Think of your assignment as the starting point and the requirements as a guideline when selecting an appropriate topic.
What are the assignment requirements?
- Type of assignment (e.g. speech, essay, research paper, project, or presentation)
- Purpose of assignment (e.g. persuasive, analysis, literature review, research paper, or compare/contrast paper)
- Size/length of the assignment (e.g. length of the paper, speech time, or project depth)
- Particular types and number of references/sources required (e.g. news articles, scholarly articles, visual media, or books)
- Who generates the topic (e.g. instructor generated or student-generated)
What are the details about the topic?
- Do you pick the topic from a general subject category?
- Example: Your professor gives you general guidelines that you can pick a topic from (e.g "Pick a topic related to climate change")
- Can you pick a topic? Or is it an assigned topic?
