Organizing source material

One of the important steps in the research is organizing information after accumulating it from different resources. An Extended Essay is written over a period of time, all the sources if organized well will make it easier to reference at the end of the process. There are many ways to organize the information collected below are some ways(information on this page is taken from the Oxford EE course companion).

Note -Taking - Good note-taking in an organized manner helps in quick reference points when writing EE (Lekanides 41) Below are some examples of structured note-taking to minimize time spent on re-reading taken from EE course companion, students can make tables to note down source name, information of the source and heading of the source.

(Lekanides 41)

2. Organizing Chapters and Paragraphs - EE is a long process and before students start writing EE lot of information is collected in the prewriting phase of EE three processes that help students to bring out key features to answer their research questions are 1. Mind Map 2. Progression chart 3. Branches.

Mind Map (Lekanides 44)

Mind Maps are great for jotting down all the associated factors linked to the topic

. 1. Write down all the factors and important comments that are related to the topic and emerge out of reading on the topic. (Lekanides 43)

Connect all the factors to the topic so that you can make the proper choice when you come back to rephrase your topic and RQ

Progression Charts (Lekanides 44)

Progression charts help you to outline the key factors of your research done for EE, it also allows you to visualize or plan topics and subtopics of your EE and give an idea of how EE would look. (Lekanides 44).

Branches

Branches are a good way of organizing information in chapters or paragraphs wise information collected can be branched like the central idea can be liked with associated factors or themes (Lekanides 44)