BTH740 Research Essay 20113

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How To Write a Research Essay

Five Stages of Research

• Survey and Critique
• Thesis Statement
• Research
• Writing
• Presentation

Survey and Critique

This is the abductive stage of forming a hypothesis.

There is no single logical procedure to implement here. We identify points of interest and guess at what might be the case for the observations that we are making.

Try

• Open-ended searches by the team members
• Selections of interest to the team members
• Identifying emotional reactions
• Discussion amongst team members to identify conditions that might be sufficient and economical in explaining an observation or a set of similar observations

Thesis Statement

Requirements For the Final Essay

set by the instructor - what you need to know before starting to prepare the thesis statement

• number of sources
  • primary >= 2
  • secondary >= 4
  • tertiary - summarize
• length 1600-2400 words
• late penalties 20%
• timeline:
  • thesis statement - due November 1
  • preliminary research - due November 8
  • recording details - due November 15
  • writing - due November 29
  • publication - due December 6

Narrowing the Focus

select the topic

• sources
  • encyclopedias
  • textbooks
  • dictionaries
  • videos
• process
  • jot down ideas
  • discuss ideas
  • circle one that are of interest
  • select one from a short-list
  • select another as the alternative

Searching for Sources

create working bibliography

• questions to answer
  • are there sufficient sources
  • is each one relevant to the focus
  • are the sources diverse
  • are the sources quality sources
  • are there twice as many sources as required
• process
  • read
    • abstracts
    • conclusions
    • reviews
  • balance
    • books
    • articles
    • electronic
    • audio-visual
    • old
    • new
  • list publication details accurately

Defining the Purpose

• single sentence plus keywords
• discuss the thesis
  • discuss with two peers
  • refine the focus
  • define the scope
• pose the research question
  • sufficient sources
  • narrow enough topic
  • avoid
    • bibliographical
    • narrative
    • descriptive
    • unfounded assumptions
  • how successful not why successful
• formulate one precise sentence
• task is to answer the question <- sole purpose
• make short list of sub-tasks
• identify keywords

Submission

• thesis statement
• keywords
• bibliography

Resources

• General
  • Seneca College Library Research Help
• Writing Labs
  • U of O - Hypergrammar
  • Owl at Purdue University
• Stylesheets
  • MLA Style
  • Nuts and Bolts MLA Style
  • Nuts and Bolts Science Style
  • Science Editors
• Classification
  • ACM Classification System