The following are good articles that provide a more detailed account of tips and tricks for skimming and scanning, beyond what I have offered to the right.
Now, you’re looking at a three-page list of sources and you’re getting scared.
You sort of need to rank your articles in order to see which you may want to pay the most attention to and which you will want to barely glance at.
You will probably want to read the articles, or if books, the pertinent chapters, that you think will hold the most information. On the next tab in this box, I will go through the list of sources I have and give justification why I think these are the ones that deserve a full read through.
You will want to figure out things that hold a good amount of the material you need and scan through those. On a subsequent tab in this box, I will go through the list of sources I have and give justification why I think these are the ones that require a scan. I also will provide tips on how to scan articles.
You will finally want to figure out the things that have the least amount of material that is relevant to your paper and give these a quick skim. On a subsequent box, I will go through a list of sources I have and give justification why I think these are the ones that have the least relevant information. I will also provide tips on how to do a skim of an article.
So that's what you will want to do.
Scanning helps in the following:
In other words;
Now throughout the course of my reading, scanning and skimming of those sections, I'll want to take notes throughout if there is a sentence or a few that will support what my thesis statement/topic is. Remember my topic is the popularity of Twin Peaks.
There are two separate schools of thought that come to play when you’re in the note taking process. But first let’s address a little elephant in the room, paraphrasing!
There are two methods I found which work.
This is the one I espouse most often. The reason being is that if you attempt to paraphrase a note during your notetaking phase, you may not know exactly how the paraphrased research will flow into your writing. In order to make it fit, you may need to rework it. And without the original quote at hand, you may misconstrue the paraphrase and inadvertently have a terrible, inaccurate, or plagiaristic paraphrase. Or you will have to wedge your paper into a paraphrase that will not work.
The detraction is that you have a lot of long quotes to either handwrite or copy into your notes page, which may feel a little like a slog. So perhaps something to keep you from taking too many extraneous notes?
The other school of thought during the note-taking process is to already have your paraphrases and your quotes separate. The benefit of this is that you will know which pieces of your research are deserving of directly quoting and which necessitates paraphrasing. With the above way, it is tempting to direct quote everything in your paper if you’re a novice writer of research papers, because you’ll feel that EVERYTHING is classic and better worded than you will ever be able to string a sentence together. So, this method forces you to write paraphrases before you even begin drafting your paper.
It is up to you which method you wish to use.
But let’s go into the process of how to get this paper going. Remember, I'm using MLA citation as the topic of this hypothetical paper is about something in the humanities field.
Now let's take notes on these. Remember how I said that having a bibliography ready would come in handy during the notes taking phase? Notice how each source has as it's "Heading" the full bibliographic entry. That way you never forget where the quote comes from.