Research?

• Why does this course focus on writing from sources or writing research essays? First, all academic disciplines rely on research to answer questions, support positions, or prove cases. Second, most, if not all, professions rely on, and require employees to perform, research: The act of finding, analyzing, and communicating others’ ideas, combined with your thoughts, in order, as Cicero once said, to teach, delight, or move.

Because…

• Performing research and incorporating it it well into your writing is a difficult task that requires a great deal of practice before you become comfortable with it.

• Research is not performed randomly; rather, research is performed to see what other writers have said about a topic upon which you have chosen to write.

Instructions

• Before continuing, I want you to go to the following site https://www.lib.jmu.edu/gold/secure.aspx and complete all eight modules of Go for the Gold. If you are reading this at the beginning of the fall semester, you must complete Go for the Gold, take the tests at the end of each module, print out your scores, and bring them to me by the end of the second week. If you are reading this at the beginning of the spring semester and haven’t completed Go for the Gold, the same holds as in the fall: Scores to me by the end of the second week. If you are reading this at the beginning of the spring semester and you completed Go for the Gold in the fall, I want to see your scores by the end of the first week.

Assignment Format

• Section One:• Goals:• Understanding of the process for selecting a topic.• Understanding of what types of sources are acceptable.• Understanding the process for performing research

through the JMU libraries’ databases through engaging in a structured research process.

• Understanding the audience for the research essay.

Background from Syllabus

• Research-Essay Topic: In this class, GWRTC 103, you will choose your topics for your three research essays from the people, places, objects, and ideas mentioned by Alberto Manguel in The Library at Night, and presented by your peers during their Student-Led Discussions. Look for people, places, etc. that intrigue/interest you; that you want to know more about, which is the reason for performing research. For example, Manguel mentions a person named Ibn Khaldun on page 29 of The Library at Night.

Which Sources?

• Acceptable Source Types: All sources used in your essays must be found through the JMU libraries’ databases. The reason I restrict you to the libraries is because the sources you find there are generally peer reviewed (read by experts in their fields before publication) or if not peer-reviewed, come from reputable publications: Newsweek, Time, National Geographic, The Wall Street Journal, etc.

Research Process• You will have noted that I may have contradicted myself by using

Wikipedia to find out a few things about Khaldun while at the same time, in the syllabus, forbidding you from using Wikipedia as a source in your essays. I have no problem with you performing a quick Wikipedia search in order to discover some initial information about a possible topic, especially when, as with Khaldun for me, you know nothing at all about a person, place, etc. mentioned by Manguel or your peers. However, not only can Wikipedia be inaccurate, but what it supplies you is a summary (sometimes a summary of other summaries) of the available information on a person, etc.; therefore, when you and I read a Wikipedia entry, though we may learn some data about something, we haven’t earned any knowledge through research and analysis, because a Wikipedia entry doesn’t provide support for its claims. Rather, as said, Wikipedia summarizes what others have said, and it is those “others” to whom you should turn to learn about your topic.

Required Work For Each Research Essay

• The purpose of this section of the Research Handout is to guide you through the process (from topic choice through finding sources) necessary for you to be able to compose a research essay. We will spend considerably more time on this area for the first research essay than for the other two research essays. Attached to the back of each of your research essays must be a separate sheet that lists and answers each of the following questions (in bold below) to demonstrate to me your research process. You will not necessarily find the answer to each question in the order listed below. I’ve answered these questions with Ibn Khaldun as my topic to act as an example of how you might answer them for your topics.

Process continued

• What was your tentative topic? • What is your final topic? • Why are you interested in this topic?• Where will you look for information on your

topic? In what type(s) of databases? • Now that you’ve finalize your topic and read

your sources, and as you prepare to compose your research essay, you should be able to explain why your readers should find your topic interesting. Explain why here:

What did you learn?

• What was your tentative topic? (Ibn Khaldun)

• What is your final topic? (The Life of Ibn Khaldun)

• Why are you interested in this topic? (Because Khaldun was a polymath, and I was intrigue by his knowledge of so many different fields when in our time we seem to overly specialize. Also, I became interested in the influence of Islamic scholars on Western knowledge, something many of us know little about in the West.)

