Part I. Understand Background of Your Topic - ELC2014 - Advanced English for University Studies - Guides & Tutorials at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

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Where to Start?

You can start by reading background information on your topic and developing your terminology around the topic.

1. From Reference Works

Reference works include dictionaries, encyclopaedias, and handbooks. They provide authoritative summary information on a field or subject.

Reading articles published in reference works helps you:

Understand the key issues, history, and sometimes the latest debates on a topic without going through dozens of books, journal articles, and other materials.
Develop a mind map on a topic and learn keywords and terminologies for further research.

Useful resources for references and summary information:

Below are some recommended sources where you can find reference works. Try searching for your topic in any of these sources and see if you can find any interesting articles. Then, expand your terminology further.

Credo Reference

Credo Reference helps you find short articles on a topic from thousands of reference books in different disciplines. It's the scholarly version of Wikipedia.

Here you can see an example. After searching the topic, we got a few articles (and sometimes a mind map too) related to the topic.

SAGE Knowledge

SAGE Knowledge is another database to find published reference works. If you wish to explore a topic in more details, you can read more from these handbooks and encyclopedia articles.

OneSearch

OneSearch is library's search engine where you can find almost everything the Library has including books, journals, DVDs. You can use OneSearch to search the reference works too. Run a search on your topic and limit by "Reference Entries". Clicking on the search result will bring you to the article published in reference works.

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia. It's a great tool to help you quickly get an overview of a topic and understand the key issues or latest debates.

Sometimes students may come up with this question:

Should I use Wikipedia for research?

The short answer is, yes you can. However, you need to:

Remember that Wikipedia is a wiki where anyone can edit, delete or add false information.
Always check the source and cite the original sources.
Use information from credible sources, e.g.scholarly journals, government websites, professional associations, reputable online newspapers, etc.

Below is a snapshot of an Wikipedia article's reference list, with a few creditable sources highlighted.

2. From News & Information Around You

You will be given a research topic for your assignment. Try searching the topic on Google and check the result list - you may see entries from newspapers, Wikipedia or other sources.

At this stage, you can do 3 things:

First, try to collect some keywords from the search results (e.g. Google Search results).
Read 2-3 articles from the top results (e.g. News articles or Wikipedia articles) to understand more about the topic. Continue to collect keywords from the articles.
While reading, consider other related terms and develop your terminology around the topic.

Recommended News Resources:

If you wish to find more news articles on a topic, you can use these Library-subscribed news databases.

Factiva
provides worldwide full-text coverage of local and regional newspapers, trade publications, business newswires, press release wires, media transcripts, news photos, business-rich Web sites, investment analyst reports, market research reports, etc.
South China Morning Post (SCMP)
Provides online access to South China Morning Post articles of the latest 20 years ("rolling archive").
WisersOne (formerly WiseNews)
Content from newspapers, magazines, journals and newswires in the Greater China region, including Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan.

Let's say the topic of your assignment is "hotel industry". You are interested to learn if there are any hotel industry studies related to COVID.

Click to see an example

You can google the terms and collect some keywords directly from search results. You can also explore some news articles and Wikipedia entries to further develop your terminology. Here are some examples:

From search results:

Keywords collected: