The Bedford Researcher Chapter 2: Summary and Discussion

The second chapter in The Bedford Researcher reviews writing topic exploration. As we begin to explore different topics for a writing project, discussing a topic of interest and gathering preliminary observations are important ways to gather feedback. These steps help the writer narrow the research question and begin to delve into gathering sources. There are many different kinds of sources available and finding good information sources that are appropriate to the topic is important. As sources are reviewed, the writing project moves from identifying a topic to examining an issue within that topic, to arriving at a research question.

This section of the textbook covered a lot of great information regarding topic exploration. The contents of the chapter, however, weren't as helpful to me as chapters one and four because I have chosen a topic that I already know a little bit about. The conversations that I've had with people about my chosen writing project topic before taking this class fueled my desire to learn more about the topic, do more research, re-frame my position if necessary, and write a paper on a topic that is very relevant to the current state of politics. I didn't take as much away from this chapter but there were still one or two ideas that I feel would be useful for navigating databases.