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5 Golden Rules for Choosing an Essay Topic

5 Golden Rules for Choosing an Essay Topic

by Cherie McCord

Whether you like writing or not, you would need to do a lot of it in your uni life. So why not try to make it somewhat enjoyable and useful to you? The key to presenting a good essay that also will be interesting to you is choosing the right topic.

Of course, you’re somewhat limited by the assignment, but there is a lot to explore in one subject. Moreover, it can feel overwhelming to come up with the topic for your essay. And if chosen incorrectly, it can become a problem that you just created for yourself.

Luckily, there are ways to deal with the task. You can always turn to professionals at dissertation writing service to do the best job for your paper. But it would not harm to keep in mind these five golden rules for choosing a topic for your next essay.

Table of Contents

  • Narrow it down
  • What piques your interest?
  • Credible sources
  • Forming a research question
  • Specific keywords
  • Wrapping Up

Narrow it down

The first thing you have to do for your essay to be a success is to narrow down your topic to a specific aspect. It might sound simple, but it is shown to be a much harder task in practice. Your topic needs to be as precise as possible for you to form a proper research question and, eventually – your thesis statement.

For example, Civil War is too broad of a topic to cover. So you would need to gradually narrow it down to something that can be transformed into a research question. Consider thinking about the following:

  • From what perspective will you cover the topic? It is the course of the war, the battles, the causes, the political arguments, the economics, or the consequences.
  • Next, figure out a specific aspect to focus on. It might be a historical figure, a policy, a military strategy, a reform, or a specific event.
  • Your specific aspect with the perspective altogether. For instance: “The influence of the Union League on the Civil War propaganda.”

What piques your interest?

While searching for the topic of your essay, do rely on what interests you personally and involve it in the process of narrowing down your topic. You would be more likely to dive deep into it if there is something that piques your interest. Moreover, it can help you to come up with a unique topic that will make you stand out but still follow the assignments.

For instance, if you’re into theater, you can try to involve it in your search for the topics. If you’re writing a history essay, it could be interesting to explore theater as a means of propaganda in certain cases.

However, be careful not to drift too far away from the assignment. Your interests that do not necessarily relate to the assignment should also come second to the required task. So remember to look for the topic that corresponds with your assignment first and apply your interests when searching for specifics afterward.

What piques your interest?

Credible sources

Another crucial thing in choosing your topic is to rely on credible sources. Do not go on Google search to browse random links with uncited quotes. Always start your search by using peer-reviewed academic sources. Otherwise, you risk falling for false claims and choosing an irrelevant topic.

Besides, looking through academic sources will give you an idea of what is not studied enough or what aspects are not talked about in the academic community. Thus, when forming your research question and thesis, you’ll come up with a legit hypothesis instead of repeating what has already been said countless times.

To look for a credible source, consider going to:

  • Your uni library website. There is a high chance that your library has a subscription to EBSCO and other credible portals full of legit academic courses.
  • Jstor
  • Science Open
  • Google Scholar
  • Public Library of Science

However, be cautious when browsing these portals. Even though there is much more credibility in the sources listed, you should still analyze them critically and double-check if anything seems suspicious to you.

Forming a research question

Make sure that your topic can lead you to your research question easily. For you to find a precise topic, it is important to understand where you are going with it. You can choose a very unique and not heavily researched one, but that might end in you having no idea what to write about.

Your topic has to sound interesting and ask for further development. Hence, coming up with the research question after studying your sources can help to formulate your topic. This is especially important when writing research papers that require you to have a specific issue.

Thus, consider writing down questions that appear during your study of the sources. It might be so that one question can change the whole direction of the essay and call for a different topic. Just remember that the way you phrase your topic does not have to be set in stone, but there has to be a clear idea of what you’re writing about.

Specific keywords

When you’ve narrowed down what you want your essay to be about, write down the keywords related to the topic. You probably know what they are since you have to search for sources to come up with the relevant topic.

However, to be as precise as you can, you’ll need specific keywords. Ideally, those are the words mentioned in your actual topic and your thesis statement. There is a chance that you would need to rephrase your topic at various stages of research. Thus, you would need to have specific keywords to narrow down your search.

Using the previous example, it would not be enough to type in “Civil War propaganda” as it opens you to not only sources on the period but on the concept of Civil War in propaganda in general. You need to be specific and focus better on the “Union League.” Do not hesitate to try out different combinations but remember to stay focused on your topic.

Wrapping Up

And here you have it. Narrow down your topic to specifics, involve your interest in the search for the topic of your essays, use credible sources in your search, mind your research question and its reflection on the topic, and use specific keywords to find the exact phrasing of the topic that you need. Use these five rules and choose the best topic for you.

Filed Under: Education

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