Blog Post #3

While I was looking through chapter 5 of the Bedford Book of Genres, one thing that stuck out to me was how to form a proposal for an essay from a research question. Composing a singular and intelligent research question for a topic that I have no idea about has always been a challenge for me. Due to this I have always written about topics that I already understood, or at least had some general idea about. This has severely handicapped my ability to write. Of course, I always figured I was a decent writer, but I was very limited. I would often catch myself writing about the same topics over the years. While this has served me well, I always knew I was cheating myself. I could have easily looked up ways to get around this issue, but I do not think I had a specific question in mind to ask. In other words, I knew I had an issue with my ability to come up with new topics, but I wasn’t quite sure what it was. During my analysis of chapter 5 I realized exactly where my writing issue was coming from. I was not asking enough questions about topics I didn’t understand. In a way, I don’t think that I wanted to leave my comfort zone of what I used to writing about. Seeing how the authors demonstrated the technique of using numerous general questions about a topic, and eventually narrowing it down to one through trials of research really opened my eyes. I feel as if this is such a simple and easy technique, I cannot figure out why I didn’t think of it myself. I believe that using this simple and easy technique will really broaden my ability to write and help me through the rest of my academic career.