Feeling under the weather

Unfortunately, this week has been one of my most unproductive weeks ever, and this is down to my new friend, the flu. The drowsiness and overall unmotivated attitude this flu has given me means I haven't progressed as much as I would have liked to, but, that being said, I have finally gotten a folder and I have started to collate my research by printing it out and putting it inside, including emails, transcripts, academic journals, etc. Printing it all out now means I won't be in a rush to gather it together closer to the deadline. Moreover, I attempted to begin writing the literature review section of my essay, but proved to be a challenge as I couldn't figure out where I was going with the research I had. Therefore, I have decided to take a step back and spend some time looking at the information I have in front of me and work through it while annotating and highlighting. As I have been doing this, I have been putting the information into a plan and writing down my initial thoughts too so I can revisit these when I actually write it. I did plan on getting the majority of this done this week so I can start writing it next week. However, I haven't gotten very far due to being ill, though I do plan on sending the majority of this weekend continuing with my plan and working through the research.

Lit Review Struggle

Chris has advised us to start our essay with the literature review and compose the other segments of writing around this. However, since this means we are diving head first into the middle of the essay, I've been struggling with how to start the review section, which research/ideas to begin with, and how I incorporate my own ideas into the comments I make on the research I have found. I mentioned my struggle to Chris today and he sat down with me and began to assist me on the beginning of the literature review section. He advised that I break my review into smaller sections as he saw that I had already sorted my research into categories relating to my project question. For example, the first section may focus on the key events in Austen's life, and then the next may focus on Regency England. Also, he reminded me of the advice he gave earlier - start with the broader ideas and gradually become more refined and specific to my project question. As I have about 27 pages of research, this means I have be spending quite a lot of time going through the information I gathered from each source and picking out the key information and ideas I want to use in my essay.

Also, Chris once again reminded us to get a folder and dividers so we can start to collate all of our work and research together... looks like I will be going shopping this weekend.

Organizing my research

It is getting to that time where I need to start writing the literature review, but as I have gathered a lot of research material I need to concentrate on sorting it out by linking information together and comparing/contrasting them. Although I wish to continue with my research, I need to spend some time sorting through the information I already have before I can progress as establishing links between different sources will make it easier for me when writing my literature review.

Therefore, my next step will be to go through my individual source reviews, reflect on the main ideas which I extracted from these sources, and see if I can identify links between certain sources. I can refer to these links in my literature review and how it relates to my project. Furthermore, I can distinguish if the information leans in support of my project aim, or against it, and then I can talk about this in my review.

Thinking about essay planning and literature reviews

As I said on Tuesday, Chris had found an informative textbook that concentrates on projects and how the process should be carried out in steps. Chris advised us to look at chapter 6 which focuses on how to approach the essay writing aspect of the project,  including some helpful tips and possible headings of paragraphs. I spent today's session looking at this guided structure, and using the tips given I can now start to plan my own essay and possible ideas that I am thinking of including, as well as where these ideas will fit into the essay. It is important to plan my essay before writing, as my supervisor has emphasised many times, as I need to refrain from mistakes such as waffling on about something so it ends up taking up the majority of my word count, contradicting myself, repeating myself, wrongly using a piece of information which doesn't support an idea, confusing myself as I progress further into the writing, and jumbling up information so that it results in a messy, incoherent piece of writing. I believe this advised structure given by the textbook will help me massively when it comes to planning my essay and organising the information I have into writing, and there is always the freedom to play around with the structure into one that I feel suits my project topic best. To add to this support, he showed us a powerpoint from the University of Leeds which also shows a demonstration of a good essay structure, and the kind of headings that can be considered for each paragraphs, as well as the possibility of sub-titles.

Today, my supervisor also reminded the class the importance of literary reviews and that we need to be keeping track of our sources and our evaluation of each individual one, such as noting the credibility, the reliability, and the origins of the source. My literary review process is still on-going as I remain in the midst of carrying out research, but I feel as though I am recording and evaluating each one of my source to an valid standard.

Moreover, Chris said that we should start to think about the writing of the abstract of our essay, as well as the introduction. He showed his own dissertation as an example, which included an example of a literary review, and I plan on taking a look at when it comes to writing my introduction for support.

UPDATE ON PRIMARY RESEARCH: Still no responses back from professors!

First day back after Christmas and Mid-Project Review!

Today is the first day back after Christmas and luckily we have EPQ! I'm uncertain on the direction we have to had in next with our project and this period has reassured me massively. Before continuing with our independent objectives, Chris went through a summary of where we should be at in terms of our primary and secondary information and, as I  am this stage, I feel reassure with my project. He also reminded us that we need to keep up-to-date with our log books as we don't want to be rushing around at the end trying to piece it altogether.

As the essay writing is becoming even more imminent, Chris reminded us that we need to be getting our heads down in research so we have a sufficient amount of information to work with. He also mentioned that he had printed out a textbook that aims at supporting with writing essay and how it should be structured, so I plan on looking at this to assist me with my essay, therefore I will be more confident with planning, as well as writing the my essay.

Also, as we didn't get chance to have our Mid-Project review meeting before christmas, I requested to have it today as I felt that I made a lot of progress during the Christmas holidays and I wanted to discuss with Chris my change the planning of my tasks, as well as how to separate the research I had found, which I had typed up. He advised me, as I had around twenty seven pages of a typed up research, to separate the information based on possible subheadings that I may use in my write up, such as the role of women, complications of love, Austen's writing style, key events, family life, etc, with the reference of the source above it so I can easily track where it came from. I believe this will help a lot when I arrive at writing the section of the essay where I will be incorporating and referencing much of this research. He also encouraged that I read through this information, highlighting and annotating the key pieces of information that stand out as vital or interesting, and will enable me to form a clear narrative. Furthermore, as I was unable to find the date for some of the information that I found online, I asked Chris what to put in replacement as I was initially using (XXXX). He looked it up, as he was unsure to, and found that the best method to put '(n.d.)', which I will use during my write up. I think I forgot to method that I have decided to use Harvard referencing for my product as it is the most common for academic research papers and I have found it, generally, the easiest to understand and use.

Essay ideas!

As I am progressing forward with my research, I am starting to come up with a lot of ideas that I may want to include in my essay when I arrive at the writing process. I have come to realise that I need to record these ideas as the creation of the end-product of our project is very near, therefore I need to start focusing on what I am going to write about, as well as the research. Recording them as I continue with my research will be useful for when I come to plan and write my essay as I can reflect on my previous ideas and expand/develop them with newly conjured ideas that I received from new information.