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Once you have chosen a topic, you need to narrow it down until you have a focus. If you write about a topic without first identifying your focus, you will probably end up conveying a lot of information without examining it in any depth.

Glossary

impact The impact that something has on a situation, process, or person is a sudden and powerful effect that it has on them.

Before you start your research, you need to think about what aspect of the topic is most interesting to you. For example, if you want to write about the topic of the internet, you may decide to focus on: the impact of the internet on how people relate to others.

This is a good start, but the topic is still rather broad. One method for narrowing your topic further is to highlight the key words and list specific words under those categories:

For example: the impact of the internet on how people relate to others

Under internet you might list: online gaming, social networking, or access to information.

Under people: children between six and ten, adolescents, young men from disadvantaged backgrounds, people who spend more than five hours per day online, etc.

Under relate to others: form friendships, maintain face-to-face social networks, perceive authority figures, see themselves in relation to others, etc.

This method can generate more than one focus from which to choose:

For example:	the impact of online social networking on how adolescents form friendships.
or:	the impact of online gaming on how children between six and ten see themselves in relation to others.

However, make sure that you do not narrow your question down too much. If your focus is too narrow, you may not be able to find enough information to research it properly.

Exercise 7

Imagine that you are interested in researching why some films become very successful .

Narrow down the highlighted key words.

1 What type of films could you focus on?

2 What are the different ways you could define ‘successful’?