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Assignment | Argument Essay (Duhart): Topic Development

ENGL 1302 | Prof. Bonnie Duhart (Fall 2024)

Topic, Research Question, Thesis

First, you develop and narrow down your topic -- the general idea of what you're going to be researching. From that, you need to develop your research question, i.e. what is the question you are attempting to answer by doing your research? This, in turn, will form the basis for your paper's thesis (your claim/argument/answer) which you'll explicitly state in your introduction.

From your central topic, you develop your research question(s) to investigate, and then finally develop a thesis statement which answers your chosen question.

Develop Your Thesis

Thesis statements...

  • give a preview of what arguments you'll be making
  • usually one sentence long
  • last sentence of your introduction paragraph

Thesis statements should be:


Specific

lay out exactly the arguments/reasons you're using in your thesis


Contestable

if you can find a definitive yes/no answer within a few minutes of Google searching, it's not arguable enough


Narrow

not about all of [topic], but this little sliver of a [topic] in a particular context


Provable

or at least something you can persuasively argue

Building Out a Topic (To Narrow Down Later)

Fake News is near the center of the image, surrounded by empty space.

Start off with your theme or initial topic idea.

Start writing down what comes to mind -- what do you already know about this central idea? Include specific examples, keywords, causes, impacts... throw everything at the wall now. We'll worry about what sticks later.

Each of the branches has gained sub-branches of its own. E.g. Social Media goes out to Twitter, Facebook, which branch into advertising and bots and viral content.

Don't stop with just one layer of ideas -- keep drilling deeper!

Once you get stuck, start doing some not-really-research. Hit up Google, Wikipedia, your textbook, and so to get some more bits and pieces to add in.

The entire image is now covered in words and ideas related to fake news with some arrows criss-crossing between ideas that reconnect to each other.

You may have started out thinking you knew what that central idea would involve, but now you can see how big (and how many possible directions for research) there really are!

Now that you can see what's going on, consider where your connections are strongest, or where you've made the most most, or what seems most interesting to you.

What are you asking yourself about those ideas? How do they relate to each other? What do you want to find out more of?

This view represents one possibility for a narrower topic. We might ask,

  • How does the psychology of confirmation bias contribute to the spread (or maybe creation) of fake news?
  • How can people recognize and overcome their personal biases?

Another possibility...

  • Is fake news inherent to social media?
  • What has fake news looked liked through history, prior to the Internet?

... and another possibility.

  • Do limits on free speech apply to misinformation shared on private social networks?
  • Does (or should) the government have the power to regulate information shared on social media in order to protect the public interest?

Pre-Research

Mind Map a Topic