Researching Tips!
By: Kaelyn Minor
How Do I Find Information? What Resources Can I Use? What about Keywords?
- When you are researching you have to find keywords, Ex: when you are looking for the answer to the question "What do black bears eat?" you should not type in that exact question into the search bar. You should use the keywords in your question like "Black bears", and then to narrow your search even more you can use "Black Bears, Eat". Another tip you can use when you search is 'CTRL F'. Pressing CTRL F when you are on a research page inserts a search bar at the top right hand corner, this allows you to type in any specific keyword you are looking for and if it is in the passage it will highlight where the word is your looking for.
- Some resources you can use to narrow your search is the Database method. If you thought to yourself just then, "How do I get to the Mid Continent Public Library Database?" (which is a very powerful database) then I have the answer! You first need to go to the 'Lakeview Middle School' homepage. Next go to the 'about our school' tab, following that go to the Media center tab. Another list of tabs should pop up and you should go to the 'research' tab. After that go to the 'General/Primary sources tab, then finally the Mid-Continent tab.
How do I know if A website is Credible?
- Using a credible and accurate website affects your research all together and it can harm it. Well how do you know if your website is credible? Some hints to know if your website is credible or not is the url. The most reliable url is not '.com' which is probably what you thought. However the most credible url is usually .edu/.org/.net/.gov, that is not to say that '.com' is not a credible website but anyone can post on .com websites the other urls in the lists have to be all correct because they are educational or run by the government usually. Another way you can tell if a website is credible is if there is ads. If the website you are on has a lot of ads and 'pop up' commercials then it usually is not a credible site. You can also tell by just the facts on the page. If the site has pictures and facts that are fictional then it is definitely not credible. "How do I know if the facts and pictures are true and real or not", you can know by looking at other sites and seeing if any other sites have the same information.
What is Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Summarizing? And What Is the Difference between them?
- Quoting is when you take the authors exact words but you put it in quotes and cite him/her for it. Ex: To be or not to be-"To be or not to be", William Shakespeare once said.
- Paraphrasing is when you take what the author said or what was in the sentence you read and put it into your own words or changed most of the words but you changed them to something that meant the same thing (this is usually used in researching if you find a certain fact that you want to use but using the same quote would be plagiarism so you paraphrase instead.)
- Summarizing is very similar to paraphrasing but you have to know the difference- Summarizing is when you take something from an article, book, etc. and it might have been a long passage and you want to have all of the info from the passage in your research but it is too long. You can summarize it which is just like basically only putting in the important things and shortening it.
What is plagiarism? How can I avoid it?
- Plagiarism is when you take credit for someone else's work and saying that it is yours. This is a very bad act and you may think it isn't that big of a deal but you can actually get arrested and go to jail for it.
- You can avoid this by doing your own work and always paraphrasing, summarizing, or quoting when you find facts of information you want to use.
What is MLA?
MLA is commonly used when researching, when you research or are writing a research paper you have to cite where you got the information from so you have to write a 'work cited page' separate/at the end of your paper or presentation.
In Text Citations?
In text citations are used when you are in the middle of your paper/sentence and you use something that you got from another website or someone said and you put it in your paper. When you use in text citations you are to guve credit from the author. THis means you should be placing the information from the source after a quote, paraphrase, etc. in parenthesis.