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Understanding Research |
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Understanding
Research |
How Do I Identify My Key Concepts? Look at your topic sentence and find the major ideas expressed in that sentence. In other words, take your topic and boil it down to its bare essentials—just the major components, that is, the key concepts. Often the key concepts are found in the major nouns or phrases in your topic, or they can be other terms that identify a unique characteristic of your topic (a location, for example). Identifying the Key Concepts in Your Topic:
(10) Do You Know How?
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Research
process
Survivor
Tip: Your key concepts serve as building blocks for generating
the search terms you use in searching library catalogs, library databases,
and search engines. Take time and identify your key concepts carefully—be
sure your building blocks form a solid foundation!