An Associate Professor of History at Bowdoin College, Patrick Rael, has created a wonderful resource for students. Reading, Writing and Researching for History: A Guide for College Students was developed, in great part, for students who will not be making the study of history their life’s work. Rael talks about history professors who often fail to convey their passion for the past to their students. They don’t always help guide students to ask questions with a critical, analytical eye. Yet, they often request students to display both that passion and critical thinking in their writing assignments.
Real has set out to help students overcome many of those difficulties. His researching history guide will help students to complete research paper assignments that will impress professors and maybe even get students excited about studying history. He shares tips on finding source materials, evaluating those sources and how to ask questions. He goes into great detail on information gathering and then provides assistance in writing the paper.
I’ve looked over Real’s researching history guide and I think it is a great resource for all students. In my mind, anything that helps students learn how to pick apart statements to differentiate between facts, suppositions and unproven opinions is highly useful. I would recommend this resource to all Freshmen students as it could prove extremely helpful in making the transition from high school to college reading and writing assignments.
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Introduction
- Preparing History Papers: the Short Version
- Avoid Common Mistakes in Your History Paper
- Reading
- How to Read a Secondary Source
- How to Read a Primary Source
- Predatory Reading
- Some Keys to Good Reading
- Historical Arguments
- Argument Concepts
- Analyzing Arguments
- How to Ask Good Questions
- What Makes a Question Good?
- From Observation to Hypothesis
- Research
- Research Papers
- The Research Process
- Keeping a Research Journal
- Structuring Your Paper
- Structuring Your Essay
- The Three Parts of a History Paper
- The Thesis
- History and Rhetoric
- Writing Your Paper
- Grammar for Historians
- Formatting Your Paper
- A Style Sheet for History Writers
- The Scholarly Voice: Crafting Historical Prose
- Working with Sources
- Presenting Primary Sources in Your Paper
- Citing Sources
- Advanced Citation
- Editing and Evaluation
- Paper-writing Checklist
- Peer Evaluations
- Frequent Grading Comments
- Generic Evaluation Rubric for Papers
- The Writing Model
- Samples for Presentation
- Sample Road Map
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Reading, Writing and Researching for History
