Mar 20 - Source Relevancy

Today we will...

1. learn to apply skimming and scanning strategies to identify key sections of sources that are more relevant to your papers
2. learn to rate the degree of relevancy of sources based on their applicability to a particular research topic and focus
3. concisely explain the relevancy of your sources to specific sections of your papers in a few sentences

Review of Source Reliability

Let's review the source reliability that we talked about in the last class.

Source Relevancy

So now you are having, hopefully, a lot of sources on your hands for your chosen topic.
The question is are you going to use all of them for your research paper writing?
If not, which sources are you going to use?
Why do you choose some sources over the others?
How do you judge whether the sources are good for your paper?

Skimming & Scanning

You cannot read all of your sources from the beginning to the end, and you don't have the time to do so. However, what should you do to determine if a source is good or not?

Yes! That's Skimming and Scanning! This can help you quickly get the main idea of the sources, and determine the relevancy of the sources to your research topic.

Practice 1

Here are 5 sources that you will be reading. While you skim and scan them, fill in this chart. Imagine that you are the person who is going to write a paper on this topic, choose the sources that are good to use.
Article 1
Article 2
Article 3
Article 4
Article 5

Practice 2

Now, let's focus on the relevancy of each article. You are still using the 5 articles from the previous practice, but you will need to judge the relevancy of the 5 sources. Please fill in this chart.

Homework

I know this is repetitive, but keep working on your Pre-research Portfolio. Remember to submit it on the due date.
Key for Practice 1     Key for Practice 2

Have a great Spring Break!