How to Study

Steps 1 & 2: Consider and Choose 
Topic Options
In some cases, your teacher will assign your topic. In others, she will
assign a general area of study, but you will have the freedom to pick
a specific topic.
There are some pitfalls you must avoid. Let’s say you need to write
a 15-page paper for your history class and decide your topic will be
“The Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.”
Can you really cover a topic that broad—four terms— in 15 pages?
No, you can’t. You could write volumes on the subject (people have)
and still have plenty left to say!
Instead, you need to focus on a particular, limited aspect of such 
a broad subject or attack it from a specific angle. How about 
“Why FDR Tried to Pack the Supreme Court”? That would work 
for a middle school or high school paper.
Remember, your job is to prepare an in-depth report about your 
subject. Be sure you can do that in the number of pages your teacher
has requested.
Choose a subject that’s too limited, and you might run out of things
to say on the second page of your paper. You might be able to write
a couple of pages on “How FDR Contracted Polio,” but you won’t fill
10 or 15 pages…even with really wide margins.
If you can’t find a single book on your supposed topic, rethink it! While
there’s nothing wrong with choosing a topic that can be researched
via magazine articles, the newspaper, the Internet, and the like, why
make your research so difficult if you don’t have to?
How to Study
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Pick a topic that’s too obscure, and you may find that little or no 
information has been written about it. In that case, you will have to
conduct your own experiments, interview your own research 
subjects, and come up with your own original data. I’m guessing 
that you have neither the time, desire, nor experience to take such 
a start-from-scratch approach.
Don’t bite off more than you can chew, but make sure there’s some-
thing to gnaw on! And make sure that there are enough different
sources of material—different authors, different books, different
points of view—so you can get a well-rounded view of your subject
(and not be forced, for lack of other material, to find ways to make
somebody else’s points sound like your own).
Taking all of the above into consideration, do a little brainstorming
now about possible topics for your paper. Don’t stop with the first
idea—come up with several different possibilities. Put this book down
until you have a list of three or four potential topics.
How about trying to get papers for two or more classes out of the
same research? You may not be able to simply produce one paper for
two classes, but with a little extra research—not what you would
need to do for an entirely different paper—you may well utilize a good
portion of the first paper as the basis for a second. What a great way
to maximize your library time!
If you are having trouble choosing a topic for your next paper, here
are two books that will help:
10,000 Ideas for Term Papers, Projects, Reports and Speeches:
Intriguing, Original Research Topics for Every Student’s Need,
5th Edition, by Kathryn Lamm (Arco, 1998).
1001 Ideas for English Papers: Term Papers, Projects, Reports, and
Speeches by Walter James Miller (Hungry Minds, Inc., 1994).
Chapter 7 
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How to Write Terrific Papers
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