My Research Process

• Where will you look for information on your topic? In what type(s) of databases? (For Khaldun, I initially tried history databases, but that didn’t work out so well. So I returned to a more general database. I found two articles that will be useful, plus because of these articles, I was able to finalize my topic.

Sources Found

• IBN KHALDUN: THE LAST GREEK AND THE FIRST ANNALISTE HISTORIAN.Preview By: Dale, Stephen Frederic. International Journal of Middle East Studies, Aug2006, Vol. 38 Issue 3, p431-451, 21p. (This article comes from a peer-reviewed journal and discusses how Khaldun was well ahead of his time in the study of sociology and history.)

• The Ibar: Lessons of Ibn Khaldun's Umran Mind.Preview By: Dhaouadi, Mahmoud. Contemporary Sociology, Nov2005, Vol. 34 Issue 6, p585-591, 7p; (This article also comes from a peer-reviewed journal and discusses the social factors that contributed to the creative mind of Khaldun.)

Where and How I found them

• I found both of these articles using the following general search site: www.lib.jmu.edu/general/default.aspx and clicking on Academic Search Complete.

• Usually, I start with the articles search site: www.lib.jmu.edu/resources/articles.aspx, because the general site often gives far too many sources to sift through. In this case, though, the general site was more helpful. Nevertheless, I recommend you begin with the articles site for your research.

Where does your topic “fit”

• . In addition to the articles and general sites, there is a site that searches for books: www.lib.jmu.edu/resources/books.aspx. Using the book search site, I found the following book:

Consider a book!

• Mahdi, Muhsin. Ibn Khaldun’s Philosophy of History. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1964. (Because this book opens with Khaldun’s biography, I decided it would be a good source. However, because our library does not contain this book, I had to order it through Interlibrary Loan. The link to Interlibrary Loan requests appears on all search sites. It’s very fast, especially for articles, a day or two and they are emailed to you, so don’t shy away from it. However, you must begin your research in a timely manner.)

Getting Help

• In addition to the three research search sites listed above, I encourage you take advantage of the Ask a Librarian site at: www.lib.jmu.edu/help/ask.aspx. However, please don’t go to the Ask a Librarian site until you have tried searching on your own.

Why this topic?

• Now that you’ve finalize your topic and read your sources, and as you prepare to compose your research essay, you should be able to explain why your readers should find your topic interesting. Explain why here:

GWRIT Learning Objectives

• Before I can explain why my audience would find my topic interesting, I must understand just who my audience is. An expertly researched, well-written essay can fall flat if I disrupt my audience’s discourse expectations. By “discourse expectations” I mean the way that communities of researchers use, and expect others within the community to use, language. For example, a historian uses language in ways that differ from the ways a chemist uses language, that differ from the ways an engineer uses language and so on.

Who is my audience?

• If I compose my essay on Khaldun with the high level of formality expected by, say, sociologists, but I aim my essay at the general, educated U. S. public, I will most likely not interest my audience. The same is true if I aim at sociologists but use the style appropriate for the public. Since I am more a member of the public than a sociologist, and since I became interested in Khaldun because I had found it interesting that while the West was just emerging from the Middle Ages, Islamic scholars like Khaldun were not only keeping knowledge alive but prefiguring later developments, I decided to aim my essay at the public. (The previous sentence is my answer to question 5 above.)

Writing for an audience examples

• I might begin my essay something like this:• Few of us in the United States know that more

than 600 years ago an Islamic scholar developed social-science theories not only unknown in contemporary Western societies but that anticipated many of the theories developed centuries later. His name was Ibn Khaldun. He was born in . . . .

What’s left to do….

• (Note: This document still needs sections on evaluating sources and on incorporating sources into one’s writing. I simply ran out of time.)

• To evaluate students’ essays I plan to use, almost exactly, the research essay rubric we we’re given on Wednesday.