The Essential Nine: Choosing Topics for the Dreaded Composition Research Paper

Whenever I teach academic writing that involves research, I usually assign an open topic essay as the biggest writing project of the semester. Despite the fact that my students have already gained an ample amount of research experience, they always break a sweat at the beginning of the open topic essay.

"What am I supposed to write about for 10-15 pages?" they all want to know.

And I suppose I don't make it easy for them to generate ideas: nothing terrifies my students more than a thirty-minute diatribe on unacceptable topics, which, for me, range from hot button issues like gun control and abortion to anything they may have written for a high school research project.

On several occasions, I have encountered sighs, grunts, and moans while giving my "Unacceptable Topics" lecture, and when it's over, I always look up from my notes into what I can only describe as a sea of alarm, with waves of shocked silence broken only by the sound of a barely audible curse word or two.

My olive branch materializes in the form of a class discussion on what I like to call the "Essential Nine." These nine different approaches to the research essay have never failed to pique student interest, and when I use them as springboards for possible topics, not only do I get a variety of different kinds of research papers-every instructor's dream-but sometimes students get so excited that the project becomes a painless experience, one they actually enjoy.

The "Essential Nine" encourage students to personalize their research essays by exploring their individual interests and experiences. These nine different approaches dispel the idea of research as a global kind of writing activity, one in which students feel they must have a formal, detached relationship with their chosen topic. The "Essential Nine" promote a more localized way of writing, insisting students write about a world in which they already live, as opposed to one composed of ideas or theories far removed from their daily lives.

The "Essential Nine" ask students to: