how to research a topic
How to Research a Topic
Ⅰ. The importance of research
“If you have no hand you can't make a fist.”(巧妇难为无米之炊)
How great writers did their researches?
When Karl Heinrich Marx(马克思) wrote Das Kapital 《资本论》，the number of books he had carefully studied was 1,500.
When Lev Tolstoy (列夫托尔斯泰) wrote Peace and War, he referred to 700 books.Ⅱ.The method of research
1. Library
Go to the ground floor
Input the key words (author, title, etc) on the computer
Get the call number and find the books in the library
Turn to the librarian for help if needed
2.Internet
Introduction
Access to government documents, material from large organizations and
academic institutions, and articles on digital or web-based issues, but be careful about questions of authority and validity.
Search narrowing and refining
Subject Area Search (科目搜索)
Key Words Search（关键词搜索）
Boolean Search（逻辑搜索）like AND, OR, NOT
The Recommended Websites
https://www.wendangku.net/doc/bd767780.html,/ Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search
engine that indexes the full text of scholarly literature across an array of
publishing formats and disciplines.
https://www.wendangku.net/doc/bd767780.html, Scirus is a comprehensive science-specific search engine.
https://www.wendangku.net/doc/bd767780.html,/ It is a multi-disciplinary search engine to scholarly internet resources, created by Bielefeld University Library.
http://www.vascoda.de/ Vascoda is a German web portal which offers access to
information and full texts on various subjects in various disciplines.
https://www.wendangku.net/doc/bd767780.html,/libraries/harvard-yenching/ Harvard Yenching Library
http://218.195.27.230/ XISU Library Online (only for XISU Campus Network
users）
Tip
During this process, you can open a Word which important information
(author, title, main idea, etc) can be copied on it.
3.Field research
ways steps 1 2 3 Observing Plan the visit Observe Take notes Interviewing Plan the interview Prepare questions Right up the notes
Using questionnaires Design a
questionnaire Do the field research Analyze the
questionnaires
Ⅲ.The way of note-taking
Note-taking is the practice of recording information captured from a transient source.
1.Summarize
A summery is a brief restatement of the main points of a passage, an article, or a
book in your own words.
Read at least 4 times, and make sure that you get the main idea of the materials Write a thesis statement first. Other sentences follow it.
Reread your summary and make certain that you have accurately represented the author’s ide as and key points.
Once you are certain that your summary is accurate, you should revise it for style, grammar, and punctuation.
2.Paraphrase
Read your source material carefully. Go back over it once you're done to make sure that you've understood it completely.
Write down, in your own words, an explanation of what you've just read.
Compare what you've written to the source. Ask yourself if your paraphrased content conveys all the information in the original body of work.
Correct your wording, both to ensure that it reflects the meaning of the original and also to make sure it is not too similar to the original work.
Note the page number and bibliographic detail of the source if you're writing an academic paper. Even paraphrases have to be correctly attributed.
3.Quote
This is a direct quoting of the exact wording of the author’s.
References
Anthony C. Winkler, Jo Ray McCuen, Writing the Research Paper (1st ed.), Harcourt Brace Villanovan, Inc.,1977.
Zhou Kaixin, A Handbook of Academic Research Paper Writing for English Majors, Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 2006
刘锡庆，《毕业论文指南》，中国广播电视出版社, 1987
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