Good Research Means Good Questioning

I never realized how essential structuring a good research question is to finding good and specific information. There have been countless times when I have received a paper back from a professor that I thought I did well on, and the professor has barely marked to the paper at all; yet I still receive an average mark. The problem that I have always struggled with, in regards to my writing is not my writing style or structure; it is that most of the topics that I write about comprise thesis statements that are entirely too vague and extremely hard to argue, let alone, prove my argument.

I have always been told that I have the potential to be an amazing writer. I never seemed to understand what that meant, necessarily; however, now it is quite clear. I just don’t take my time. I have always been one of those writers who thought that he got everything right on the first draft. So when teachers would comment that I need to work on stronger arguments, I would just sort of pass them off as crazy, finding it hard to believe that my writing was that incomprehensible.

I now understand that the problem, most of the time, was not how I was writing; rather, it was the fact that both the arguments that I was making and the research that I used to back it up, was dim and indistinct; thus, my paper would seem a little weak and, in some cases, even a bit cliché. By focusing on a clear and concise research question at the start of my research I have found that the majority of the research that I find is almost identical, in regards to the topic, which makes it a lot easier to make a point and stick to it.