CCLC1202 English Academic Writing II

Take-Home Lecture (Lecture 2): Advanced Research Skills

A. Setting Topic and Generating Research Questions

1. Find and narrow a suitable topic

Getting started on a research essay begins with investigating a
broad ______________of interest and then moving to a more
particular aspect of it called a ___________________. Your
ongoing goal in finding such a topic, as well as throughout your
research, is to
__________________________________________________________________.

For example, if you were interested in reaching the subject of ‘space exploration’, a
possible topic for research might be ‘the benefits of long-range space probes’ like
Explorer I or Galileo. Another topic for a paper on the subject of ‘space
exploration’ would be ‘the physiological effect on humans of spending prolonged
periods of time in outer space’.

2. Frame a research question

Once you have selected a suitable topic for research, you
can begin to frame one or more potential research questions
about it. The questions will help you focus your research
and, as you begin to answer them, serve as the basis for the
final form of your paper’s main argument.

For example, ‘How beneficial are long-range space probes?’ might be one question
to answer on the topic of long-range space exploration. Or, ‘Should we continue
sending long-range probes into space?’ could be another question which, however,
would shift the focus of your research to a different aspect of the same topic. The
following diagram shows how we narrow the focus of our research from a broad
subject to a narrower topic and finally arriving at a research question:

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 General subject Space exploration

Research Topic The benefits of long range space probes

‘Should we continue sending long-range

Research Question probes into space?’

3. Identify research gaps

Most research essays attempt to fulfil the research gaps found in the literature.
Research gap is a _________________________ or ________________________
which has not been answered appropriately or at all in a given field of study. By
adding a new dimension or perspective to a body of ideas already expressed by
others (such ideas are going to be compiled and presented as the ‘literature review’
in your research), it shows you have a deep understanding of the status of the body
of knowledge in your chosen field and have conducted a research which fulfills that
gap in the literature. For this reason, process (‘how to’) essays or those that merely
summarize already known information (e.g. ‘the dangers of cocaine addiction’) are
not good choices. Topics that focus on a philosophical approach to a subject or are
based on personal beliefs (e.g. ‘the immorality of popular music’) also should be
avoided because they are so rooted in opinion that they don’t lend themselves to
research and the presentation of objective evidence. Look instead for a topic that
allows you to explore areas that still need discussion, such as an unsettled and
continuing problem or a little-known situation.

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 Activity 1: Research subject

Rank each of the following from 1 to 6 (most to least) according to its potential
suitability as the subject of a research essay. Briefly state your reasons for ranking
each as you have.

Research subject Most Least Reason(s)

The dangers of 1 2 3 4 5 6
alcoholism
Children and the 1 2 3 4 5 6
Internet
The value of a family 1 2 3 4 5 6

The death of Princess 1 2 3 4 5 6

Diana
The development of 1 2 3 4 5 6
nuclear power
The unethical human 1 2 3 4 5 6
cloning

Activity 2: Research question

State two potential research questions about each of the following topics:

Topic 1: Television and race

Your research question:
___________________________________________________

___________________________________________________

Topic 2: Sports fan violence

Your research question:
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________

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___________________________________________________________________
___________________________

Topic 3: Nudity in advertising

Your research question:

___________________________________________________________________
_____________________
___________________________________________________________________
_____________________

B. How to Conduct a Literature Search

1. Locate primary and secondary sources

In order to present an informed and balanced discussion of the research topic, your
research essay should reflect a comprehensive understanding of issues and points of
view. For this reason, you will need to use both primary and secondary sources to
give your paper’s discussion of the research topic depth and originality:

 A primary source is the actual material that you write about in a research
essay. Primary sources include works of literature, letters, journals,
government documents, surveys, reports of experiments or research,
laboratory specimens, interviews, and oral histories. Using primary sources
allows you to make your own assessment of the raw material from which
your paper will develop. Through this contact, your own analysis or reaction
to such sources can become an integral part of your research essay.

 A secondary source is written about a topic. Secondary sources include

books, magazines, newspaper articles, encyclopedia entries, pamphlets, and
other works that examine, analyze, or report information. A journal article
about teenage driving habits or a film documentary showing the effects of
illegal hunting on certain wildlife populations are examples of secondary
sources.
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You should consult as many available primary and secondary sources as are
relevant to your subject, while you should avoid basing too much of your research
on any one source or type of source.

