Table of Contents

https://youtu.be/IOscupleq6w

Selecting a topic

Selecting a topic (handout): Move from an everyday problem that you would like to investigate (stage 1) to defining a specific subject, perspective, and vantage point that defines your research topic (stage 2). The final stage (stage 3) is to remove yourself from the personal domain of refining the topic of interest to the formal world of academia. In this final stage, switch from everyday language to technical terminology used in a particular academic discipline (e.g., applied linguistics) (Machi & McEvoy, 2012).

Refer to the list of possible research topics in applied linguistics below as a guide.

Merge your topic with an area of linguistic focus: a) individual skills (i.e., reading, writing, listening, speaking), b) grammar, c) vocabulary, d) or some combination of the aforementioned (e.g., reading and writing, listening and speaking, speaking and vocabulary, etc.).

https://anchor.fm/benjamin-l-stewart/episodes/Thesis-Seminar-Literature-Review-and-Research-Alignment-eovcb6

Moving from a topic to questions

(Booth, Colomb, & Williams, 2008)

• Historical context
  • Ask questions about how your topic has changed over the years.
• Structure
  • Ask questions about the structure or composition of a phenomena, situation, etc. that relate to your topic.
• Categorization
  • Ask questions about how your topic compares and contrasts with other similar categories.
• Negative questions
  • Shift positive questions to negative ones: Why have English language learners in Mexico not been able to achieve...?
  • Questions from sources
    • Find a question from other studies, either verbatim or modifying it to your own research context.

Moving from questions to a problem statement

A problem statement - expressed as one sentence - for the purposes of developing a researchable topic includes 1) a topic, 2) an indirect question, and 3) a significance [or purpose] (Booth, Colomb, & Williams, 2008).

Topic (general idea)

Here are a few examples of topics (in red).

• I wish to learn more about **teachers' beliefs about formative assessments and related teaching techniques**.
• I wish to learn more about **English language teachers who teach English grammar covertly to their English language learners**.
• I am working on **why students are reluctant to speak English in class**.
• I am trying to learn about **teaching covert grammar and how students feel about different related teaching techniques.**

Indirect question (a more specific idea that relates directly to the thesis statement of the paper)

Now, extend your topic by adding an indirect question (in red) to indicate what you don't know or would like to understand better more specifically. What follows are a few examples.

• I wish to learn more about [a topic] because I want to find out who/what/when/where/whether/why/how _________.