This document discusses various techniques for generating topics and questions for a research paper, including brainstorming, freewriting, cubing, determining your purpose and audience, and clustering/mapping. It provides examples of using these techniques on the topic of class attendance requirements. Students are encouraged to read, discuss topics with others, and write down initial thoughts to help choose a topic. Various brainstorming questions and potential answers are also presented to help develop a research question.

1. Writing a Research Paper: Generating
Questions & Topics
Ashley Velázquez
Brought to you in cooperation with the Purdue Online Writing Lab

2. What’s a Research
Paper?
A research paper—
1. requires you to critically think about, evaluate,
organize, and compose;
2. is an assignment or project that grows over time
as you interact with other sources;
3. varies in length;
4. is generally written on a topic decided by your
teacher.

3. How Do You
Start?
Typically, the hardest part of starting a paper is starting!

4. Choosing a Topic
• How do you usually choose a topic?
1. Read.
2. Talk with a friend or classmate.
3. Write down your initial thoughts about the
topic.

5. Brainstorming Techniques:
Let’s Workshop!

6. Topic: Attendance in College Classrooms
•Possible question:
– Should attendance be required for a passing grade?
•Possible answers:
– No (why?)
– Yes (why?)
– Dependent (on?)
•Possible Reasons:
– Students are too busy to always go to class.
– Students can’t participate if they’re absent.
Ask a Question,
Make a List

7. • What is freewriting?
– You write without thinking, or stopping. The trick is
to write whatever comes to mind, even if you trail off
topic.
Let’s try!
Freewriting

8. Cubing
• Cubing is a good way to look at your topic from 6
different perspectives. Here’s what you do:
— Describe it
— Compare it
— Associate it
— Analyze it
— Apply it
— Argue for and against it

9. What is Your Purpose?
Who is Your Audience?
What is your purpose?
• Sometimes we get blocked because we don’t
know why we’re writing this.
Who is your audience?
• Knowing who would read about our topic helps
us focus our message and find a starting point.

10. Clustering/Mapping

11. Now Write!
Hopefully this presentation has helped you
develop some skills for thinking about topics and
developing questions.

12. The OWL is also Helpful
• There are many resources
on the OWL’s website,
one of which is about
research papers and
generating questions.
Here’s the link:
https://owl.english.purdue.
edu/owl/resource/658/
1/

13. The End
Writing a Research Paper: Generating Questions &
Topics
By: Ashley J. Velázquez
Brought to you in cooperation with the Purdue Online Writing Lab