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ENGL 1005: Honors Composition - Professor Hollcraft

This is a class guide for ENGL 1005. Instructor: Jacqueline Hollcraft

From Topics to Keywords

Now, let's turn your topic into a topic statement. 
 
Note: There are plenty of concepts/issues to choose from. It's possible that your concept/issue changes after today, however, for this section of the guide, let's select a concept/issue.
 
Example Topic Statement:
 
I'm interested in college students and the health risks of fast food.

 

Directions:

Write out a sentence, similar in style to the example topic statement above, addressing your topic.

 

Once you have your topic statement, let's turn that topic statement into keywords.

Now, let's take your topic statement and turn it into keywords.

 
We can do this by identifying the most important words in your topic statement.
 
Example Topic Statement:
 
I'm interested in college students and the health risks of fast food.
 
Example Keywords:
 
1. college students
 
2. health risks
 
3. fast food
 
Directions:
 
Review your topic statement and develop a list of words most relevant to your topic.
 
 
Now that you have the most relevant keywords from your topic statement, let's brainstorm associated words or phrases.

Now that you have your keywords from your topic statement, let's develop associated keywords.
 
Directions:
 
Please go to the Merriam-Webster Thesaurus website.
 
Conduct a search for each of your keywords in the Thesaurus Search.
 
Review the associated keywords (synonyms) in the thesaurus and select the most relevant associated keyword.

 

Now that you have brainstormed associated keywords, it's time to find sources!

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