研究方法

下面我们学习哈佛老师分享的，如何在研究中，提高研究效率、阅读时的批判性。

提高研究效率的方法是：制定研究时间表，然后坚决执行。对工作排序。最重要的先做。只读和论文特别相关的文献或者章节。聚焦自己的研究，主动、批判性地阅读，有选择地阅读和记笔记。把你的主问题贴在墙上，让它时时提醒你，给你的阅读一个目的和方向，这样你的阅读就会更有效率，也更有效果（effective and efficient）。同时，也保持你的时间表的灵活性。

提高我们阅读文献时的批判性的方法是：

  1. 总结，留意这个材料能用来完成什么；

  2. 把它放到它的上下文、学术对话、辩论中考虑；

  3. 批评，质疑它的假设、证据、论证；

  4. 区别你自己的想法。

参考文献

附录：哈佛老师原文

Being An Effective And Critical Researcher

When you begin your research, draft a research schedule and stick to it. You can use your time most effectively by learning how to prioritize your research demands so that you get the most important work done sooner rather than later. Learn to read for main arguments and content specifically relevant to your thesis. Learn to take notes in an economical but effective manner. You will probably find that you are unable to read everything you need to read for your thesis in the six months you have between the beginning of the fall semester and the thesis deadline in March. The challenge lies in reading those works that are most important and that will move your project forward.

Prioritizing Research

After a trip to the library, you’ll probably find yourself looking nervously at the ever-growing pile of unread books and photocopies of articles on your desk, and begin to feel a little overwhelmed by the amount of research you still need to do. Instead of rushing headlong into this pile of material, take a few moments to step back and think about where you are in your research. Look at your research schedule for the year and any provisional outline of the thesis or its chapters. If there are any areas in which you have read little, you might want to prioritize those. Many students have a discussion with their advisor in which they break down the various aspects of their research project, identify the most important goals, and map out a reasonable timetable for accomplishing them. Some students find it useful to keep lists or stacks of books to “read now,” “read later,” and “return.” After a trip to the library, take a few minutes to skim through the books you have checked out (or do this in the library). Look at the table of contents to get a sense of the overall scope and focus of the book. Which books are most important? Why? Put these on your “to read” list. If only one chapter of a book seems relevant, put only that chapter on your list. If the book seems interesting but not crucial, put it on your “to read later” list.

Maintaining A Flexible Schedule

保持灵活。

Try as you might to conduct your research item by item or piece by piece, the nature of a sustained research project often doesn’t unfold in such a manner. Recent readings may turn up new and unexpected fields of inquiry, reveal new primary sources, or introduce a new cast of interlocutors in the secondary literature. Additionally, while you do research, you may find your research goals shifting as you fine-tune the focus of your main research question. This is particularly true in the early stages of research, when you are still refining your topic. While establishing a research schedule or “to do” list is important, be flexible about this list. It’s easy to become so immersed in the minutiae that you forget to step back and consider how specific readings or research is affecting the broad scope of your thesis. As this happens, don’t be afraid to edit or refocus your research schedule or “to do” list periodically.

If you are doing lab-based research, you will also need to factor in additional time demands, including hours spent in the lab, time waiting for results, and so on. In many cases, students doing research in a lab will need to let the time demands of the experiment itself dictate much of the research schedule. You may, for instance, need to wait for lab samples to be processed. In these cases, secondary reading may need to be worked in around your lab schedule.

Active, Critical Reading and Note-taking Strategies

In the excitement of discovery, it’s easy to dive right into the books or articles you’ve just brought back from the library. The pressure of feeling as if you need to be doing something—anything—in the way of “thesis research” may make you feel as if reading more books more quickly is the best policy. If you’re particularly disciplined, you may find yourself slogging through a work word for word, determined to read it in its entirety so you can cross it off your list of books you have read. Fascinating as details and minor arguments from your sources can be, recording each and every one of them can be time consuming, and you may not even include them in the final version of your thesis. While false leads and research dead ends are inevitable in every project as the focus of the research question or aim changes, you can eliminate a lot of extraneous note taking and aimless, dilatory reading by focusing your research.

