Tacoma Community College Library: ENGL 102: Chen-Johnson, M. (Spring 2025): Narrowing the topic, starting your research

Choosing and narrowing a topic

This assignment allows you, and encourages you, to be creative!

You get to investigate some aspect of the concept of "fun!"

Some of you may immediately choose a more common idea to explore related to fun, for example, exploring origins and maybe the reality of the common U.S. saying, "laughter is the best medicine."
Some of you may be interested in a topic that is less well-known, such as "the neuroscience of flow state" as it relates to "fun."

Whatever the case, you should choose something that is interesting to you - something that you wouldln't mind spending 10 weeks on!

My personal recommendations as a research librarian:

While it should be interesting to you, I recommend avoiding topics that you are attached to on a personal level - this can cause us to make assumptions that we aren't even aware we are making.
At the same time, though, I do recommend that you choose something that you have not questioned previously. Maybe you accepted it without giving it much thought.
And then there is the recommendation that you choose something you have never heard of. It's a chance to learn something absolutely new to you.

If you have trouble choosing a topic, and a narrower assertion about that topic, there are many sources you can explore!

Social media! Lots of people share and repeat sayings, idioms, platitudes, assumptions, and assertions on social media! Find an idea/assumptions/assertion about something that gets repeated a lot.
Listen to your friends and family talk. Pay attention to what you talk about with friends and family, and how you all talk about it. Try not to be afraid of putting your own assumptions to the test. Here is a version of what I hear a lot of people say about work, "If it's not fun, why do it?"
Explore YouTube for a topic. As above, choose an assertion or a topic about "fun" that seems to get a lot of repeated play.

Librarians can also help you locate and choose topics. It's never too early to work with a Librarian on research work.

Thinking about your own thinking

I encourage you to spend some time thinking about some assumptions or questions that you want to explore. Write out your experience of the theme or your sub-topic if you have identified it.

Then spend some time digging down into what you actually do not know about an aspect of "fun." You could even start with the theme itself. Below the student actually wonders if they really know what the word "fun" means, and then they simply listen to their own thinking and wrote it out. That's a great place to start. The student also put words in bold that could help them narrow their topic.

This is a great exercise to get your ideas flowing, AND narrow your topic AND develop key words to do your researching (see key word example below as well)!

unexamined assumption or question	Reflection - what do I know or think already and how did I come to think that?	I wonder...
I know what fun is.	I know when I am having fun, I think "this is fun!" or I feel it.	What is fun, really. Now that I think about it, I can't really define it.
	Things my friends think are fun are sometimes fun for me, sometimes not. It's hard for me to understand how my friends think ___________ is fun, but they do. So, fun isn't the same for everyone - it's personal	Is there a cultural difference in what we think or feel is fun? But maybe that's the wrong question - if fun has three components, playfulness, flow, and connection, is that cross cultural?
	I think we have a lot of pressure on us to have fun, always, everything, every day should be fun.	Why? How is it we have so much pressure on use to have fun? Social media?
Where do I have fun?	I mostly have fun with groups, like my family, or sports teams	What are the family dynamics that allow fun to happen? Or maybe what past experiences do we have that make it easier for some rather than others to experience fun?

Research reflection and notes chart
Here is a blank chart similar to the above, with a column for taking source notes.

Mining keywords from your topic

When you begin searching for information, you will need to use key words - these are the words that summarize your interest into it's most basic form. This is a bit of a challenging theme, "fun", because it is so hard to define, there hasn't been a whole lot of research specifically about "fun." It's a good idea to spend some time thinking about all the words you can think of related to fun. You can often start with resources your instructors give you, such as articles to read, or class discussion topics, or guides like this one.

Below is a summary statement from the "Funology" podcast linked on the Start page of this guide, for example, where there are many key words you could start with, and then brainstrom some more!

Statement: Fun seems to have three components: 1) playfulness, 2) shared experience, maybe a human or an animal connection, and then the last element is flow.

Important terms from the statement	Related terms you can think of	Important terms you find as you research
playfulness	free, uninhibited, silly, child-like, feeling safe,	Here is an article available on the Web that this student first read, to find these key words about playfulness: spontaneity, expressiveness, creativity, antithesis to “adult behavior”, well-being
shared experience	connection, intimacy,	laughter, friends, family, pets
flow	concentration, muscle memory, ease, sports,	focused, engrossed, time, neuroscience,

This is an example of how you might organize a key-word chart. You can use this, or you can organize it in a way that makes sense for you.

Key word chart
Here is a key word chart that you can use as is, or modify, to keep track of important words associated with your topic, that you can use to further your research, and include in your paper

Research questions

Once you've identified a sub-topic, an aspect of "fun", you'll need to focus it even further by investigating it as questions. Your question may come "pre-packaged" for you - maybe you read it somewhere in your early research, presented as a question. If it's well-crafted, lucky you! Or, you may struggle a little with shaping it into a question. That is more common. Reading a wide variety of background information can help you with the process of refining and defining a question.

Constructing good research questions takes time, and practice. Always see a Research Librarian, like me, when you would like to work on any aspect of your research-based assignments, including crafting a research question.

Research question	type of question	evaluation of the research path as stated
Is learning fun?	uninteresting; binary result	This is a yes/no question. And most likely, no! While the student should research and discuss this binary in the introduction of their paper, this should not be the focus of their paper. This student needs to dig deeper and better define the question.
Who has more fun learning, children or adults?	possibly opinion-based research and poorly defined	This question is in danger of being based in opinion, rather than supported with facts due to the use of the word "more" - what does the student mean by "more?" And how do we measure "more fun?"
Why do we think that learning should be fun for children but not for adults?	biased or leading question	This seemingly simple question is a lot to unpack! First, who is "we?" Second, it is heavily based in a bias that adult learning is in fact not fun, and that children always have fun! This student is in danger of just looking for evidence that children have fun learning, and adults don't.
What role does fun play in learning exeperiences across the lifespan?	defined, measurable, interesting	Think of this question as the end of a question-crafting process. In some ways, this question is seeking the same information as the one just above it, but it is crafted to reduce bias, opening up opportunities for much more interesting sources, and results! It is asked from a neutral point of view and it leaves room for inquiry and maybe even some surprises! There is also a reduction of internalized binary bias that helps prevent the student from exploring this question from a binary, stereotyped position. (TIP: This student actually had to read some quality background information about fun and adult learning from 19-55, compared to learning in childhood, or older adults. They didn't need to work very hard for the poorly crafted question!)

Finding/using keywords in library databases and Google

Finding Keywords From Your Research

How to pull search terms from your research question and how to use them in database search engines.

How do we know what we know? An exercise in exploring our past learning and assumptions

Decorative image of a lemming by photo.andersson.es is licensed under CC BY SA 2.0

Library interactive exercise: How do we know what we know?
Link to the interactive "lemming based" TCC Library exercise in the online app, Rise 360.

ENGL 102: Chen-Johnson, M. (Spring 2025): Narrowing the topic, starting your research

Choosing and narrowing a topic

This assignment allows you, and encourages you, to be creative!

Thinking about your own thinking

unexamined assumption or question

Reflection - what do I know or think already and how did I come to think that?

I wonder...

Mining keywords from your topic

Research questions

Research question

type of question

evaluation of the research path as stated

Finding/using keywords in library databases and Google

Finding Keywords From Your Research

How do we know what we know? An exercise in exploring our past learning and assumptions

Google search to get started

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