In Quest of Culture: Topic Generating for Research Essay
Purpose: A Topic-generating Exercise best suited to a culture-oriented researched essay assignment. This exercise helps students learn how to ask the right questions when beginning a research-oriented assignment. By asking them to generate questions about a seemingly uninteresting object, this activity demonstrates the infinite possibilities and important aspects of researchable topics.
Description: This exercise works with the students’ own cultural “artifacts”, or ones that you provide, to help them generate potential research topics and questions in small groups. You might discuss the “Myth of the Boring Topic” from The Curious Researcher with the class beforehand or as a work-up to the exercise (What’s there to write about? How do I approach something that I can research? How can I be sure my topic’s not too broad, too narrow, too boring? What is there to write about “culture”?).
Suggested Time: 30 minutes – full class period
Procedure: You might ask students what cultural artifacts they carry with them this very moment. It could be cell phone, a pair of designer glasses, a magazine, Dasani bottled water, a dollar bill. Collect a few of these items, or supply some of your own.
Divide the class into groups of four or five. Give each group one iconic, cultural artifact. For about 10-20 minutes, ask each group to generate a list of “potentially interesting questions” about their object. Ask them to consider the objects in terms of:
Cultural uses
Possible impact on people
Processes of creation or development
After 10-20 min., ask your groups to trade objects AND the lists already generated for them. Give them about 5 minutes to consider the new object, and come up with questions the previous group didn’t think of.
Return original objects and questions to their groups. Overhead, or on the blackboard, discuss the characteristics of good researchable topics. I’ve modified Ballenger’s list of “What Makes a Question ‘Researchable’?” (The Curious Researcher 35):
Not too broad or too narrow
Focuses on some aspect of the topic about which something has been said (it CAN be researched)
It’s interesting to YOU
Answers the question “SO WHAT?” (Relates to how we live, might live, care about, believe, or what we should know)
Implies a potential audience (part 2, of the question above)
Implies an approach – how you might go about answering it
Raises more questions that can’t be answered with “Yes” or “No”
Each group should review their list of questions, and choose ONE they find both interesting and the most researchable. Ballenger asks students to imagine that they are a team of editors working on a new magazine project, and this is precisely the kind of focus we want for this researched article. Ask each group to propose/pitch their topic, with an initial starting question, to the “board room” with the following considerations:
What’s my publication? (specific, or a general idea: magazine, Cable program, newspaper, journal, etc.)
Who’s my main interest group/audience?
What’s my narrative position?
Ballenger continues with approaches through “People,” “Trends,” “Controversies,” “Impact,” and “Relationships” (35-36) – all of which apply to our cultural perspective for a research article/exposé. You can wrap-up discussion by asking students to pose other questions, modify ones from their lists, or examine the possibilities Ballenger offers.