I Search Paper

Post date: Mar 5, 2015 7:54:26 PM

The first step in preparing to write your paper, of course, is to find a topic. Only you can decide what sort of topic you find engaging, exciting, and worth looking into. Your I-Search Paper will be limited to how technology impacts your lives; think about how it impacts your life, the past and future of technology, how it integrates into your life, the way it has transformed how you live today, that kind of thing.

STEP 1: To begin, freewrite for about ten minutes about what is tumbling around in your mind after reading the above paragraph. Include any thoughts which were stirred after reading about potential subject areas.

STEP 2: Next, re-read your freewrite and generate a list of possible topics which emerged during your freewrite. If your list contains eight ideas or less, freewrite again. See if the list you just made helps you to come up with even more ideas. (If you have nine or more possible topics, skip ahead to STEP 4.)

STEP 3: Add new ideas generated in the second freewrite to your original list; if you still have fewer than nine ideas, continue the process until your list contains at least nine or ten ideas.

STEP 4: Cross off any of the ideas you feel you cannot pursue with a sense of lasting interest; you need to want to know more about this topic so badly that your desire to learn will carry you through the lengthy research, writing, and rewriting processes. Hopefully you will have at least five or six topics remaining.

STEP 5: Now go over your list of ideas. How likely is it that you will be able to locate a living resource (person to interview) for each topic? If it seems unlikely, cross that idea off. At this point, you should have at least three potential ideas left.

STEP 6: Get out three sheets of paper and write each of your remaining topic at the top of each page. Now freewrite about each of these ideas, answering the following questions:

What do you already know about this topic?

What do you guess or surmise about this topic?

What do you need to know or find out about this topic?

STEP 7: Now carefully read back over your freewrites, highlighting anything which stands out to you as interesting or thought provoking. After reading over your highlighted sections, eliminate the topics which generated the least freewriting and/or the least comments of interest. Read over the final topic one more time; is it truly an idea that grabs your interest? Will your interest be sustained over the length of time it will take (nearly the rest of this semester) to research and write this paper? If so, congratulations! You have your topic! If not, back up a few steps and investigate other possible ideas until you settle on one.