So you've started your research, and sitting in front of
you is something you've just finished reading.
Where do I start?
After you've read it several times, marking
and annotating along the way, put it aside. Now, without looking
at it again, try to summarize it briefly, putting the most important
points into your own words. If you cannot do this, go back and
read it again, and again, and again, until you are able to write
that summary. Until you've written a good summary, you cannot
be confident that you understood everything you read.
Now that I've summarized it,
what do I do next?
It's tempting to simply summarize your findings,
but a research paper is not the same as a report. A research
paper is not about what you learned; rather, it discusses what
you think about what you learned. This is a considerably different
type of task. Research is the beginning of a research paper,
not the end. Quite honestly, about 90% of a research paper should
come from your own thinking, not from your sources.
But if I'm not an expert on
the subject, how can I possibly write anything?
That's one of the reasons you're doing research--to
develop a certain level of expertise, which means you will always
be reading far more than you will ever need to incorporate in
your paper. However, you don't need to know everything there
is to know about the subject because a research paper is more
about critical thinking than it is about locating and incorporating
sources. The important part is not knowing everything, but thinking
about what you do know.
How do I do that? What should
I write about?
Try writing in response to the following questions.
I guarantee that if you attempt to write about even half of
these questions for every source that you read, you will be
well on your way toward writing a good paper. These prompts
are designed to help you think critically about what you have
read.
Questions for Critical
Reading and Writing
