Research Tutorial

Part 1: Summary and Reflection

     The tutorial we did on Skunk Ape was very productive and educational especially for students who conducted a research already. The tutorial was one way of knowing whether a researcher followed the standard format of presenting a research paper or not. Some points that I want to highlight for the beneficiality of this tutorial are:

1. The tutorial made me realize that I miss some important details of conducting a research like finding a scholarly journal and how to utilize scholarly magazines. When I did my research, I had been dependent on books and articles related to my subject of study only but good thing that I learned that there are other credible sources for a research aside from what I mentioned.

2. Citation is very important. This is to recognize the work of the author of the reference material that enrich your research. But we still keep on committing accidental plagiarism.

3. Databases is very amazing. In my country we don't have online databases. You have to find your sources manually. What I mean with manually is going to different libraries to find books and scholarly journals and using card catalogs.


     For this tutorial, every part is vital in conducting a research. So for me, we need to utilize whatever skills we have in doing our research because if we don't, we might commit errors that will result to plagiarism. Skills like knowledge on the correct mechanics of English language, on how to present your topic of study to avoid duplication on an existing research, audience consideration, clearly defined purpose of doing the research, credible sources inclusion and citing sources are all important. We have some websites that can do the basic parts like citations but bear in mind that some of these websites are prone to errors so it is best that we know how to do it by ourselves.


     I guess I still have a lot of things to learn in conducting a research. Learning is evolving so I cannot say that I know a lot about research already. What I am sure now is that it is very important that we know how to do the different sections of a basic research because this will be our foundation in conducting our case study before we earn our degree. Not only that, research is also very useful in our daily lives. Let us put it this way, in a news, in our jobs someday and even in a normal conversation, basic research on information about certain things from credible sources can avoid miscommunication and misunderstanding between two opposing parties and this could avoid further conflicts.


Part 2: New versus Old


     Here are the top three things I did not know before I started the tutorial:
1. Utilization of online databases
2. Information about scholarly journal
3. Citation of sources using an online pre-modified program


     Here are the top three things that I already knew before the tutorial
1. Different forms of informations
2. Citation of sources manually
3. Locating informations by books using card catalogs.