| Research
Basics
In your academic career, you will be expected to gather information
from a variety of sources. In class, you will take notes from your
professor; in addition, you will study and take notes from your textbooks.
You will also be asked to research various topics on your own, taking
notes from the sources you choose, then writing down and presenting the
information to your professor or even to your class in spoken, written, or
electronic form.
The purpose of this course is to help you develop your research skills.
We will emphasize
- outlining basics,
- quoting,
- paraphrasing,
- summarizing, and
- citing sources.
We will use these skills in the process of writing 1) a summary and 2)
a persuasive essay with citations.
Since we are going to be doing much of our work on-line, we will also
consider how to
- conduct web searches, and
- evaluate on-line resources.
In addition to these skills, you will begin developing a list of
on-line sites, a personal on-line library of resources, that you can use
now and in the future as a student in the U.S. or back in your own
country.
To Begin
1. You will need to have an
email account through an English language server (otherwise, your
email messages may be preceded by a message asking your reader to
download a foreign alphabet, which slows down correspondence and may
prompt some recipients to simply delete your message).
2. You will be working with
Microsoft Word because you will be emailing your work to me as Word
attachments. This will allow me to comment on your work and return it to
you for editing. I will be happy to help you with WORD basics, as will
the lab assistants in the IELI multimedia Lab. For help in typing your
essays, see
some reminders about typing essays.
3. Some of your work will be
emailed to you, and some will be posted at http://courses.unt.edu/ttaylor. You will need to access that site for information concerning your
assignments.
4. Remember that, as an IELI
student with full access to UNT resources, you will be able to use the
computer labs on campus or even your own computer (if it has an internet
connection) to do your assignments. If at anytime you are having trouble
meeting deadlines or accessing information, contact me by email (at both tam@isp.admin.unt.edu and ttaylor7@gte.net)
or by phone at 940-458-3837 (home).
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