2. Gather information on the research topic

Once you have identified a promising, potential topic to research, you will be ready
to start gathering information about it. Most of your research data will probably
come from reference books, general books, and periodicals available in your
university or community library. Systematically investigate each of these three
major sources to establish a preliminary bibliography for your research essay.

 Consult bibliographies
One of the most useful aids to research is a bibliography which is a work
listing books and/or articles by an author or about a particular subject. You
can use bibliographies to find a particular topic as well as to see what sources
may be available on it. The most comprehensive bibliography is the
Bibliographical Index: A Cumulative Bibliography of Bibliographies, which
is international in scope and lists other published bibliographies by subject,
including those in books and periodicals.

 Prepare a working bibliography

A working bibliography is a list of the books, articles, and other sources that
might be useful in writing your research essay. You should establish such a
bibliography early in the research process as a means of gauging your topic’s
suitability for research – that is, to see if there are enough primary and
secondary materials available for you to work with on this topic. Later, you
can transform the preliminary bibliography into the one you actually use in
writing your research essay.

3. Evaluating Internet resources:

whom can you trust?
Many people naively believe that if
something appears in print, it must be
true. In fact, it might not be. As a
critical reader, you should always
consider the source of information as a
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primary factor in determining its value. Ask yourself these two questions:
 What agenda does this person or group have?
 How reliable are they in terms of providing complete and accurate
information?

Information found at many websites is intended to represent a particular point of

view or to promote a cause. Although such sites may support worthwhile causes,
they are frequently highly selective about the information they provide or otherwise
biased in the ways they present material.

For example, a Web page titled ‘McCruelty to Go’ depicts a well-known character
from McDonald’s Corporation’s commercials behind bars. Although the page’s
content describes a recent agreement between McDonald’s and the site’s sponsor,
the page’s URL (“meatstinks.com”), its title, and the depiction of the McDonald’s
character behind bars are clearly intended to prejudice the reader.

You should therefore be alert to such online

sources which demonstrate a one-sided, biased approach to an issue. Here is a
reliability checklist for Web sources:

CONTENT
 Currency: Does the material appear to be current, and is there any indication
of how often it’s updated?
 Fairness: Does the material demonstrate not only the author’s knowledge but
also other viewpoints, and research that may be relevant? Is the author’s tone
reasonable and temperate?
 Evidence: Does the content provide statistics, examples, or anecdotal
evidence to support the author’s position? Are the examples and other
evidence presented fairly? Is there a clear separation of fact and opinion?
 Research: Is there evidence of credible research, such as a description of
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 methodology or a bibliography? Are links to other sites with established
credibility listed?

AUTHORITY
 Identity: Does the author of the material or the person responsible for posting
it include an email address, URL, or other means of being contacted for
comments and questions?
 Qualifications: Does the author include or express a willingness to provide
information about his or her qualifications?
 Other Postings: Has the author posted other kinds of entries on the Web? If
so, what kinds? How do they compare with the current document?
 Credibility: Would the author of this document be considered credible in the
non-Web world? If so, why and with whom? If not, why?

Activity 3: Searching in an online database

Circle the correct answer(s) to the following frequently asked questions in

conducting online searching.

1. In terms of usable sources, what is the difference between books, magazines,

journal articles, newspaper articles, etc.?

a. If I am searching for a current event, I will start with magazines or

newspapers.
b. If I am searching about a topic in more depth, I will start with journal
articles.
c. If I am having trouble finding one type of source, I will ask my lecturer or
a librarian for ideas on where to start.

2. What if my search returns thousands of hits? I can’t possibly look through all
of them.

a. I will only read the first three hits, as they must be the most relevant to my
subject/topic.
b. I will narrow my search using the Advanced Search option.
c. I will try searching for my topic in conjunction with another search term to
narrow the focus. For example, “cloning” will return a large amount of hits
that may not be relevant to my search. “Cloning” and “religion” will

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 narrow my search.

3. What if my search returns no hits? I know there’s got to be something out there
on my topic.

a. I will use another keyword immediately in order not to waste more time,
and if it still doesn’t work, change another again.
b. I will simply change the form of the keyword first. For example,
“conscious” might return different results than “consciousness.”
c. I will give up searching the library database and turn to Google.

