Intro to Academic Writing

Introduction

This guide accompanies an in-class workshop about doing research for your essay assignment.

If you have questions, please contact the English & Film Studies Librarian, Meredith (mefischer@wlu.ca).

OBJECTIVE: find academic sources about your topic and choose 2 good ones to work with in your essay.

1. What are Academic Sources?

• Academic sources are where researchers share their work and engage with each others' ideas.
• A defining feature of academic sources is that they go through a process called peer review.
• Peer-reviewed articles and books have been assessed by experts in a research area.

Example

Below is an example of a peer reviewed article called "The Political Subject is a Lover Not a Fighter."

2. How to Find Academic Sources

A. Where You Search Matters

• Different search tools (e.g. Omni - the Library search tool, Google, etc.) are built to do different things. 
• Good places to search for academic sources are:
  • Omni
  • MLA International Bibliography
•  You can use a peer reviewed checkbox after your search to see only peer-reviewed articles.

Activity #1 (10 min.)

1. Copy the following term: fight club
2. Paste it into the tools below and hit search.
   • Omni
   • MLA International Bibliography
3. Check off peer reviewed and answer these questions:
   • How many results did you get?
   • What are the dates of the first 3 results?

B. Search Tactics Improve Results

Try some of the search tactics below to get more relevant results.

Activity #2 (10 min.)

Which 2 tactics might help you get better results for the fight club search?

3. Citing in MLA

• Purdue's MLA Formatting and Style Guide gives lots of examples!