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ENG598 Research Skills Guide: Developing a research topic

This guide is designed to support students completing ENG598

Your purpose as a researcher

No reader wants to stumble along with you, looking in every place you looked, at everything you found; they don’t want to accompany you staggering toward some sort of conclusion about all that— or no conclusion at all. What they want is what you’ve made of things. What they want is the story. It’s up to you to make it convincing. Interpret, analyse, critically assess and conclude. That’s what you’re there for.

Treddinick, M. (2005). Little red writing book. Sydney: UNSW Press.

The steps

When you're completing a research project, there are 2 main stages, the ideas plan and the research plan. There are a number of steps you should work through that will help you develop a topic into a research question

Stage 1 - Ideas Plan

Step 1 - Finding the Research Topic

Step 2 - Develop the Research Question

Stage 2 - Research plan
This guide will cover some of the techniques of searching for your research project. We recommend you also complete the Searching the Literature topic in the Topic tree.

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