Finding a Research Topic or a classroom project topic

Fear of Topic Selection Your topic should be...

Innovative Exciting Interesting Current Attractive

Things to Consider

What kind of job are you interested in?

Listening, speaking, pronunciation, CLIL,

culture, teachers-to-be?

What are your strengths? weaknesses?

Teaching, reading, writing?

What drives you? bores you?

Technology, strategies, applications,

interdisciplinary, behavior, learning

Ways to Find a Topic

1) I have an idea! Is it researchable? Is it doable? Can you find enough information?

2) Testing the waters! Find opinions about you idea from

different perspectives. Explore the field you are interested in.

3) Make up your mind! From collected information, find the

area of interest that is more appealing for you.

4) The Stapler Model You work on a number of small topics

that turn into a series of conference papers

You figure out somehow how to tie it all together, create a chapter from each paper, and put a big staple through it

5) Post-it now! Save sources, pages, for the

reference list. Found something interesting? Post-it

now, so you don't forget.

Select a topic that interests you

Read through background information

Start making a list of key words

Write out your topic as a statement and select the

main concepts

Start making a list of words to describe your topic

IN BRIEF