Selecting and developing the Research Topic 2 | Student Study Abroad Australia

Selecting and Developing The Research Topic

Comprehensive bibliography, or list of references, for your thesis.

C. Do not rely only on your supervisor and your own reading. Use the other resources available in the university. Other academics in the department, fellow students, other universities and colleges in the country, national conferences, departmental seminars and discussions over coffee are all potentially valuable sources of ideas. They also provide opportunities for refining, through discussion and debate, your own understanding of your topic and research.

D. Welcome rather than shrink Away from, opportunities to try out your developing ideas on staff and fellow students. It can be very useful - though frightening - to give a departmental seminar on your proposed research topic early in your course, maybe after six months or a year. This forces you to clarify your objectives and provides you with a chance to get constructive criticism from other members of the department. It also has the benefit of making you known to staff within your department.

E. Set aside some regular time each week for writing about your research - even if it is only a private record for your own in terest. Writing enables you to reflect systematically, to clarify and build up ideas over time. At first this writing may be very rough, uncertain, informal; but it will become more fluent as your understanding grows and as your control of an appropriate style of English improves. Further, these rough notes can later provide the foundation for papers and chapters of your thesis.

All these suggestions point in the same direction: you must allow yourself plenty of time and you must make use of all the resources available when choosing your research topic. You will be devoting a lot of your time and energy to working on your topic, so it is important that it is one that satisfies you.