Informative Essay

How do you choose a research topic? 

When you already have an essay prompt, it might seem like you don't need to develop your research topic. But it can still be helpful to identify the main ideas in the prompt since that will determine how you look for information in your research.

As American author Zora Neale Hurston wrote, “research is formalized curiosity” and a strong research topic begins with something which you are sincerely curious to know more about.

Here are some other important qualities of a good research topic: 

• right-sized 
• looks at relationships between concepts
• about something you're genuinely interested in

It can also be useful to do a little bit of research before you settle on your topic. Watch the video below, Picking Your Topic IS Research, to learn more. 

Turning Your Topic Into a Question

Now that you have a potential research topic, let's think about how you might turn it into a focused research question. 

Check out this video below which demonstrates the process of turning a research topic into a research question. 

Converting Concepts to Search Terms

Before you begin to look for information on your research topic, it's helpful to identify the main concepts in your essay prompt for two reasons:

• This will help you to think about how you might write about or present the topic in your research essay. What kinds of ideas, events, concepts, or people are you going to be writing about?
• These concepts can be used as search terms and/or phrases when you begin to look for information about your research topic. 

How do you turn those main concepts into search terms? 

The video below shows you how to:

• identify the main concepts in your research question or research prompt
• define those main concepts
• use the concept definitions to search for information on your topic