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Dear Sir,
When you put your plans to write a research, you should take in your consideration an important and vital item in this process; which is the historical review in concerning the topic of your research work in general, and how could your research will be valuable in the chain of knowledge as well.
Any research is consisting of Basic Structure:
- An essay must have an introductory paragraph that lets your reader know what your thesis is and what the main points of your argument will be. An essay must also have a conclusion (at least a paragraph in length) that sums up its most important arguments. In short, over the course of your essay, you must tell readers what you are going to say, say it, and then tell them what you have said.
- Paragraphs are the building blocks of an essay. Each paragraph should contain a single general idea or topic, along with accompanying explanations and evidence relevant to it. Each paragraph, moreover, has a topic sentence (usually the first sentence) that tells the reader what the paragraph is about.
- Do not write one-, two-, or three-sentence paragraphs. Paragraphs have topics, introductory sentences, evidence, and conclusions.
- Do not write two- or three-page paragraphs. A paragraph generally explores a single idea, rather than a dozen.
- Before you end a discussion of one major topic and begin another, it is important to summarize your findings and analyze their importance for your thesis. It is also necessary to write a transition to alert your reader that you have begun a new topic. Thus, if your thesis is hinged on three major points, you should spend a couple of pages on each point and write a transition paragraph between each section.
Perhaps, this could take much time in editing, collecting data from authenticated sources, deprived the unauthenticated and repetitive ones, refining, revising, abstracting, as well as assorting the whole data in harmonious and smooth formats.
While the issue could be delicate and require further assortments if our research is built upon historical events subject, i.e. you are writing about history itself. So, your inquiry for specific sources will be the key of your research work success, and there are TWO types of research you need in this mission:
- Primary sources: A primary source is a document that was created at the time of the event or subject you've chosen to study or by people who were observers of or participants in that event or topic.
- Secondary sources.
= Primary sources are like the followings:
n newspapers in a variety of languages;
n a short film made during the period that shows the yards;
n records and manuscripts;
n novels about that topic;
n autobiographies of life, that events, workers, etc., were published even many years later;
n maps that show the location of those historic events made during the period you are studying;
n Music, such as work made or adapted during the time you are researching;
n Oral histories of period lived- people experiences, though a historian's comments on those oral histories would be a secondary source.
= The medium of the primary source can be anything, including written texts, objects, buildings, films, paintings, cartoons, etc. What makes the source a "primary" source is when it was made, not what it is.
= Primary sources would not, however, include books written by historians about this topic, because books written by historians are called "secondary" sources. The same goes for historian's introductions to and editorial comments on collections of primary documents; these materials, too, are secondary sources because they're twice removed from the actual event or process you're going to be writing about.
Secondary sources:
- Once you have a topic in mind, you need to find out what other scholars have written about your topic. If they've used the same sources you were thinking of using and reached the same conclusions, there's no point in repeating their work, so you should look for another topic.
- Most of the time, though, you'll find that other scholars have used different sources and/or asked different questions, and that reading their work will help you place your own paper in perspective.
- You want to move past just looking for books in the library. Now that you're doing your own history research and writing, you should step up to the specialized bibliographies historians use for their own work.
- Don't stop looking for secondary sources until you begin to turn up the same titles over and over again. Put those titles you see most frequently and those that are most recently published at the very top of your list of things to read, since they are likely to be the most significant and/or complete interpretations.
- After you've located and analyzed some primary sources and read the existing secondary literature on your topic, you're ready to begin researching and writing your paper.
- Remember: when lost, confused etc., Ask a reference librarian! They are there to help.
== For you, what should you do and take in your consideration when you read any primary historical documents?
1. When and by whom was this particular document written? What is the format of the document? Has the document been edited? Was the document published? If so, when and where and how? How do the layout, typographical details, and accompanying illustrations inform you about the purpose of the document, the author's historical and cultural position, and that of the intended audience?
2. Who is the author, and why did he or she create the document? Why does the author choose to narrate the text in the manner chosen? Remember that the author of the text (i.e., the person who creates it) and the narrator of the text (i.e. the person who tells it) are not necessarily one and the same.
3. Using clues from the document itself, its form, and its content, who is the intended audience for the text? Is the audience regional? National? A particular subset of "the American people"? How do you think the text was received by this audience? How might the text be received by those for whom it was NOT intended?
4. How does the text reflect or mask such factors as the class, race, gender, ethnicity, or regional background of its creator/narrator? (Remember that "race" is a factor when dealing with cultural forms of people identified as "white," that "men" possess "gender," and that the North and Midwest are regions of local as well as national significance.)
5. How does the author describe, grapple with, or ignore contemporaneous historical events? Why? Which cultural myths or ideologies does the author endorse or attack? Are there any oversights or "blind spots" that strike you as particularly salient? What cultural value systems does the writer/narrator embrace?
6. From a literary perspective, does the writer employ any generic conventions? Use such devices as metaphor, simile, or other rhetorical devices?
7. With what aspects of the text (content, form, style) can you most readily identify? Which seem most foreign to you? Why? Does the document remind you of contemporaneous or present-day cultural forms that you have encountered? How and why?
== Next, When writing a historical research paper, and in order to develop a manageable topic, you will definitely have many questions in your mind and asking for answers to fill the gaps. So, your goal is to choose a topic and write a paper that
1. Asks a good historical question
2. Tells how its interpretation connects to previous work by other historians, and
3. Offers a well-organized and persuasive thesis of its own.
= Let's take this one step at a time.
