Researching the question

Once you know what the question is about, and what you are being asked to do, you can then begin to research the question. Just as the question is not an invitation to tell the reader all you know about the topic, so the research is not a quest to read everything in print, or on the Internet, about the topic.

Essentially, the task at the research stage is to

locate,

read, and

make notes on,

the materials that are relevant to your answer. Much of the material you need will be readily available, but there may well be many other students looking for the same information and working to the same deadline. You could, therefore, usefully photocopy journal articles as early as possible after receiving the question, and reserve books from the library as necessary.

Reading and making notes on the materials can be very time-consuming and to make the best use of the time available you will need to employ effective reading strategies while remaining focused on the question. To get a general impression of the issues you will first need to read broadly, though the extent of the overview reading you need to do will very much depend on the level of your existing knowledge of the essay topic. This general reading should help you discover the important themes around the key concepts of the essay and the range of possible answers to the question. When your understanding is such that you can take a stance on the answer you should then narrow the focus of your reading and concentrate in detail on the arguments that support your view.

At this stage we can usefully return to the SQ3R technique which we first encountered at pp. 15–17. When using this technique to research an essay question, surveying and questioning the material are done at the same time by skim reading or quickly scanning the materials you think might be suitable for your essay, while always keeping the key concepts of the essay question at the forefront of your mind. To survey a book in this way, you would flick through the table of contents, and (if they are not included in the table of contents) the main headings and subheadings within each of the relevant chapters. You may also scan the most promising pages, looking for words and phrases which are relevant to your essay topic. When reading, you should ask yourself the following questions:

is the material relevant to the key concepts of the essay?

does the material support or contradict what I already know?

is there anything new or interesting here that is worth pursuing further? (Remember that everything must be relevant to the question.)

You will then be in a position to progress to the reading, recalling and reviewing stages of the SQ3R process in the usual way.