Exploring purpose and topic

topic

When you are assigned a report, carefully identify the subgenre (psychology term paper, physics lab report, article for an arts journal) and the kinds of information your report will require. Will your report merely answer a factual question about a topic and deliver basic information? Or are you expected to do a more in-depth study or compare different points of view, as you would in an investigative report? Or might the report deliver information based on your own research or experiments? Consider your various options as you select a topic.

Answer questions. For this kind of report, include basic facts and, perhaps, an overview of key features, issues, or problems. Think of an encyclopedia entry as a model: Facts are laid out cleanly, usually under a series of headings. The discussions are generally efficient and basic, not exhaustive.

Assigned an informative piece like this, you can choose topics that might otherwise seem overly ambitious. When readers expect an overview, not expertise, you can easily write two or three fact-filled pages on “Atonal Music” or “The Battle of Salamis” by focusing on just a few key figures, events, or concepts. Given a prompt of this sort, consider a topic that introduces you to new ideas or perspectives — providing you this opportunity could, in fact, be an instructor’s rationale for such an assignment.

Review what is already known about a subject. Instructors who ask you to write five- or ten-page reports on specific subjects within a field — for example, to compare banking practices in Japan and the European Union or to describe current trends in museum architecture — doubtless know plenty about those subjects already. They want you to look at the topic in some depth to increase what you know. But the subject may also be one evolving rapidly because of current events, technological changes, or ongoing research.

So consider updating an idea introduced in a lecture or textbook: You might be surprised by how much you can add to what an instructor has presented. If workers are striking in Greece again, make that a focal point of your general report on European Union economic policies; if your course covers globalism, consider how a world community made smaller by jet travel complicates the response to epidemic diseases. In considering topics for in-depth reports, you’ll find “research guides” especially helpful. (plan a project) You may also want to consult librarians or experts in the field you’re writing about. (ask for help)

Report new knowledge. Many schools encourage undergraduates to conduct original research in college. In most cases, this work is done under the supervision of an instructor in your major field, and you’ll probably choose a topic only after developing expertise in some area. For a sampling of research topics students from different schools have explored, search “undergraduate research journal” on the Web.

If you have trouble finding a subject for a report, try the brainstorming techniques suggested in Chapter 19, both to identify topic ideas and to narrow them to manageable size.