Day 15: Research Paper Question and Topic Selection

Review [3:30-3:45 (15 min)]
 Review Key Summary Writing Concepts


Part I: God/Bad Research? (5min)

Click HERE and consider the following scenarios in pairs. Follow the questions and discuss whether you believe the research topics were strong or weak and why. Be prepared to share your answers with the class.  

Part II: Topic Selection and Lecture PowerPoint [3:55-4:10 (15 min)]

Open the PowerPoint or simply follow along on the overhead. The PowerPoint highlights the difference between a general subject and the narrower topic and will help you when narrowing down your research topic. Feel free to take notes as we go through in the section entitled “Notes Page” under “View” in PowerPoint. Think about a topic, but make sure your topic is a topic that is arguable or could be debated. 

Part III: Guided Practice [4:10-4:25 (15 min)]

In small groups (or individually), select five general subjects listed on slide 11. Click HERE to access the worksheet for writing.Forthe five general topics, try yo come up with at least three more specific topics. Once finished, share your ideas with the class. 

keys for worksheets.

Part IV: Narrowing your research scope [4:25-4:45 (20 min)]

Open example research paper 1 and example research paper 2 and find the abstract or introduction for each.  Identify the who, what, when, where, and how (or the subject, place, type, time, and aspect questions) in each research abstract or introduction (using different colors to label each idea).  Also, identify the research question in each abstract or introduction and discuss the process you feel each writer took in developing their research question.  Share your ideas with the class. 

Part V: Title Writing [4:35-4:50 (15 minutes)]

Follow along on this power point as we go through the major components that make up academic title writing.

Homework: (5 min)

By Tuesday, I will be asking you to have narrowed down your topic of research and submit it to me via dropbox for approval. For now, even if you have no idea what you want to write, open a word document, label it NAME Research Topic and save it to your dropbox in a folder labeled UNIT 3. If you are unsure about your topic, I suggest submitting more than one topic so that I can give you feedback. The more information you provide in your folder, the more assistance I can be! Looking forward to reading your topic selections!