Choosing a Topic and Narrowing it Down

The universe is something fascinating to ponder, but it doesn't make a great research paper topic. You just can’t "save the world" in one essay.

Sound flippant? Well, sometimes novice writers tend to attack a far bigger topic than can be effectively dealt with in a term paper. Some students think that a paper will sound more academic if they can cram as much into it as possible.

However, a well researched and supported paper entitled "The development of silicon chip technology in the US" has far more potential than one called "The development of modern electronics"

What's the difference?

Notice how "modern electronics" has been narrowed down to the much subtopic of "silicon chips", which is enough to handle. The topic has also been narrowed down in terms of place, so that you wouldn't have to worry about the development in any other country.

Here are examples of very broad essays with topics very similar to the following:

• A comparison of the economic styles of Japan, Korea and China and what the future holds.
• A history of women’s domestic roles in South America
• How parenting styles differ around the world
• Similarities and differences in twentieth century art
• Why Persian poetry is better than English poetry
• African food
• What life in the 21st century will be like

Take a look. Each of these topics is much too large for a research paper. Some of them would make good books!

How can each of these be broken down into smaller parts?

Let's try one as an example:

African food "African" alone can be broken down into geographic regions, countries or ethnic groups, say Zulu, Ghanaian, or West African, for example.

"Food" can be sub-categorized into specific dishes or food groups (meats, vegetables), methods of preparation.
Also, the topic could be narrowed by time (contemporary foods, or ancient), and by "slant" (nutrition, holidays) and social class (who eats what?).

So, from one large topic you could create several more manageable ones, just by playing mix-and-match:

West African celebration foods; "Typical meals of the Egyptian Pharaohs"; food preservation techniques of the desert nomads"; etc.

Try it yourself with the other "huge" topics listed above, just to practice.

The words "always", "never", "all", "every", "nobody", and "everyone" should also set off warning bells. These words imply an all-inclusive scope, no matter what the topic is, and can often cause incorrect or unsupportable overgeneralizations:

Go To Page: 1 2

Articles in this Topic    Discussions in this Topic