To avoid wasting lots of time taking notes that end up in the trashcan, pause to remind yourself why you have chosen to read this book or article. Ask how the work you’re reading relates to your main research question (or sub-questions). Some students even go so far as to keep the main question (in its evolving formulation) written down in the front of a notebook, or, more boldly, taped above their desk, as a way of keeping it in the forefront of their minds. This enables you to maintain a perspective on your reading, to remember how and why a particular work is important to your research. Taking a moment to remind yourself why you’re consulting a particular source will also prompt you to think critically about the work and its relationship to your project. It will help give your reading a purpose and direction, and, in so doing, make it more effective and efficient.

Taking some form of notes, either by hand in a notebook or on your computer, will make you an active reader. Note taking forces you to grapple with the text at hand, rather than passively absorbing it. Marking important passages, inconsistencies, or flawed argumentation in the margins of a book or photocopy enables you to locate the passage quickly when you begin writing, and it often saves you the trouble of re-reading sources. While you read a work and take notes on it, there are several different actions you can perform to produce useful and critical readings.

Summarize

Although it may seem like passive reiteration, summarizing the main argument of a work forces you to select and condense what another author has said and put it into your own words. Succinctly summarizing a work is an art form in itself. This is particularly true of complex theoretical arguments, when it’s tempting to get drawn into lengthy recapitulation of minor points, or to get bogged down in the complex turns of an argument. As a result, some students prefer to write down brief summaries of the main argument of a particular work (or the main arguments of each chapter.) Some prefer to summarize the main arguments of a work and to summarize any minor arguments or information that may be of particular relevance the project. Again, the point here is to summarize efficiently, with an eye to what you want to accomplish by consulting this particular source. The more you practice this skill, the more proficient you will become at it.

Situate

You may also situate the work in relation to the subject matter it treats and other works that cover the same topic. If you’re looking at a primary source, situating a work entails locating its importance in relation to its political, aesthetic, sociological, or historical context. If it’s a secondary source, you will need to situate it within a wider scholarly discourse. What other secondary sources does the work agree with? On which issues? With whom does the author disagree with? Why? Situating a particular source in relation to other authors who have written on the same topic allows you to map out the conversational terrain in a way that highlights the dynamism of the scholarly conversations that are taking place. Thinking historically, it also allows you to trace the evolution of these conversations, tracking the twists and turns the dialogue has taken over the course of several years or even decades. By locating the works you read in this way, you will find that you are often well on your way to developing an overview of the scholarly discourse on a particular subject. And, you will find you have a growing sense of what the major debates are in a given field. This, in turn, often provides a basis for a literature review that summarizes scholarly work on a particular subject.

Critique

With pen in hand (or fingers on the keyboard) you are able quickly to jot down questions or criticisms you have of the work. Critiquing a work entails questioning its assumptions, the evidence it uses to support its argument, and its argumentation in an active and engaged way. Do you disagree with the argument the author is making? Why? What other sources contradict the argument presented? Is there other primary source material you’ve come across that appears to contradict the author’s argument? Where? How does it contradict it? The notes you take that raise questions about the book, argue with its assumptions, or raise counter-arguments often provide the most fertile ground for developing your own arguments. Given their importance, many students put asterisks next to their own critiques in their notes or put them in brackets to distinguish them from notes that summarize a book or situate it in relation to other sources.

Distinguishing Your Thoughts

As you take notes, be sure to distinguish clearly your thoughts from those expressed in the book or article you are reading. If you are summarizing the author’s ideas in your own words, make this very clear in your notes, because you will need to cite the author if you use this material in your thesis. If you use the author’s words, put them in quotes. Being clear about which ideas or words are yours and which are the author’s will guard against inadvertent plagiarism.

“The best advice my advisor gave me was to start writing early—before I’d finished my research, before I had an argument. Just start writing a little bit every day. It’ll probably be terrible and you’ll have to edit it, of course, but the great thing is once you get to January, you’ll already have pages of stuff written and so writing sixty pages won’t seem so daunting and overwhelming.”


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