blog iii

Chapter 5 of the Bedford Book of Genres helped me better understand the scary process of writing a research paper. I have never thought of myself as a talented writer, especially in the research department. The way that the book explained the beginning of a research proposal, accompanied by the student example, helped to ease my fears about Project II. The hardest part, for me, when beginning a research proposal is narrowing down my topic so that it is not too broad, as well as choosing enough reputable sources.

Over the years, I have gravitated toward some of the same topics for research papers. I have mostly struggled with picking a research question for these topics that is somewhere in the middle of too broad and too specific. Personally, I feel very strongly about human rights and women’s issues, so I think that this is a good starting point for Project II. I would love to write about something relating to human rights or women’s issues, but both are very broad topics. While Chapter 5 will definitely help me narrow my interest in these fields for my research paper, I am still worried about finding an abundance of credible sources. Research on social issues is not as quantifiable as Jasmine Huerta’s research on diabetes and the effects of nutrition.

As for the sources, I was always told to not use Wikipedia, like the textbook stated, but I had never thought to use it as a starting point for my research, like Jasmine Huerta. Narrowing down sources for research is an important part of the research process, especially when using the internet as your starting place.