Frequently your subject will be given to you. In a psychology class, for example, you might be asked to explain Bruno Bettelheim’s Freudian analysis of fairy tales. In a composition course, assignments often ask you to analyze texts and evaluate arguments. In the business world, you may be assigned to draft a marketing plan.

When you are free to choose your own subject, let your curiosity focus your choice. Look through your readings and class notes to see if you can identify questions you’d like to explore. Consider topics within your major to deepen your expertise.

If your interest in a subject stems from your personal experience, you will want to ask what it is about your experience that would interest your audience and why. Perhaps you can use your experience to inform your research and to broaden your readers’ understanding of specific issues. Perhaps you can connect your personal experience to theory or research within an academic discipline.

Make sure that you can reasonably investigate your subject in the space you have. If you are limited to a few pages, for example, you could not do justice to a broad subject but instead need to focus and narrow a subject to a manageable topic.

Two effective ways of exploring a subject are freewriting and listing, which are discussed on the next pages.

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