Any topic you choose to research must be manageable—it should suit the scope, audience, length, and time limits of your assignment. Making a topic manageable often requires narrowing it, but you may also need to find a particular slant and look for a question to guide your research. To arrive at such a question, you might first generate a series of questions about your topic. You can then evaluate them and choose one or two that are both interesting and manageable.

Sample: A student researcher’s narrowed topic

First-year writing student David Craig knew that he had to zero in on some aspect of texting or messaging and take a position on it. He considered researching “the prevalence of messaging worldwide,” but because he didn’t know where to begin, he realized that this topic was vague and unmanageable. He spoke with two instructors about his topic, and both of them criticized messaging for its negative influence on students’ writing. Intrigued by this reaction, David decided to focus on messaging language and its harmful effects on youth literacy.

Find out more about how David Craig identified this topic and turned a hypothesis into a working thesis for his research project.

Student Writing: A student research essay, MLA style (David Craig)