Choose a Topic for a Dissertation

Steps:
1) Make a habit as early as possible in your graduate career of jotting down ideas for
research while sitting in lectures and doing your reading. Particular findings can point
to new and interesting questions.
2) Weed out ideas as the time to choose draws nearer. Consider such issues as level of
interest (how excited do you get when you think about it?), practicality (too broad or
too narrow?), and how significant a contribution it will make to your discipline.
3) Consult with fellow student; they may offer great ideas.
4) Ask your advisor and other professors what they know about work that is already been
done on the topics that remain after your weeding-out process.
5) Find this work, and see how similar or different it is from your own ideas. If its too
similar, you have just eliminated another possibility.
6) Choose whichever of the remaining topics interests you the most.
7) Keep in mind that your topic is a work in progress, and allow yourself to be flexible.
Its inevitable that some aspects of your topic will change as you progress in your
research and writing.
Write a Rough Draft
In a rough draft, you get all your ideas on paper and flesh them out. You will add and delete
material several times before you are satisfied that your work is complete and you are ready to
write your final draft
Steps:
1) Make your thesis statement and a summary of your objective at the top of a clean
sheet of paper. This will become your topic paragraph after revision.
2) Approach your rough draft in sections; theres no need to concern yourself with the
overall flow of the paper just yet. Each section will be a paragraph or group of
paragraphs in your final draft.
3) Start with the first item on your paper outline. Write the title of this item on a sheet of
paper and write all relevant ideas beneath it.
4) Write the title of the next item of your outline on a separate sheet of paper with all its
relevant ideas beneath it.
5) Continue this process with all sections of the outline.
6) Tie together each item on your outline in a brief conclusion at the end of the draft.
This will become the concluding paragraph after revision.
7) Spend a little time brainstorming before beginning your rough draft. Write these ideas
on a sheet of paper.
8) Organise your ideas by clustering them. Write each idea in the centre of a page and
circle it.
9) Arrange related ideas around each idea, trying to place ever-more-detailed pieces of
information close to one another on the paper. This will give you some idea of how to
structure your paper: if you find you have many ideas clustered in one are, you may
want to focus there.
10) Make an informal paper outline to provide guideliness for the format and flow of your
paper. At first, you can just list points in order. Later, you may want to arrange your
information in standard outline form.

11) Do some brief, preliminary research. Consider which authors, books or quotations
might offer you good supporting evidence. Save your in-depth research for draft
revision.
Take Research Notes
Take organised research notes now, and youll thank yourself later when writing your research
paper.
Steps:
1) Write down all the bibliographical information authors name, publisher, date and
place of publication on a 3x5 index card when you find a source for research
material you would like to use. This is your source card. Number each one.
2) Skim through each source for information on your subject
3) Write down the information you wish to note on an index card, called an information
card. Write only one piece of information per card, using a direct quote, a paraphrase
or anything that will help you remember the information
4) Jot down the page number of the source from which you got the information on the
information card.
5) Number each information card to correspond to the source card of the work from
which it comes so that you can always refer back to the source
6) Organise your information cards according to subject matter. For example, if you are
writing a paper about mountain wildlife, separate the cards about bears from the cards
about eagles. This way, you avoid searching through the cards when writing the paper.
Write a Research Paper
Writing a good research paper is a tough challenge, but breaking it down into smaller places
helps a lot.
Steps:
1) Choose a topic that is broad enough to be interesting but narrow enough to be
manageable.
2) Find your sources. Start with three or four, check their bibliographies for additional
sources, and repeat the process untill you have enough material to work with.
3) Reserve one index card for each source. Record the bibliographic information for the
source on its index card, and number each card for ease of future reference.
4) Take reading notes on index cards, writing down only the material that is most relevant
to your project. Write the source number on each card.
5) Organise your index cards by topic and sub-topic.
6) Write an introduction that grabs the reader and plots out the trajectory of your
argument.
7) Write the body of paper, following the structure you created in your outline. Make sure
you correctly cite your sources.
8) Write the conclusion, reviewing how youve made your points.
9) Come up with a title after youve written the paper, not before: you dont want the
content of the paper to be hamstrung by an inappropriate title.
10) Read your paper at least twice to be sure your argument makes sense and is presented
logically.