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ENG 125 AAY

This guide is designed to assist you to navigate the library's resources.

Topic Development Strategies

 

person playing chess

  •  When selecting a topic, you want to think of something that interest you
    •  If you are passionate about a topic, the effort comes easier and typically you’ll produce better work
  •   Also, before researching a potential topic, we’d recommend completing the TOPIC exercise

topice exercise

  •  Each letter in TOPIC represents a question about your potential topic to help generate keywords to search with
  •  You can list as many keywords for the columns as you'd like, but we recommend thinking of one word per column and see where that gets you first

Create a Concept Map

  • Identify subtopics & topic-related ideas by creating a Concept Map

example of a concept map

 

Give it a Try!

  • Write your general topic, centered, at the top of a piece of paper
  • Around your topic, brainstorm & write down as many subtopics as you can think of
    • Use Credo Reference Database to help during this process
  • Based on your subtopics, try to think of & write down sub-subtopics
  • Think of ways your subtopics & sub-subtopics interconnect with each other, & draw lines between these 
  • Write two questions you have about each of these relationships between subtopics & sub-subtopics