Guidelines for Research Papers

1. Writing a Proposal (Topic with two specific questions due 2/11 and the proposal is due 3/27)

It will guide you, much as a recipe guides the cook. A carefully worked-out proposal with a descriptive topic, the problem statement, research methodology and procedures and so on should guarantee against wrong turns, wasted time, impossible undertakings and the like. Publicly presenting your research proposal to your classmates and your professor is an important way by which you can practice your presentation skills and share your on-going work with your classmates, who may provide very useful feedback to your research project. Your proposal should consist of 1) a title that is descriptive and concise, 2) a statement of the problem, i.e. what you plan to explore and why it is significant, 3) a set of manageable research questions, 4) a plan for the review of relevant literature, 4) the design of your research methodology, i.e. how you are going to find evidence/data to answer the questions you raised. See below for further details about these components. The following web site is also useful: http://libguides.usc.edu/content.php?pid=83009&sid=818072

2. Conducting Your Research Project and Writing Your Paper (Due 4/29).

2.1. The first step in your research project is to find an interesting topic that you will enjoy working on. Ms. Karen Greever created a web page for this course that help you identify a topic. She states that "reference works, such as encyclopedias, handbooks, and dictionaries, are a good place to begin your research or search for ideas for a research topic. They provide background information and may provide bibliographies of additional resources for your topic. The easiest way to find reference works on your topic is to browse the library's reference collection under the appropriate Library of Congress classification. The area for linguistics is "P," but there may be additional sources elsewhere. Ask a reference librarian at the Information Desk for assistance." For additional information on library research visit her web page at

http://lbis.kenyon.edu/subj/lang/mll331/

Please note that "browsing through these sources gives you a sneak peak at special terms and unique corresponding definitions that apply specifically to linguistics. Such terms may have other meanings in other disciplines (Ms. B. Thompson)." She continues, "write down terms and phrases that interest you. Later you may be able put these terms to good use during your literature review, where to be a thorough researcher you must fluidly adapt your search language to loosely-structured research environments (such as the www) and to more formal subject-specific databases, such as Psychological Abstracts."

2.2. The title of your research paper should clearly and briefly state what your research project is about. The introduction section of your paper may include the background statement of how you became interested in the question(s) you are exploring and why you find it interesting and significant to explore. It is not necessarily intended as a "scientific" statement, but rather is an acknowledgment of the hunches and experiences that led you to the particular problem you want to investigate.

2.3. Once your research topic is identified and your research rationale is discussed you need to narrow your topic down in the form of a "statement of the problem" and come up with a set of manageable specific research questions. The statement of the problem is a concise delineation of the topic to be investigated. It is the statement of what you are trying to find out. Here is an example: "The purpose of this paper is to describe the forms of address in Chinese, the patterning of their usage and the implications to the teaching of Chinese as a foreign language."

Problem statements must be concise; inconciseness often reflects difficulty in narrowing down the research problem itself. By reading closely some of the assigned articles on various aspects of linguistics, you will find well-written problem statements.

2.4. Now you are ready to start your review of relevant literature. Review of the literature is not simply to demonstrate that you have read the stuff, but rather to link your study to existing knowledge and so to demonstrate how your study will advance such knowledge within a theoretical framework, within a systematically organized body of theory. In other words what have you learned from the review of literature? Is it informative in terms of understanding of the issue under question or/and in terms of designing your own research methodology? Does the review of literature help you identify a direction in which your research can advance the understanding of the issue under exploration? To assist your review of literature Ms. Barbara Thompson created the following web pages:

Linguistics Pre-Research Module

Searching for Books and Checking them out

She also has the following advice, "After completing your problem-statement, take a moment to take the library pre-research module created for this course. This module will help familiarize you with some practical information about how to use the library, and the MORE buttons also loosely introduce a process you can follow to begin your literature review. The more you read on your topic, the more easily you should be able to pursue research, not only because you are internalizing more vocabulary, but also because by using different sources you can appreciate connections among various forms of linguistics scholarship.

2.5. The review of literature will help you achieve a much clearer picture of 1) what other people have done with regards to the questions you have in mind, 2) what your research project can contribute potentially to the understanding of the issue in question and 3) how you are going to gather evidence/data to answer the questions you raised. The final phrase of your research project is to design your research methodology, collect and analyze the data and discuss the significance and implications of your research findings.

There are different types of research designs such as descriptive, experimental and etc. Students in the past have conducted research projects such as 1) the description of linguistic and social cultural aspects of the Nicaraguan Sign Language, 2) the comparison of how aspect is expressed in English, French, and Greek, 3) the study of phonological features of certain dialects in the United States, and etc.