however) • Getting the ISBN of a useful book

13. M25 catalogue and databases • Use quotation marks (“ ”) to find precise titles • ISBN number (from Google Scholar or British Library)

14. SCONUL Access • Enables access to over 170 higher education libraries in the UK and Ireland • www.access.sconul.ac.uk • Complete an application form, available in the library • You will then receive a SCONUL ID card

15. General Research tips • Read Most recent materials first • Try to find surveys of the years’ work (searchable under key words – e.g. ‘Year’s work in Law Studies’) • Amazon Marketplace (cheaper/more convenient than borrowing/photocopying?)

16. Preparing to writeGet your space sorted out! • Clean desk • Get things organised • Music/silence (?) – ‘the Mozart effect’ • Morning or evening? • Home or library (?) • Try to feel as ‘ready to write’ as you can. • (Have you eaten?) • (Have you had your coffee?) • (Wear comfortable clothes) • Sometimes essays ‘want’ to be written. • Sometimes essays ‘want’ to be written at funny times – ask your significant other to be understanding!

17. Brainstorming exercises for creativity • 1) Big pieces of paper – spread out over the desk, the floor... • 2) Use colour to isolate different aspects of your topic (e.g. methodology, data, findings, conclusion...) • 3) Use numbered (coloured?) paragraph ‘boxes’: in each, put different points/papers/bits of photocopies, pictures, ideas, diagrams... • By doing this, you’re already engaging with the difficult processes of selection that are so important to good, fluent academic writing • What would be the best order to put these different themes/paragraphs? • Think about where your different themes might overlap and connect: this will help with the ‘transition’ sentences that end one paragraph and begin another. • Think about how you would order information within each paragraph? Which points might come first? Which tend to follow on from the next? • Don’t be scared to ‘rip it up and try again’ – you will have learnt from the last time.

18. ‘The first draft’, or: ‘the writer vs. the blank page’ • One minute of writing (‘I’m stuck’) • ‘It’s only a first draft – NO ONE WILL SEE IT BUT ME’ • Get through it from beginning to end: don’t worry about selecting the perfect word in the perfect place; you will feel better once you’ve got the first draft out of your system: because then you can muck about with it. • If your first draft is too short (relatively rare, but it can happen) • Try to ‘open up’ each aspect of each paragraph. What have you missed out? • Try and make sure you’ve written of every aspect of the topic on your diagram • If your first draft is too long (which is much more common) • Try and think of moments where you’ve repeated yourself • Think back to your diagram – where were the colour-coded connections? Can you think of moments where you can kill two birds with one stone? • Could you arrange your material in a different order? Sometimes you can let the flow and order of your piece imply things (especially about the different importance of different points, or different causal relationships); this means you don’t need to use up your word-count saying them ‘out loud’

19. Referencing • TWO main types of referencing • In-text referencing (when you signal a source WITHIN your piece of writing) • Bibliographical referencing (when you signal a source AT THE END of your piece of writing)

20. In-text Referencing • The ‘spirit’ of the law • References are there to enable academic readers to locate quoted material • For verification purposes • To develop their own arguments • References should follow either ‘direct’ quotes (i.e. Material taken directly from a secondary source) or ‘indirect’ quotes (paraphrases etc.) • The ‘letter’ of the law • The reference should make clear at least the following information: • The source (article, book, film, website) • The page number from which the direct or indirect information might be located

21. Examples of in-text referencing (various formats/disciplines) • Footnote (Oxford style) • Give full bibliographical entry at the first footnote • Give short footnote thereafter • e.g. : • 1 Alan Jones, The Light at the End of the Tunnel: Tentative Hope at the End of the Second World War (London: Palgrave Macmillan 2007), p. 305 • 2Jones, Light at the End of the Tunnel, p. 275 • ‘Harvard’ (or ‘Author-date’) style • Information in brackets in the main text • Author(s) • Date of publication • (If necessary) ‘a’ ‘b’ ‘c’ (etc.) to differentiate between sources published by the same person(s) in the same year • Colon • Page number • E.g. (Jones 2007b:305)

22. Examples of scholarly bibliographical entries (various formats) • Standard format for undergraduate essay: • [Book]Alan Jones, The Light at the End of the Tunnel: Tentative Hope at the End of the Second World War (London: Palgrave Macmillan 2007) • [Article]Alan Jones, ‘The Light at the End of the Tunnel’ in Twentieth Century War Studies, Vol. 25, No. 3 (Summer 2007), pp. 305-27 • [Internet reference] • Author’s name • Title of item • Title of complete work/resource • Publication details (volume, issue, date) • Full address (Universal Resource Locator (URL)) or DOI of the resource (in angle brackets) http://prism.talis.com/greenwich-ac/ • Date at which the resource was consulted (in square brackets) • Location of passage cited (in parentheses) e.g. (para 1 of 15)

23. Bibliography • The ‘spirit’ of the law • Give bibliographical information at the end of the text toaid your reader locate relevant texts • So as to check/confirm information more easily • So as to undertake subsequent research • The ‘letter’ of the law • Every source quoted must be in the bibliography • Bibliographies often give additional sources • It is normal to give these entries alphabetically(for ease of reference) • References should include (at least): • Author’s surname (with either initials or first names) • Text’s full title (i.e. Including any subtitle) • Book title • Article title and Journal title • Date of publication (first publication in square brackets) • Place of publication • Publisher

24. DO NOT PLAGIARISE • We will look up parts of your text • We will consider and penalise as plagiarism anything that is not referenced. • Give full references therefore for: • Everything you cite • Everything you use