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Preface | |
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General Advice about Writing and Reading Biology | |
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Introduction and General Rules | |
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What Do Biologists Write about, and why? | |
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The Keys to Success | |
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Ten major rules for preparing a first draft | |
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Six major rules for developing your final draft | |
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Eight finer points: the easy stuff | |
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The annoying but essential final pass | |
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On Using Computers in Writing | |
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On Using Computers for Data Storage, Analysis, and Presentation | |
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Summary | |
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Getting the Most from Your Word-Processing Program | |
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Locating Useful Sources | |
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Using Indexes | |
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Using Science Citation Index | |
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Using Current Contents | |
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Using Medline and Other Databases | |
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Prowling the Internet | |
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Conducting Web Searches: Developing Productive Search Strategies | |
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Final Thoughts about Efficient Searching: Technology Isn't Everything | |
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Closing Thoughts | |
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Summary | |
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Using Search Engines Effectively | |
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General Advice on Reading and Note-Taking | |
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Why Read and What to Read | |
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Effective Reading | |
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Reading Data: Plumbing the Depths of Figures and Tables | |
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Reading Text: Summarize as You Go | |
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Plagiarism and Note-Taking | |
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Plagiarism | |
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Take notes in your own words | |
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Split-page note-taking: A can't-fail system | |
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Final thoughts on note-taking: Document your sources | |
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Summary | |
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Reading and Writing About Statistical Analyses | |
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Statistical Essentials | |
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Variability and its representation | |
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When is a difference a meaningful difference? What you need to know about tomatoes, coins, and random events | |
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Establishing a null hypothesis | |
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Conducting the analysis, and interpreting the results | |
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Degrees of freedom | |
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Summary: Using Statistics to Test Hypotheses | |
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Moving Beyond p-Values | |
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Statistical power | |
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Effect magnitudes | |
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Reading about Statistics | |
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Writing about Statistics | |
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Citing Sources and Listing References | |
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Citing Sources | |
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Summary of Citation Format Rules | |
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Preparing the Literature Cited Section | |
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Listing the references-General rules | |
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Listing the references-Using the correct format | |
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A Sample Literature Cited Section | |
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Bibliographic Management Software | |
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Producing Hanging Indents | |
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Revising | |
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Preparing the Draft for Surgery: Plotting Idea Maps | |
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Revising for Content | |
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Revising for Clarity | |
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Taming disobedient sentences-Sentences that don't say what the author means | |
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The dangers of It | |
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Problems with and | |
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Headache by acronym | |
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Revising for Completeness | |
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Revising for Conciseness | |
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First commandment: Eliminate unnecessary prepositions | |
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Second commandment: Avoid weak verbs | |
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Third commandment: Do not overuse the passive voice | |
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Fourth commandment: Make the organism the agent of the action | |
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Fifth commandment: Incorporate definitions into your sentences | |
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Revising for Flow | |
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A short exercise in establishing coherence | |
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Improving flow using punctuation | |
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Revising for Teleology and Anthropomorphism | |
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Revising for Spelling Errors | |
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Revising for Grammar and Proper Word Usage | |
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A grammatical aside: Rules-that-are-not-rules | |
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A strategy for revising: Pass by pass by pass | |
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Becoming a Good Reviewer | |
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Receiving criticism | |
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Fine-tuning | |
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Sentences in need of revision | |
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Checklist | |
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Tracking Changes Made to Documents | |
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Guidelines for Specific Tasks | |
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Writing Summaries and Critiques | |
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Writing the First Draft | |
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Writing the Summary | |
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Sample Student Summary | |
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Analysis of student summary | |
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Writing the Critique | |
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The critique | |
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Analysis of student critique | |
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Concluding Thoughts | |
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Writing Essays and Review Papers | |
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Why Bother? | |
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Getting Started | |
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Researching Your Topic | |
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Developing a Thesis Statement | |
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Writing the Paper | |
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Getting underway: Taking and organizing your notes | |
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The crucial first paragraph | |
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Supporting your argument | |
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The closing paragraph | |
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Citing Sources | |
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Creating a Title | |
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Revising | |
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Checklist | |
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Writing Laboratory and Other Research Reports | |
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Why Are You Doing This? | |
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The Purpose of Laboratory and Field Notebooks | |
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Taking notes | |
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Making drawings | |
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Components of the Research Report | |
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Where to Start | |
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When to Start | |
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Writing the Materials and Methods Section | |
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Determining the correct level of detail | |
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Giving rationales | |
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Describing data analysis | |
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Use of subheadings | |
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A model materials and methods section | |
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Writing the Results Section | |
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Summarizing data using tables and graphs | |
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Constructing a summary table | |
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To graph or not to graph | |
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Preparing graphs | |
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(Not) falsifying data | |
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The question: To connect or not to connect the dots? | |
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Making bar graphs and histograms | |
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Learning to love logarithms | |
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Preparing tables | |
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Making your graphs and tables self-sufficient | |
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Putting your graphs and tables in order | |
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Incorporating figures and tables into your report (or not) | |
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Verbalizing results: General principles | |
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Verbalizing results: Turning principles into action | |
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What is a "figure"? | |
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Writing about negative results | |
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Writing about numbers | |
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In anticipation-Preparing in advance for data collection | |
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Citing Sources | |
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Writing the Discussion Section | |
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Expectations | |
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Explaining unexpected results | |
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Analysis of specific examples | |
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Writing the Introduction Section | |
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Stating the question | |
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An aside: Studies versus experiments | |
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Providing the background | |
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A sample introduction | |
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Talking about Your Study Organism or Field Site | |
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Deciding on a Title | |
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Writing an Abstract | |
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Preparing an Acknowledgments Section | |
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Preparing the Literature Cited Section | |
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Preparing a Paper for Formal Publication | |
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Checklist for the Final Draft | |
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Using Computer Spreadsheets for Data Collection | |
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Graphing with Excel | |
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Writing Research Proposals | |
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What Are Reviewers Looking For? | |
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Researching Your Topic | |
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What Makes a Good Research Question? | |
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Writing the Proposal | |
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Introduction | |
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Background | |
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Proposed research | |
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Citing references and preparing the literature cited section | |
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Tightening the Logic | |
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The Life of a Real Research Proposal | |
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Checklist | |
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Answering Essay Questions | |
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Basic Principles | |
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Applying the Principles | |
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Writing a Poster Presentation | |
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Layout of the Poster | |
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Making the Poster | |
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Checklist for Making Posters | |
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Writing for a General Audience: Science Journalism | |
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Science Journalism Based on Published Research | |
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The simple statement and bullet leads | |
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The narrative lead | |
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The surprise or paradox lead | |
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Science journalism in action: An example | |
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Journalism Based on an Interview | |
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Preparing Oral Presentations | |
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Talking about Published Research Papers | |
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Preparing the talk | |
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Giving the talk | |
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Talking about Original Research | |
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Talking about Proposed Research | |
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The Listener's Responsibility | |
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Preparing Effective Slides and Overheads | |
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The Pros and Cons of PowerPoint Presentations | |
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Checklist for Being Judged | |
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Writing Letters of Application | |
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Before You Start | |
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Preparing the Resume | |
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Preparing the Cover Letter | |
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Recruiting Effective Letters of Recommendation | |
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The Disassembled Paragraph Reconstituted (From Chapter 6) | |
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Revised Sample Sentences | |
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Revised Sample Sentences in Final Form | |
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Commonly Used Abbreviations | |
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Suggested References for Further Reading | |
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Sample Form for Peer Review | |
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Some Useful Web Sites | |
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Using the Paper Versions of Leading Indexing Services | |
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Index | |