1. Asking a good historical question:
A good historical question is broad enough to interest you and, hopefully, your classmates. Pick a topic that students in the class and average people walking down the street could find interesting or useful. If you think interracial relationships are an interesting topic and you find the1950s to be an equally fascinating time period, come up with a question that incorporates both these interests.
n For example: "How did white and African-American defense plant workers create and think about interracial relationships during World War Two?" This question investigates broad issues—interracial romance, sexual identity—but within a specific context—World War Two and the defense industry.
n WARNING: Avoid selecting a topic that is too broad: "How has war affected sex in America?" is too broad. It would take several books to answer this question.
n A good question is narrow enough so that you can find a persuasive answer to it in time to meet the due date for this class paper.
n After selecting a broad topic of interest, narrow it down so that it will not take hundreds of pages to communicate what happened and why it was important. The best way write a narrow question is to put some limitations on the question's range. Choosing a particular geographic place (a specific location), subject group (who? what groups?), and periodization (from when to when?) are the most common ways to limit a historical question.
n WARNING: Avoid a question that only looks at one specific event or process. For example, "What happened on Thursday, Dec.12,1953 at the Boeing bomber plant in Albany, California?" is too narrow. Perhaps there may have been several important events that day, including a fight over an interracial relationship. However, this question does not position you to explore the larger processes that were taking place in the plant over time, nor why they are important for understanding sex, race and gender in American history.
n A good historical question demands an answer that is not just Yes or No. Why and how questions are often good choices, and so are questions that ask you to compare and contrast a topic in different locations or time periods; so are questions that ask you to explain the relationship between one event or historical process and another.
n A good historical question must be phrased in such a way that the question doesn't predetermine the answer.
2. Connecting your interpretation to previous work by other historians:
n Once you have a topic in mind, you need to find out what other scholars have written about your topic. If they've used the same sources you were thinking of using and reached the same conclusions, there's no point in repeating their work, so you should look for another topic.
n Most of the time, though, you'll find that other scholars have used different sources and/or asked different questions, and that reading their work will help you place your own paper in perspective. When you are writing your paper, you will cite these historians—both their arguments about the material, and also (sometimes) their research findings.
3. Offering a well-organized and persuasive thesis.
n Think of your thesis as answering a question. Have your thesis answer a "how" or "why" question, rather than a "what" question. A "what" question will usually land you in the world of endless description, and while some description is often necessary, what you really should focus on is your thinking, your analysis, your insights.
n Consider the following questions when reviewing your thesis paragraphs:
· Does the thesis answer a research question?
· What sort of question is the thesis answering?
n The thesis paragraph usually has three parts: (1) the subject of your paper, (2) your argument about the topic, and (3) the evidence you'll be using to argue your thesis.
· Is the thesis overly descriptive? Does it simply describe something in the past? OR,
· Does the thesis present an argument about the material? (This is your goal.)
· Is the thesis clearly and succinctly stated?
· Does the thesis paragraph suggest how the author plans to make his or her argument?
== By the end, do not forget to
1- document your sources, and in order to do this: you should use the traditional endnote or footnote system with superscript numbers when citing sources. Do not use parenthetical author-page numbers as a general rule. Exceptions include: short discussion assignments; five page analytical papers where you have been assigned the specific texts that you are analyzing.
2- Use formal written English: by avoiding
- colloquialisms (e.g., cool, kind of, totally, hung up on, OK, sort of, etc.), because they are fine in speech, but they should never be used in formal written English;
- antiquated or obscure words that have been suggested to you by your computer's thesaurus, especially if you are not sure what these words mean;
- contractions (e.g., don't, can't) in a formal written piece of work;
- Gender-inclusive language should be used, but it should be used sensibly. On the one hand, if you mean all people living in society, do not describe them with the word men. On the other hand, if gender-inclusive language makes what you are saying incorrect, do not use it. In other words, when speaking about monks (who are men), do not say he or she. If talking about the right to vote in the nineteenth century, the same principle holds, as women could not then vote.
- It is all right to use I, me, or my now and again, but do not overuse them. It is unnecessary to use expressions such as in my opinion, as your reader will assume that whatever you write in your paper that is not attributed to another author is your opinion.
- Do not use the general you. Use one instead.
- When you first discuss an author or historical figure, use first and last name. After this, you are free to use last name only. Do not, however, refer to historical figures by their first name; e.g., Karl Marx should be referred to as Marx, rather than Karl. This rule applies for women as well as men. Emily Dickinson should be called Dickinson rather than Mrs. Dickinson.
- Avoid beginning sentences and paragraphs with the word however, and never end a sentence with however. However can be used only to link two halves of a single sentence, separated by a semicolon (not a comma), if both clauses have something to do with one another. Incorrect:He was hungry; however, it was a warm day.
- The words while and although have slightly different meanings. Although means "regardless of the fact that" or "even though." While means "at the same time that."
Best Regards,
Lubna Al-sharif
good job lubna
Thank you Lubna Al-sharif for your detailed and well informed answer.
Actually I'm getting ready to start work on my new book,"Realities in Quran". I want to collect all the information given in Quran chapter by chapter in the form of short stories. To make it interesting for the children and Non believers, I also want to add pictures of historical spots in the Holy lands according to the topic. This will be a form of interpretation of Quran but in a new fashion. No text of Quran will be included except the name of the chapters and verse numbers for the sake of reference.
I would love to listen from you if you can provide me some guide in context with this description.
Thank you
Anayat Bukhari
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