The Craft of Research: Chapter 3 "From Topic to Questions"
Alright so far my favorite chapter.
This is a major weakness that I have battled over the past semesters. Coming up with a topic and generating questions. The main issue I had was how do I get from topic to questions and guess what that is the title of this sections.
The highlight of this chapter is Booth's section on Narrowing your Topic.
He states, "At this point, your biggest risk is settling on a topic so broad that it could be a subheading in a library catalog: spaceflight; Shakespeare’s problem plays; natural law. A topic is probably too broad if
you can state it in four or five words" (Booth 39).
#MR: yeah I have done this before and ended up writing way too much or I end up running up against a deadline and narrow my project so much that it doesn't explore outside a particular section of a work.
Booth also adds, "We narrowed those topics by adding words and phrases, but of a special kind: conflict, description, contribution, and developing. Those nouns are derived from verbs expressing actions or relationships: to conflict, to describe, to contribute, and to develop. Lacking such “action” words, your topic is a static thing" (39).
#MR: trying to incorporate nouns derived from verbs is a little advance and good practice I need to start working with.
On page 41 Booth builds a strategy for asking questions about your topic.
"You can start with the standard journalistic questions: who, what, when, and where, but focus on how and why. To engage your best critical thinking, systematically ask questions about your topic’s
history, composition, and categories. Then ask any other question you can think of or find in your sources. Record all the questions, but don’t stop to answer them even when one or two grab your attention. (And don’t worry about keeping these categories straight; their only purpose is to stimulate questions and organize your answers)" (41).
This is a major weakness that I have battled over the past semesters. Coming up with a topic and generating questions. The main issue I had was how do I get from topic to questions and guess what that is the title of this sections.
The highlight of this chapter is Booth's section on Narrowing your Topic.
He states, "At this point, your biggest risk is settling on a topic so broad that it could be a subheading in a library catalog: spaceflight; Shakespeare’s problem plays; natural law. A topic is probably too broad if
you can state it in four or five words" (Booth 39).
#MR: yeah I have done this before and ended up writing way too much or I end up running up against a deadline and narrow my project so much that it doesn't explore outside a particular section of a work.
Booth also adds, "We narrowed those topics by adding words and phrases, but of a special kind: conflict, description, contribution, and developing. Those nouns are derived from verbs expressing actions or relationships: to conflict, to describe, to contribute, and to develop. Lacking such “action” words, your topic is a static thing" (39).
#MR: trying to incorporate nouns derived from verbs is a little advance and good practice I need to start working with.
On page 41 Booth builds a strategy for asking questions about your topic.
"You can start with the standard journalistic questions: who, what, when, and where, but focus on how and why. To engage your best critical thinking, systematically ask questions about your topic’s
history, composition, and categories. Then ask any other question you can think of or find in your sources. Record all the questions, but don’t stop to answer them even when one or two grab your attention. (And don’t worry about keeping these categories straight; their only purpose is to stimulate questions and organize your answers)" (41).
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