4. What do I do once I’ve found a source I definitely want to use? I’m not ready
to start writing.

a. I will immediately read through the entire source, as it must be useful for
my project anyway.
b. I will copy and paste the whole source first, and not to read it until I have
started writing.
c. I will only take note of the title and author on a Word document file. Then,
I will copy and paste the citation for each article into the document, and
now I have a record of the research I’ve done!

Activity 4: Research activity

Go to a search engine of your choice to find sources on any two of the topics below.
Select two of the most credible sources available, and provide justifications for
your choices in the box below.

a. Family violence
b. Dreams
c. Dyslexia
d. The right to privacy

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C. Structure of an Academic Journal

Most journal articles are subdivided into the following key sections: Abstract,
Introduction, Methods, Literature Review, Results and Discussion, and Literature
Cited. These sections may usually appear in journal article in the following order:

Section of Article Description

Abstract The ‘abstract’ is a short summary of an article with a
maximum length of 200-250 words. Most readers first scan the
abstract in order to decide whether reading the rest of the
article would be worthwhile. In a nutshell, an abstract shows
you what the writer did, why he/she did it, and what you will
find out.

Introduction The ‘introduction’, with a length of 500-1000 words, generally

consists of six elements:
Element 1: The broad theme or topic of the study
Element 2: The academic and practical importance of the
theme/topic
Element 3: Summary of the available literature and the most
important
previous studies that are relevant to the current
research
Element 4: Explanation of the most important gaps,
inconsistencies
and/or controversies in the literature that the current
study
will address.
Element 5: Indication of the core research question to be
addressed in
the study as well as the specific research objectives.
Element 6: Outline of the structure of the rest of the article

Literature The ‘literature review’, with a length of 1000-1500 words,

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Review represents the theoretical core of an article. A literature review
will normally:
 compare and contrast different authors' views on an issue
 group authors who draw similar conclusions
 criticise aspects of methodology
 note areas in which authors are in disagreement
 highlight exemplary studies
 highlight gaps in research
 show how the current study relates to previous studies
 show how the current study relates to the literature in
general
 conclude by summarising what the literature says

Methods The ‘methodology’ or ‘methods’ section, with a length of 500-

1000 words, describes the steps followed in the execution of
the study and also provides a brief justification for the research
methods used. It contains enough detail to enable the reader to
evaluate the appropriateness of the writer’s methods and the
reliability and validity of the writer’s findings.

Results and While the ‘results’ section summarises the data collected for a
Discussion study and also reports the results of relevant inferential
analyses conducted on the data, the ‘discussion’ that follows is
the most important section in an article. The ‘discussion’
normally…
 restates the study’s main purpose
 reaffirms the importance of the study by restating its main
contributions
 summarizes the results in relation to each stated research
objective or hypothesis without introducing new material
 relates the findings back to the literature and to the results
reported by other researchers
 provides possible explanations for unexpected or non-
significant findings
 highlights the main limitations of the study that could
influence its internal and external validity
 discusses insightful directions or opportunities for future
research on the topic

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Literature Cited The ‘literature cited’ section gives an alphabetical listing (by
first author's last name) of the references that the writer
actually cited in the body of his/her paper.

Appendices The ‘appendix’ section contains information that is non-

essential to understanding of the paper, but may present
information that further clarifies a point without burdening the
body of the presentation. An appendix is an optional part of the
paper, and is only rarely found in published papers.

Activity 5: Structure of a journal article

Based on any one of the scholarly journals assigned to your Division, identify the
following elements in the article and underline the sentences concerned. These
elements may help you generate the research question for the ‘literature review’
assignment and/or the term essay.

1. Core research question to be addressed in the study

2. Research gaps
3. Limitations of the study

____________________________________________________

____________________________________________________

____________________________________________________

____________________________________________________

____________________________________________________

____________________________________________________

____________________________________________________

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____________________________________________________

____________________________________________________

____________________________________________________

References

Dornan E. A., & Dees, R. (2011). Four in one: rhetoric, reader, research guide,
and handbook. Boston, MA: Longman.

Kotze, T. (2007). Guidelines on writing a first quantitative academic article [PDF].

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