In the video cast below, you’ll see how our student writer has worked to narrow her topic and develop a good research question.
My next step was to come up with a research question to guide me through the rest of my research and writing process. To get myself started, I did a little research on the web to see what people were saying about a topic that is really interesting to me—standardized testing, and specifically, the No Child Left Behind Act.
I then did a freewrite, which you can see here, to get my ideas down and to help me see my thinking more clearly. I just spent a few minutes and wrote down everything I could think of related to my topic.
I have heard my professors in college complain about standardized testing. I found some helpful information on the web, some related to the negative impact on writing and some related to drop out rates, which the act was actually supposed to help.
I then worked to make a short list of research questions I thought I might like to explore, which you can also see here. I ended up going with the first question because I am very interested in this topic and think it would be a good issue for my audience to think about.
I am kind of excited about researching this topic and seeing where this issue will take me.