Step I. Planning stage

OBJECTIVES: at the planning stage you are going to learn how to analyze, organize, and report the literature.

Before you write almost anything, you need to read. Read to get new ideas on your topic and find necessary information. Read to learn new vocabulary. Read to discover your own opinions.

Step one is to read several passages before you begin to write a paragraph. But first you should provide answers to the seven basic questions: Why? To whom? What? Where? When? How long? How? Table 1 shows you the way.

Table 1

Seven basic questions

1	Why?	the aims of your report, those evident and hidden
2	To whom?	what the audience knows about the subject, their status, age, culture, specific interests – the information you present should tailor their needs
3	What?	the subject matter of the report
4	Where?	the place where the report will be delivered ( a large conference hall, a small meeting room, with the help of a microphone or without it, etc.)
5	When?	the time (the first report, the last one, after of before the break, in the evening, etc.)
6	How long?	the length of the report is determined by many factors, but generally try to make your talk reasonably short
7	How?	the format, or form of the report including the use of demonstration materials and handouts

Now you are ready to survey the information on your topic. The review starts with the systematic identification, location, and analysis of documents containing information related to your topic. These documents include articles, monographs, books, other research reports, and electronic media. You should start examining a wide range of sources. Your library may have an online computer search, CD-ROM access capability, or Internet hookups. Make a list of key words to guide your literature search. Primary or secondary sources related to your topic may be found in a variety of ways:

1. searching for books in the library;

2. consulting computer database to locate journal articles, reports, and other publications;

3. obtaining the references listed in the bibliographies in the secondary sources you previously located;

4. searching the Internet and the World Wide Web for up-to-date information.

Here are some Web sites that could be useful to you. UnCoverWeb (http://uncweb.carl.org) - UnCover is a database with brief descriptive information about articles from more than 17,000 multidisciplinary journals. NewJour (http://gort.ucsd.edu/newjour) - this site provides an up-to-date list of journals and newsletters available on the Internet on any subject. It is entirely possible that you want to access information on the World Wide Web that is not available in the Web addresses just given. The easiest, quickest way to find interesting new sites on the World Wide Web is to use a search engine to look for Web pages containing key words that you enter. Search engines are sites that allow you to search the entire Internet for specific information. Examples of search engines include MSN, Yahoo!, Lycos, Excite, and Alta Vista. Once you have entered a key word or key words in the appropriate place on the search engine’s home page, the search engine examines the entire Internet for sites that contain your key words.

After you have identified the primary references related to your topic, you are ready to abstracting the references (see Annex 1). For example,