I have been asked to come up with a “catchy acronym” for doing/evaluating/using research sources. Each letter will have an instruction module attached. I decided on the acronym FACTS:
FIND ANALYZE CITE T____ SYNTHESIZE
I’m stumped on a relevant T word however. Type and Try are way too simple, Tautology and Tantalize both sound great but are irrelvant, and Tutu and Tittiesare right out. (Synthesize is mandatory since it’s in our new curriculum guide.)
The best I can think of is Tweak and I’ll probably go with that, but can anybody think of a better one? It should have something do with the research process. The ideal word would be a known synonym for winnow, sift or condense (i.e. to choose the parts of the source that are important to your paper) but nothing presents itself.
I’ve also considered the acronym QUACKS for waying a web site’s validity:
Qualifications of the author Users (i.e. who is the site intended for) Agenda (is there an obvious one?) Currency (when was this written) K Sources (does he/she gie any for factual claims?)
but this one’s not as important. I’ve considered Knowledge (does the author have any of the subject?) but that’s too closely related to qualifications)
and I’ve considered Kinship (did the author’s parents probably have too close of one to safely breed?)
but that seems somehow inappropriate.
Any suggestions for T or K words for the above? (And what the hell is it with academic administrators and acronyms?)
If I may, I think you are going about it backwards. You are settling on a catchy acronym, then you’re inventing your content so it fits.
I think you should create your titles first, prioritize them, then see if you get anything close to a word from their first initials. If not, start thinking about possible synonyms that will work to form your eventual acronym.
Don’t forget, acronyms do not need to be perfect. You can play with spellings (QUAX instead of QUACKS, for example) or eliminate the use of prepositions in the acronym (The United States of America is the USA, not the USOA).
I’m actually caught up on the “cite” portion. So you’ve found it. You’ve analyzed it. Citing doesn’t sound like the third thing to do, especially when you’re “synthesizing” it as your last step. What about “categorize”?
Find
Analyze
Categorize (it even rhymes!)
Tea Party
Synthesize
In this one, your T could be “theorize,” to complete the rhyming.
I’m thinking of something along the lines of “paraphrase,” so that students understand the importance of using your own words too, but I can’t think of a “T” word. Maybe “transcribe?” (Perhaps this is covered by the Synthesize.)
For the web one, if you could think of the right K word for timing/relevance/current-ness, you could change the C to “Content.” If a web site’s content is crap, it doesn’t really matter how good the rest of it is. Of course, I can’t think of a “K” word that is roughly analogous to “timeliness.”