Identifying the Inquiry and Stating the Problem

Other works

It can be your Previous reading assignment in your other subjects

Work Experience

Clues to a researchable topic from full-time or part time jobs, OJT (on the job training) experience, fieldwork, etc.

Limitations on the subject

Research Topics to be Avoided

This makes you link in your choosing with course requirements. In this case, you have no freedom to choose your topic based on your interest, but has to decide on one topic to finish your course.

Hard to investigate subjects

A subject are hard to investigate if there are no available reading materials about it and if such materials are not up-to-date

Personal resource

Highly technical subjects

Researching on topics that require an advance study, technical knowledge, and vast experience is a very difficult task.

Controversial topics

Before sticking fully to your final choice, assess your research abilities in terms of financial standing, health condition, mental capacity, needed facilities and time allotment to enable you to complete your research.

These are topics that depend greatly on the writer's opinion, which may tend to be biased or prejudicial. Facts cannot support topics like these.

Professional periodicals

Examples are:

• College English Language Teaching Forum
• English Forum
• Academia
• Business Circle
• Law Review

General Periodicals

Examples are:

• Readers' Digest
• Women's Magazine
• Panorama Magazine
• Time Magazine
• World Mission Magazine

Sources

Mass media communication

Other references

What is Mass media communication?

Those are the variety of ways used to communicate with very large audiences such as the population of a city or entire country. It include books, magazines, newspapers, radio, television, film, and now the Internet.

• Books
• Internet
• Peer-reviewed journals
• Government publications

Sources of Research Topics

It is also necessary for you to know where a good research topic may come from. Knowing some sources of probable research topics could hasten your choosing. Freeing you from a prolonged time of pondering over a problem of knowing which problem is good for you to research on. The following can help you generate ideas about a good research topic.

Too broad subjects

Topics that are too broad will prevent your from giving a concentrated or an in-depth analysis of the subject matter of the paper. The remedy to this is to a narrow or limit the topic to a smaller one.

Too narrow subjects

Vague subjects

These subjects are so limited or specific that an extensive or thorough searching or reading for information about these is necessary.

Choosing topics like these will prevent your from having a clear focus in your paper. Titles beginning with indefinite adjectives such as several, many, some, etc. like "Some Remarkable Traits of a Filipino" are vague enough to decrease the readers' interests and curiosity.

Guidelines in Choosing a Research Topic

Availability of Information

Timeliness and relevance of the topic

Interest in the subject matter

Your interest in a topic may be caused by your rich background knowledge about it and by its novelty; meaning, its unfamiliarity to you. Your real interest in a subject pushes you to research, investigate or inquire about it with full motivation, enthusiasm and energy.

Collecting a lot of information as evidence to support your claims about your subject matter from varied forms of literature like books, journals and newspapers is a part and parcel of any research work. In choosing a research topic, visit your library to check the availability of reading materials on your topic.

The topic is relevant if it yields results that are instrumental in societal improvement. Unless it is a pure or historical research, a research on the ins and outs of people's revolutionary acts will prosper more if it tackles the contemporary revolutionary action rather than those in ancient time.

Identifying the Inquiry and Stating the Problem

Based on Jim Harvey's speech structures