Last week we talked about writing format. This week I’d like to talk about selecting a topic for your essay or report. The topic of your essay needs to accomplish two things. First it needs to focus your essay to a narrow enough scope that it is manageable, and secondly it needs to fit within the scope of your assignment, be it a work assignment or school assignment.
The first step in selecting a topic for your essay is to read your assignment thoroughly and make sure you understand what your professor, teacher, boss or client needs. Generally you will be given a fairly broad range of possible topics to select from, however, occasionally you will be given a very definitive topic that you will need to write about.
After the general topic is identified, your next step is to narrow down your topic choices to something that is manageable for the number of pages that you need to write. For example, if you are writing a three page essay on the Civil War, you don’t want to handle the entire Civil War, as you will not have enough space to cover this broad a topic adequately. Instead, you will want to focus on a single event, person or element of the war. However, if your professor or teacher tells you to provide a general report on the Civil War in three pages, then you will want to select a few elements of the war and provide a brief summary of that element.
Writing is used by teachers to evaluate their students’ skill level and understanding of the curriculum. If you are having a difficult time writing an essay about a specific topic then the problem may be that you need help comprehending the topic instead of the writing process. In this case you can enlist the help of a private tutor, an online tutor or a school provided tutoring service to help you acquire the academic skills needed to become a successful student.
March 17th, 2011 at 6:06 pm
This is a great idea. I think tutoring online will of better than going back to school in my English subject.