Interesting Research Topics Are Right in Front of You
Interesting Research Topics Are Right in Front of You
I became a teacher’s assistant while I was studying for my masters in education. Most teacher assistance have it fairly easy. Teach some classes, host some discussions groups and grade a whole bunch of mindless term papers. I on the other hand at it a little more difficult. The professor that I was assisting for was a totally lazy. I am so serious. I couldn’t believe how uninvolved he was with the class. He wanted me to develop my own curriculum and develop interesting research topic ideas. Furthermore he never showed up for our meetings together and the first semester I taught the class I don’t think he ever step foot in the classroom. I was getting very frustrated.
I was teaching freshman English. Honestly the class was a piece of pie. The kids had to be there. They didn’t try to challenge me or argue with me They were very respectful and obedient for the most part. Perhaps it was because they didn’t realize that I wasn’t the real Professor for the class. The one problem was they seemed so bored. The main goal of the class was to teach these young adults how to write a good research paper. I began to think of interesting research topics. I began thinking back to my freshman year in college. I had just graduated from high school king of the mountain. I racked my brain to try and remember the reading material I endured at the time. There was mostly Shakespeare some Beowulf and lots of Virginia Wolf.
I decided to draw these freshman in for there first assignment. After all, the main goal was to learn and write a research paper. I could really care less what the paper was about as long as it flowed well and the basic structure was there. I mapped out exactly what I wanted on the dry erase board as students walked in that morning.
Think of interesting research topics and make sure your research paper includes the following:
1. A basic thesis that is present in the first and last paragraph of the paper.
2. Use MLA format for citing your sources just if you are not familiar with MLA please use the following: Author. Title of the Book. city of publication: publisher, year
3. Make your last paragraph very strong. Do not have a week conclusion.
4. Make sure your paper is free of grammatical errors. Please utilize the free english tutors we have on campus.
I kept office hours three days a week. The main problem I was approached about was no one could come up with any interesting research topics. This was very frustrating for me. I felt like some kind of school counselor. I just kept asking them: what do you like? I always prefaced my conversation with “this is probably the easiest paper you will write in your four years of college.” One student told me the assignment was hard because it was too broad of a topic. He was wearing a popular sports jersey on. I stared at him in disbelief and told him to write about the team on his shirt. It was now his turn to stare back at me. He didn’t think my assignment was that easy. I again thought back to my high school days. I guess I couldn’t have thought interesting research topics would be that easy too, when I was his age at least.
