Chapter 6: Researching Your Speech
Learning Objectives
- Learn that research is not only useful, but fun.
- Describe how to establish research needs before beginning research.
- Identify appropriate scholarly and popular sources.
- Differentiate between primary and secondary research.
- Understand how to incorporate sources within a speech and how to use sources ethically.
- Differentiate between direct quotations and paraphrases of information within a speech.
- Explain twelve strategies for avoiding plagiarism.
Key Terms
- APA style
- CRAAP Method
- Databases
- Direct Quotation
- “Drive-by” Quoting
- Encyclopedias
- General-Interest Periodicals
- Headings
- Interlibrary Loan
- Journals
- Keywords
- MLA style
- Paraphrase
- Peer-reviewed Sources
- Popular Sources
- Primary Research
- Representative Sample
- Research
- Research Log
- Scholarly Sources
- Secondary Research
- Special-Interest Periodicals
- Subheadings
- Summary
- Topic Sentence
- World Wide Web
style scholars in the various social science fields (e.g., psychology, human communication, business) are more likely to use
CRAAP stands for “currency,” “relevance,” “authority,” “accuracy,” and “purpose,” or the five ways that you should evaluate each source to determine if it represents the best information available at the time
an online searchable collection of information
when you cite the actual words from a source with no changes
a practice that disorients your audience by not giving them everything they need to understand how the source is relevant to your own claims
information sources that provide short, very general information about a topic and are available in both print and electronic formats
magazines and newsletters published on a fairly systematic basis
a title at the head of a page or section of a book
a process where librarians are able to search other libraries to locate the book a researcher is trying to find
a scholarly publication containing articles written by researchers, professors and other experts
a word or concept of great significance
the style scholars in the various humanities fields (e.g., English, philosophy, rhetoric) are more likely to use
to take a source’s basic idea and condense it using your own words
an article that has been reviewed by a group of experts in the field, sometimes called a board of editors
(also called non-scholarly) sources inform and entertain the public or allow practitioners to share industry, practice, and production information
carried out to discover or revise facts, theories, and applications and is reported by the person conducting the research
a group or set chosen from a larger statistical population or group of factors or instances that adequately replicates the larger group according to whatever characteristic or quality is under study
scholarly investigation into a topic in order to discover, revise, or report facts, theories, and applications
step-by-step account of the process of identifying, obtaining, and evaluating sources for a specific project, similar to a lab note-book in an experimental setting
are written by experts in their field, usually professors in a specific discipline
research carried out to discover or revise facts, theories, and applications—similar to primary research—but it is reported by someone not involved in conducting the actual research
magazines and newsletters that are published for a narrower audience
a heading given to a subsection of a piece of writing
clear sentence that restates the preview statement in past tense, outlining the main points that were addressed in the speech
The first sentence of each paragraph is the topic sentence, which is basically a paragraph’s thesis statement: well-written topic sentences tell the reader what the entire paragraph is about.
an interconnected system of public webpages accessible through the Internet
