Narrowing Your Topic

After you choose a topic for your paper, you must then narrow it down. How and why do we do this?

We begin with a very broad topic (like ‘education’) and step by step narrow the topic so that it becomes one that will be manageable for a research paper. This is called a “limited topic.”  

Next, you will find sources about your limited topic, in this example I would look for sources that provide information about online college writing classes.  Often you gather more sources than you will need because you are not yet sure what you will be proving until you learn a little about your limited topic. 

Next, you read, highlight, and take notes from your sources.  This helps you to see what information you have really collected and helps you learn more about your limited topic.  

Finally, you take your limited topic and the information you learned through research to form a unique argument of your own. This will be your thesis statement, the backbone of your paper. Click Thesis Statement to see all posts relating to how to form an effective thesis statement.