We’ve all been taught how to research information and find sources since we were in middle school. Most of the time all it takes is a couple searches on Google, and you have all the necessary information to finish your paper. However, since I’ve entered college, I’ve had to put a lot of extra effort into finding sources, articles and information that will meet my teacher’s standards. For my English 101 class, I no longer use Google, but instead I use the WSU Library website, which includes Griffin and WorldCat. I must admit that it is much more difficult to find relevant articles on these sites than Google, but the information you do end up finding is definitely more scholarly and reliable.
Once I am delivered a list of articles that contain the keywords I am looking for, I start scanning through the various summaries, looking for ones that will contain the most unbiased info. When looking through articles, before I decide which ones I want to use, I also make sure I can find the author or organization and figure out where the information is coming from. If the author is someone who I believe would be reliable and educated on the topic at hand (for example, a doctor talking about health problems or a scientist talking about experiments), then print or order the article.
The hardest part in using sources comes when it’s time to successfully put them into an appropriate place of your paper. When I am making a really strong argument, or trying to argue why my opinion is better, is usually where I place a direct quote. I do this because it gives my commentary a little more of a backbone, because it is real, factual evidence. I can’t just argue something for a long time, and then move onto a new point without putting concrete details and quotes along with it, to make it strong and believable.
I think that the way I accumulate sources is efficient and definitely works for me when it comes to writing my papers for English 101. It isn’t very time consuming and the articles I end up finding usually fit right into my paper, and are really big helps. However I do think that there are a couple small things I could use to help me make my method for finding articles a little bit easier and faster. If I knew of other places on the web to look for scholarly, peer reviewed articles besides the library website, I could find more of them, or just a bigger selection. It would also be really helpful to know how to refine my searches a little better when it comes to keywords so I can cut down the time it takes me to find ones I can actually use.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment