Writing a research paper is one of the hardest things you’ll have to do. It’s long, time consuming, tedious, and can be incredibly frustrating depending on the topic you’re doing. However, writing the essay isn’t always the hard part but sometimes finding what to write about. Here are 5 easy ways to find a topic for your next research paper.
1. Research something that interests you. You might not always get the opportunity to chose your topic but when you do, make sure it’s about something you enjoy or that you find interesting. Writing about something that you find to be interesting is always a great way to find useful resources, formulate an argument, and to write something that’s compelling.
2. If you can’t think of anything take a break. Sometimes writer’s block can get the best of us and make you feel very overwhelmed. Taking a break, gaining perspective, and sometimes putting a spin on a trite or commonly used topic can bring new insight and will not only help you find a topic but it can help you win over you audience.
3. Talk to your professors. You’ve been given your professors because they’re some of the best in their field and most knowledgeable about current research. They’re a tool that you can use to your advantage and sometimes talking over a topic with them can help bring focus to what your argument is and can shed new light on resources and databases that you didn’t know existed.
4. Write down your argument or hypothesis. It’s hard enough to find a topic but it’s even harder when you’ve finally come up with a topic, sit down to write about it, and can’t remember where you had planned to go with your research. It helps with outlining your paper, finding new sources, and can really help set the ground work for your research.
5. Work from the end to the beginning. If you really can’t think of anything start researching scholarly articles about a very general topic. Read the abstract and write down the sources that interest you the most and see where you can go with them. You might find you like something out of the ordinary that you weren’t expecting.
I hope these tips help you guys out on your next research papers and that you’re able to find a topic with ease based on these tips!