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Dr Anna Claydon
Department of Media and Communication,
University of Leicester.
Office: Attenborough Building Room 701.

 
RESEARCH METHODS and WRITING GUIDELINES

1) Questioning material and cross-referencing

Researching and the material/information you find

• How did you find your information? Any other examples of which you can think?
o From a book
o From a periodical
o From a documentary
o From the internet
o From a lecture
o Somebody told you they’d come across this

• How reliable do you think the information coming from these sources might be on a scale of 1-6 (with 6 as most reliable)?

o From a book
o From a periodical
o From a documentary
o From the internet
o From a lecture
o Somebody told you they’d come across this

• You are told a piece of information, for example that a film was made in a specific year. How can you verify this?

• A book tells you that a particular event in film history happened because of something specific, how can you corroborate this opinion?

• Why should you not write “Many writers believe” (or some such generic statement) without providing an indicative sample of some of those writers?

• Why should you not rely on someone’s verbal account of information they have found?

• How do you think you should consider material from a lecture and how might you cite it?

• How does the kind of book you are looking at as a source of information affect the way in which you view the reliability of that data?

It is important to question what you read and to cross-reference claims because writers have been known to be inaccurate in their accounts for a wide variety of reasons. If you read only one account and it contains mistakes you could find yourself could in an erroneous belief which, if written in assessment, could lose you valuable marks. Double checking information only broadens your comprehension of the subject and makes your research stronger.
2) Using critical books (indexes and chapters, focussing skills)

What is a critical book?

• Not an autobiography
• Sometimes a collection of essays by one or more authors on a common subject (known as ‘a reader’
• A fact based, fully researched, text on a particular facet of film (usually not anecdotal)

How do you use a critical book well in research?

• Read the whole book for a full understanding of the subject and make notes of passages (clearly signalling what is from the text and what is from your notes) which are of interest.
• Read chapters which have titles linked to your subject of research.
• Search the index looking for keywords.

Sometimes, the subject you are researching may not be evident in the book or chapter titles (for example a specific film), this is where indexes (both for the whole book or indexes of titles) can be invaluable to tell you where to look. It is not unknown for people to read a whole book which may vaguely be of use to find it is of no specific use so have a clear idea of what 本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。