Coming up with a topic

In the final project for Ling. 305W, decisions about your topic go hand-in-hand with decisions you make about the genre, audience, and purpose of the text you want to write.

It can be helpful at the beginning to conduct an interest inventory. To do an interest inventory, think of a few categories you are interested in and then make lists under each category with specific ideas. Then consider which ideas you find the most interesting or that you think will work best for the project. Put check marks by the ones you think will be good and cross out ones you decide not to use at this point.

Narrowing your topic

Now you are at the point where you will need to think about narrowing your topic. Students often fall into the trap of thinking that a very general topic will be easier to write about than a narrow one. However, it is impossible for you to write comprehensively about a broad topic in the scope of this project. Ideas for how to narrow your topic can come from anywhere.

One strategy that might work is to create a mind map (often called a bubble map or web map) to help you think of different angles to your topic.

Another strategy is to use the question words Who, What and Where to focus your topic. While “when” may be a good question to use for a research project for another class, it is most likely you will be writing about a current topic or issue for this class. You can also think about specific causes or issues related to the topic you are interested in.

Another strategy is to do some preliminary research. For this, you can use the university library, an internet search, or Wikipedia. These places can give you ideas about what is already written about the topic. For example, if you are thinking about writing something about workplace discrimination, and you do a search in a library database, you will find articles about discrimination against specific groups or communities and articles about workplace discrimination in certain career or industry areas.

A final strategy is to use backwards design. In this strategy, you are thinking about the audience and purpose of the project and your end goal, i.e. what do you want your readers to learn from your information and what do you want them to do with the information after they have read. To use this strategy well, play devil’s advocate and argue against your ideas.

To see some of the above ideas in action, please read Process Narrative and Designing Research Backwards from Lumen Learning Composition II. Keep in mind as you read that these chapters are written for students doing traditional research papers. You may need to adjust your process somewhat for the purposes of our project in Ling. 30W.

Examples

Let’s say you are a civil engineering student. After conducting an interest inventory you decided you wanted to write about roundabouts. Now think about your audience and purpose and use backwards design. Maybe you decide that your target audience are people living in a place where roundabouts are being constructed and you decide that you want them to know that roundabouts are safer than traditional four-way or two-way stops so that they will support the construction of roundabouts in their area. Your project has a clear focus and you are ready to think more about the genre you would like to use to convey this message.

Here is another example. Let’s say you are a public health major and you are interested in writing about sleep. You have brainstormed several angles on this topic, such as different sleep needs by age (children, teens, adults, elderly), how screen use affects sleep, problems with sleep deficits, etc. By looking across everything you have have thought of and applying the question words, you come up with the following: How does lack of sleep (what) negatively affect teenagers (who) in the United States (where)? This is a pretty good topic but you will want to think a bit about the audience and purpose of the project and do some backwards designing to focus it. Maybe you decide that you want to write for the teens themselves or for the parents or guardians, or maybe you want to propose to the school board that they make high school start times later so that teens are more likely to get the sleep they need. Once you have decided on the audience and purpose, you are ready to think more about the genre.

Remember to consider these guiding questions:

• Is my topic narrow enough for the scope of this project?
• Is my topic appropriate for the genre?
• Who is my audience?
• What would my audience learn from reading this project and what do I hope they will do with this information?

Planning the research

Once you have your narrowed topic and your genre, audience, and purpose determined, you can plan your research. The type of research you do depends on the genre you have decided to write.

This research falls under two main types:

• Primary or Original research — information you collect through observation, interviews, surveys, analyses, or experiments
• Secondary or Text-based research — using sources such as books or articles that you have found through search engines or library databases. These sources are written by others.

Let’s use our examples from above.

Our civil engineering students have decided to write a persuasive/commentary article for a newspaper that might appear on the op-ed page. They might use a mix of original research (such as interviews with experts on road safety) and text-based sources (that can provide statistics and background information) in their article.

Our students writing about the negative effects of lack of sleep on teens have decided to write an informative article for an online magazine that is targeted toward teenagers. They have also decided to use a mix of types of research. They have decided to use text-based sources to get information on how much sleep teens need and different types of negative effects, but they also decided that to appeal to their audience they would want to include personal experiences of teenagers, so they they are getting that through original research (interviewing teens about their sleep habits).

Not all genres require a mix of research methods. An academic literature review would rely solely on text-based sources (academic research articles that are found through the library database or through Google Scholar). And the above examples could be done with only one type of research. In making these decisions, you will want to consider what the best source will be, what will have the most impact for your readers, and what you will be reasonably able to manage in the time you have to complete your project.

Before you dive in with the research, you will also want to consider what your audience will need to know to understand your topic. This will help you frame your research and keep you in control of the sources you find, rather than letting the sources you find control the project.

Our students writing about the negative effects of lack of sleep on teenagers have decided they need the following information:

• information about how much sleep teens need (recommended amount)
• why do teens need that amount of sleep (importance of sleep to growth and brain development)
• statistics about the amount of sleep the average teen gets
• information about negative effects of not getting enough sleep (physical, mental, academic, etc.)
• strategies for increasing the amount of sleep teens get (what works and what doesn’t work)

Then they think about where the best places are to get that information or the type of research that they might use to collect it.

• information about how much sleep teens need (recommended amount) — text-based sources
• why do teens need that much (how is it important to growth and brain development) — text-based sources
• statistics about how much sleep the average teen gets — text-based sources + interviews
• information about negative effects (physical, mental, academic, etc.) — text-based sources + interviews
• strategies for increasing sleep for teens (what works and what doesn’t work) — text-based sources + interviews

The next two chapters have more information about engaging in these research methods.