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MILE 5000 - Language Learning: Seach Techniques

Useful Seach Techniques

The search techniques below can save you time and give you more relevant results than typing blindly into Google or other search tools.

Known Item: Classic Scholarly method: Find References in Your Reading

When you do research, you will find things cited in papers & books you read.  You can then look those up and read them.

Example: I read a chapter in this e-book 

Ho, B.C. and Li. Q. (2013). Rural Chinese Women's Political Participation. In Z. Hao and S. Chen (Eds), Social Issues in China : Gender, Ethnicity, Labor, and the Environment (pp. 23-44.). Dordrecht, Netherlands, Springer. Retrieved from: http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-1-4614-2224-2

chapter example image showing words and highlighted reference

1. You decide to follow-up on the in-text citation as written in the article " In Tong's studies (2003) Chinese men fare better....".   So you go to the full reference below.

reference to: Tong, J. (2003). The gender gao ub political culture and participation in China. Communist and Post-Communist Studies 36(2) 131-150.

2. You then search for the article in PrimoCentral of PowerSearch - very generally - using the title

screen shot primo central search of gender gap political china - over 70,000 resuls

 

Results - 75,000, but the one you want is the top (thank goodness!). Then you read it. This may lead you  to more citations and useful resources.

 

A more efficient search would use advanced search with author = Tong + title= gender gap political china

screen shot of results of advanced search author is Tong and title words are gender gap political china

 

Citation Chaining - Modern Addition to Classic Method

The "classic method" allows you to search backwards.

Now modern tools also allow you to search forwards! You can learn more about Citation chaining in the Citation Chaining Guide & by watching the videos below

Citation chaining helps you quickly find related articles through citations. It is an essential technique to support your literature review process.

You can do backward and forward searching based on an article in hand.

◀◀  Backward searching

A "perfect" article you have in hand

 Forward searching  ▶▶
  • finds articles the author used. These articles are usually called: 

"References", "Cited Articles", "Cited Documents"

  • helps you track classical and foundational studies
  • finds articles who used this article. These articles are usually called:

"Citing Articles", "Citing Documents"

  • helps you track latest development on your topic

"What is Citation Chaining" - Claremont Colleges Library (2 min 3 sec)

Citation Chaining - GoogleScholar - Seattle U

Citation Chaining - Web of Science - UNSW Canberra

Search Smart - Short videos on Search Techniques

Most databases do not support "natural language" searching. But, if you learn some |smart search" techniques, you will be able to target your searching better.. The image below is linked to several short videos to help you learn new and different search techniques.

thumbnails of several short HKUST Library made videos. clicking on this image will bring to the tags "search smart" on the e-learning server

Use Search Fields - "Advanced Search"

Most databases have them!  

Good place for easy field searching

Example in PowerSearch

screen shot advanced search gender and political participation and china OR chinese


Example in Proquest

screen shot of proquest advanced search in abstract for gender and oltical participation and chin OR chinese

Example in Social Science Citation Index

screen shot of web of science - social science advanced search gender and politial participation and china OR chinese

 

Notice how of the fields you can search relate to the information we use to make a citation? That's called "meta-data"

Unkown Items: Identify Concepts & Keywords

Identify Main Concepts and Keywords

The best way to search most databases is by keywords. You need to "translate" your research question into concepts and keywords to help the database understand what you are looking for.

Example

Topic:  ESL and listening skills in the classroom

Question(s):

What are the major theories on teaching and learning listening skills in the ESL classroom?  Is there a qualitative difference between people developing listening skills "in person" versus via audio-video (AV)? Is there a difference between learning listening with AV versus audio only?

Concept Mapping

  • Concept 1: listening skills
  • Concept 2: English as a Second Language
  • Concept 3: audio-visual
  • Concept 4:  in-person

Map concepts to keywords, Think of...

  •  Synonyms (words with similar meaning)
  •  Related terms (narrower & broader)

Keywords

Concept 1: listening, listen, verbal comprehension

Concept 2:  English as a Second Language, ESL, Teaching English as a Foreign Language, TFEL

Concept 3: audio-visual, AV, videos, podcasts, educational technology, YouTube, online

Concept 4:  face-to-face-teaching, in-person teaching

Use Search fields to decrease or increase your results

Search one area/field (e.g. title)  to set limits on your search. This will help you.  

  • Sometimes your first search finds little. In library-land we call this "too narrow".
  • So you will want to modify the search and try to get more results. In library-land we say you want to "broaden" the search.
  • For example, go from searching the title only, to searching the full-text.

From the first search in a search engine that you do, be aware and critical of what you are finding. Think about what you are searching (title only? full-text? subject?). 

Search field Exampls in Proquest

 

Example: Search fields in Proquest

Search field

Code

Example

Abstract

ab

ab(“second language learning”)

Title

ti

ti(chinese as a second language)

Publication title

Pub

pub(“language learning”)

Author

au

au( jiang wenying)

Year

yr

yr (2008)

subject

su

su(second language instruction)

Example - Search Technique 3 - Boolean Searching

Combining Keywords into search statements using Boolean Operators

 Examples of using Boolean Operators

AND

 - All keywords must appear in the results
– Narrows a search, find less numbers of record

ESL AND listening

OR

–Any one or all of the keywords should appear
–Broadens a search, find more

 "English as a Second Language" OR ESL

(  )

Brackets combine keywords of similar concept

 

(""English as a Second Language" OR ESL ) 

AND

(listening OR listen)

 

Tips:

Don't make your search too long and complicated.

Begin by combining only TWO aspects (focus areas) at a time.

General Tips

Tips:  Research is not "do it once in this order & you are done".  These tips are strategies are recommendations for approaches that you may often do at different points on your research journey.

  1. Start with what you have been given
    1. Ideas, information, data,  themes, methods of analysis from  lectures
    2. Ideas, information, data, themes, arguments, from readings
  2. Look for clues in your readings (syllabus)
    1. Main argument, findings  (in abstract? in conclusion?)
    2. Keywords, special terms?
    3. Important authors?
    4. References to other articles, books, statistics  in assigned readings (for your follow-up)  = Classic Scholarly Method
  3. Use References from things you research & find on your own  = The Classic Scholarly Method)
    1. When you do research, you will find things cited in papers & books you read. You can then look those up and read them.
  4. Think about the arguments & evidence from the readings and lectures and other info
    1. See if/how they apply to your topic
    2. What questions do they give you?   Start to search for answers or evidence that might lead you to your answer, your theory, your argument.
  5. Search for more answers or evidence (or questions!)  in recommended search tools
  6. Use smart search techniques in those search tools

Questions to Ask as You Evaluate Search Results

Questions to Ask Yourself : Search and Evaluation are tightly tied together!

Relevance

  • Do my terms or ideas related to my terms turn up in the title, abstract, or source title?

Date or Time

  • Does the publication date show it fits in my time period?
  • Does the publication date
  • Does the title indicate that the time period covered in the item relates to the time period I’m studying?

Amount of results

  • Am I getting too much (feeling overwhelmed?)
  • Am I getting too little (feeling like there’s nothing to build on)

Suitability

  • What is it?  (video?  Article? Book?)
  • How long is it (7 page article? 30 page article, 300 page thesis?
  • Is it appropriately scholarly and reliable?
  • If not scholarly, is it from a reliable source?
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