STUDENT WRITING Teaching Students to Write Research Papers Managing Information

An effective researcher is a good record keeper. You need to find a systematic way of managing information. You will need methods for maintaining a working bibliography, keeping track of materials, and taking notes without plagiarizing your sources.

Record complete bibliographic information for each of your sources, and do not forget to include the page numbers of any passages you might cite as evidence in your essay. The following entry is an example of the MLA format for a bibliography.

Boydston, Jeanne. Home and Work: Housework, Wages, and the Ideology of Labor in the Early Republic. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Norris, Margot. “Narration under a Blindfold: Reading Joyce’s ‘Clay.’” PMLA 102 (1987): 206–15.

Maintain a working bibliography
Keep a record of any sources you decide to consult. You will need this record, called a working bibliography, when you compile the list of works cited that will appear at the end of your paper.

Keep track of source materials
The best way to keep track of source materials is to photocopy them or print them out.

As you take notes, avoid unintentional plagiarism.
You will discover that it is amazingly easy to borrow too much language from a source as you take notes. Do not allow this to happen. To prevent unintentional borrowing, resist the temptation to look at the source as you take notes — except when you are quoting. Keep the source close by so you can check for accuracy, but do not try to put ideas in your own words with the source’s sentences in front of you.

There are three kinds of note taking: summarizing, paraphrasing, and quoting. As you take notes, be sure to include exact page references, since you will need the page numbers later if you use the information in your paper.

A summary condenses information, perhaps reducing a chapter to a short paragraph or a paragraph into a single sentence. A summary should be written in your own words; if you use phrases from the source, put them in quotation marks.

A paraphrase is written in your own words; but whereas a summary reports significant information in fewer words than the source, a paraphrase retells the information in roughly the same number of words. If you retain occasional choice phrases from the source, use quotation marks so you will know later which phrases are your own.

A quotation consists of the exact words from a source. In your notes, put all quoted material in quotation marks. When you quote, be sure to copy the words of your sources exactly, including punctuation and capitalization.