The internet is a wonderful resource. It has all the information that students are likely to need about every topic they are studying. Internet research can be a very effective (and enjoyable) way of finding the information that you need. However, it is also very easy to spend a lot of time searching on the web and still not find what you are looking for. If you follow the 'rules' below, you can be sure to avoid wasting too much of your precious time.
The more exactly you know what you are looking for, the easier it will be to find it.
Most internet research requires you to enter keywords in a search engine such as Google. The success of your search depends entirely on the keywords you use. Your teacher or the librarian can tell you which keywords to use if you are not sure.
This means that you should enclose phrases in quotation marks to reduce the number of unwanted hits. For example, entering the 2 words French Revolution in Google returns 30 million hits. If you type in "French Revolution", you get just over one million.
The different search engines work in slightly different ways, but all of them use Boolean logic. For example if you type in the keywords Revolution -French in Google, the hits will not include any pages about the French Revolution.
In Google, the Advanced Search will help you use Boolean logic correctly, or read their help page. You could also ask your teacher/librarian to show you.
If you have used good keywords/keyword groups and correct Boolean logic, you should have a not-too-long list of links that contain the information you are looking for. These links come with one or two lines of information about the webpage they lead to. If you read this information with some care, you can avoid clicking on irrelevant pages. It is very time-wasting to wait a minute or so for a page to load, only to find that it is useless to your needs.
Anyone can put information on the internet. Not all of the information is correct or up-to-date. If you find a webpage that has unusual colours/fonts or contains many spelling mistakes, you should be very careful about trusting the information it contains. See if there are details about the author somewhere on the website, or ask your teacher/librarian to advise.
Much of the information on the web that is in English will be very hard for ESL students. An excellent idea is to research in your own language. You can then read the corresponding information in English with a far better chance of understanding it.
School libraries are full of books and other resources containing most of the information you need. If you use a library book, you can usually be sure of its reliability (although it may not be up-to-date). Libraries have access to excellent reference resources such as the Encyclopedia Britannica or ProQuest magazine database. It is often best to start research in the library and to use a web search engine only if the library does not have what you are looking for.
Review the reference resources in the Frankfurt International Upper School Library.
Once you have found the information you are looking for, you will need to do something with it. Often you will make notes on it before putting it into a piece of writing of your own. In this case, be sure to keep the URLs (web addresses) and titles of the [More on taking notes.]
.. and what you have to do with it once you have found it.
More about internet searching.
Evaluating internet resources 1.
Evaluating internet resources 2.