Skip to Main Content

English Composition Research: Before We Begin

The content in this LibGuide is provided for students taking English 101.

Analyzing an Assignment Prompt

Before beginning any writing assignment, we should have a strong understanding of the assignment prompt. We could do this by locating any essential questions that the prompt may be asking us to answer and identify any major topics that our response should include. We should also check for expected length and formatting requirements.

For example, if we are being asked to write about our chosen career field, we should identify what about that career field our essay should address:

  • Do we need to discuss the degree required to be a part of that field?
  • Does the assignment prompt suggest we should look for statistics or specific documents?

If we are given a set of topics that our essay must address, we may have to create our own questions to develop our essay. 

Becoming More Informed

An incredibly helpful step toward completing an assignment is checking resources to have a broader understanding. If we were to be writing a history paper about the Civil War, for example, it would help to do initial research about the Civil War before we select a topic. Using the open internet can be helpful for gaining a broad understanding of an assignment, but it is not always a credible means:

Identifying the Required Source Material

While reading through the assignment prompt, we may note that the assignment requires source material. It is important to check what type of sources we are responsible for using while writing our essay.
For example, if we are composing an essay about the influence advertisements have on the people who watch them, we could be held responsible for locating our own advertisement to analyze. Additionally, the assignment prompt may specify that we should include research that support our claims. In this example, we are responsible for these sources:
  • Primary Texts: texts, artifacts, and/or objects that we should analyze, discuss, and/or review.
  • Secondary Texts: research, criticism, and/or analysis connected to our primary text, topic, and/or assignment.
In this example, a cigarette advertisement would be a primary text and research on the influence of cigarette advertisements would be a secondary text. We should assume that our instructor wants us to locate credible, academic sources.

Beginning the Research Process

This credible and reliable database will provide excellent information to help us begin writing on any topic.