THE RESEARCHED ESSAY
FROM GENERAL SUBJECT TO ESSAY TOPIC
In order to enter selectively into the ongoing dialogue on the issue of your researched
essay, you need to decide more precisely on your own agenda as a researcher. It can be
productive to ask yourself some questions and respond to them in writing. Please begin
by responding to each of the questions posed here:
1) What is my general area of interest, in broad terms the "subject" of my inquiry?
2) On what ideas or topics within that area might I focus?
3) What are some of the questions I might ask about those topics?
4) What do I already know that would help me answer some of those questions?
5) Where might I go to find more answers? (Be as specific as you can with this one.)
6) What do I anticipate might be some of my findings?
7) If an all-knowing source presented himself or herself to me, and I could ask of that
source only one question, what would that question be? (The attempt here is to focus on
the common denominators in some of the ideas and questions you proposed earlier. The
“research question” often turns into the “working thesis” of the piece.)
[Kathy Skubikowski and John Elder, “Journal and Essay”]