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Research can be one of the hardest parts of writing, this is mostly because of how much time and effort has to be put into it, and who wants to do that, that’s boring. Luckily though theres a couple of ways to do research, and the one we are looking at is the one shown by the awesome content creators, Overly Sarcastic Productions. They create all kinds of wonderful content that helps viewers understand stuff like history, mythology, and tropes in a fun and entertaining way. We can full-heartedly suggest this channel to all of you. And for those of you looking for a summary after giving the video a click and a view, we’ve got one down below. Now enjoy the video, and summary if you want.

Summary

A controversial opinion to start, use Wikipedia. And by this Red doesn’t mean that you should only use Wikipedia, if that were the case the video would’ve been a minute long, no, what she means is that you should use the sources that the Wikipedia article provides. Find and gather all the sources that relate to whatever your researching, find related groups, people, time periods, just anything that could come up useful in what your doing.

After gathering the sources its time to look into them. If you’re lucky they’ll be online articles, but they will most likely be books, books that you can find either at your local library or a lucky Google search. It’s important to note that there are two different kinds of sources, primary and secondary. Primary sources are the original thing being looked at as just that thing, while secondary sources are about looking at the outside reactions to that thing, and everything surrounding it. Imagine a video being posted on YouTube, that’s the primary source, and then a bunch of people record themselves reacting to this video, that’s the secondary source. And most people who have a need in their job to research things say that you should read the primary sources first, and then a secondary source last to help create a more accurate view of the subject matter. Reading secondary sources is good for finding biases in the original work, basically contextualizing what could be happening in the creation of the primary source that would make the author embellish certain topics. Don’t ignore credible sources that could have contrary information to what you have already found, because if you do your not researching, you’re just confirming what you already think.

Take notes on every little thing that could pertain to what your researching. Don’t have the attitude of saying that you’ll remember it later, instead keep in mind that this is just consolidating all of your sources into one place so you don’t have to return to the original sources. After gathering your notes you should start organizing and finding the connections between everything. And then after connecting all your evidence you can finally a make thesis on you subject.

Links

Find OSP’s channel by clicking here.

View the original video on YouTube by clicking here.

Visit their website by clicking here.

They also have a Twitter you can follow, @OSPyoutube.