Research plan, preliminary outline, working bibliography

Research plan

It is important to plan, map and outline your research process and your essay structure. You are embarking not on a spur-of-the-moment weekend road trip with no particular route or destination in mind, stopping off for gas and food and supplies along the way as you please. This is a deliberate six-month journey that requires considerable forethought and planning, maps and travel guides in hand, supplies prepared and packed, all to ensure that you reach your destination in good condition and on time. There will be detours and wrong turns along the way, engine breakdowns and flat tires, but good preparation will help you stay on course.

To help you focus, please write a two-paragraph general description of your plan for conducting your research and writing your paper.

• What are your sources? Texts, journals, magazines, websites, experts?

• How do you plan to find your sources?

• What is your research and writing timeframe?

• How will you conduct experimentation? Materials, equipment, location, time?

• What do you hope to eventually discover?

• What obstacles can you foresee, and how will you overcome them?

You can e-mail your research plan to Heimer at pheimer@senri.ed.jp.

As part of your planning, you will complete a working outline of your essay, too.

Preliminary outline

Outlining is a process that many students skip. But 30 minutes of early outlining work can save you hours of research and writing work later. An outline gives you direction and keeps you focused. It breaks up your work into manageable chunks. Click on the link below to access a Word document containing a sample "skeleton" essay outline. Open and "Save as" if you want to, creating your working outline on that same page.

EE preliminary outline

Working bibliography

As you begin your research, you will look for information from both primary sources and secondary sources.

A working bibliography is a record of all the information you collect and the sources from which it came. A working bibliography

• helps you locate information and opinions on your topic,

• helps you determine if there are enough sources for your topic,

• changes over time, and

• contains all the information you need for your references page.

Primary sources are records left by a person or group who participated in or witnessed an event, or who provided a contemporary first-hand expression of the ideas or values of the topic under study.

Examples of primary sources: letters, autobiographies, government documents, minutes of meetings, newspapers, books about your topic written at the time of the event, interviews, films, photographs, music recordings, clothing, buildings, tools from the period you are researching.

Secondary sources are accounts written by people not involved in the events or in the original expression of the topic under study. These accounts are written after the events/ideas have occurred, and are based on primary sources or other secondary sources.

What are some sources of information for my topic?  Where will I look?  (Make a list and get started.)

Read selectively.  Record all sources in your working bibliography.

For more information, please contact Peter Heimer, OIS IB Coordinator

(072-727-5290, pheimer@senri.ed.jp), or visit the IBDP office, room 324 (third floor, next to tennis court), or visit the IBO public website at www.ibo.org.