Chapter 3

The focus of this chapter is on developing your research question and adapting it to the writing situation. Writing an essay for instance would require a different focus then writing an article for a newspaper or magazine. There is a brief mention of the effect that a quick sweep of sources and conversations with other s can have on your research question. The textbook then asks us three questions:

1. Has what you have learned changed your understanding of your writing situation?
2. What do you want to learn next?
3. How strongly has your initial understanding of your exploration of your topic?

With the choice of your issue out of the way now the focus needs to be on choosing a research question specific to that issue. Come up with several questions and then take them for a test drive. Write an introductory paragraph with each one and see how well it adapts itself to answering your question. Once you have chosen the question that works the best narrow it just a little more. Thebook gives this example:

"What is behind the increase popularity in women's sports?"

That question is distilled into the following,

"What has led to the increased popularity of women's sports in colleges and universities?"

By restricting the field of inquiry to women's sports at the collegiate athletic level the resulting paper will be less broad.