This level is a starting point, where you will gain awareness of some basic search techniques. This is a foundation to go on to develop the research skills you need to succeed on your degree.
instructions:
To find sources for your research, it is tempting to just put your whole report topic into a search engine such as Google. However, you might not get very good results this way:
To start your research, you need to break down your topic into key words. For example:
The influence of talker-listener accent similarity and accent intelligbility
1. Watch this video explaining how to identfy keywords
2. Complete this tutorial about keywords from the University of York Library
3. Consider a research topic that you are working on, or are interested. What are the keywords?
In academic writing, it is important to base your argument and points on evidence - we can't just write about our own thoughts. This means we need to do research in sources to find evidence relating to out topic.
Different types of sources you might use for research at the IPC include:
1. Click to read this introduction to difference source types.
You can also read this comparison of the pros and cons of different types of academic sources
2. Watch these videos to understand more about different types of sources, and how to identify different source types
3. Complete this tutorial about academic sources by the University of York Library
Google Scholar is an academic version of the Google search engine. It will help you to find acacdemic sources related to your search, without including 'normal' web results.
It is a really useful tool, so it's important that you know how to use it. At the basic level, it's enough just to have an overview of how to use Google Scholar - we'll cover more advanced searching in the next level.
1. Watch this video: it is an introduction to Google Scholar from Lister Hill library.
The most useful information is after 02:20
2. Watch this video to hear some advice from a student about using Google Scholar.
Note: he talks a bit about using Booleans (AND, OR, NOT) - we'll look at this in the intermediate level
3. Read the University of York Guide to Google Scholar
YorSearch is a tool to search through the university library catalogue - you can find the location of physical books in the library itself and also access e-books and journals on your computer.
You may find different information here than you would using Google Scholar, so both are important in finding sources for your research.
You can search by:
1. Watch this video: it is an introduction to YorSearch from the University of York Library.
2. Complete this tutorial by the University of York Library:
Complete this quiz to test your knowledge. Get all the answers right to get the code to move onto the next level.