LANG1402 Chap.4 Academic Writing and the Researchable Question
Academic Writing and the Researchable Question
What makes writing academic
The module opens by putting three pieces of writing on one topic side by side and asking which is academic and how you know. It is a better exercise than a definition because the answer is never a single feature. What any piece of writing looks like is decided by three things at once: what it is for, who is meant to read it, and the conventions of its kind.
Academic writing has its own set because its readers expect evidence, precision and objectivity. Three conventions come out of the comparison and are worth carrying forward: language that is precise and objective rather than personal, claims supported by evidence rather than by assertion, and sources cited so that a reader can check them.
None of the three is about difficulty of vocabulary.
Narrowing is additive
The funnel takes a broad topic, gives it a narrowed focus, fixes a defined context and arrives at a focused question. Students usually read that as cutting a topic down, and it is better read as accumulation: each stage supplies a component the question needs, so a question missing any of them is hard to answer with three sources.
The lesson then works six sample questions and the results are instructive. Only one of the four weak ones is genuinely too broad. One is closed, because almost every reader would agree before seeing evidence. One is loaded, because it presumes its own answer. One is definitional, because a reference work settles it in a sentence.
Narrowing rescues none of those three.
Research is a process with a return loop
The five published steps run from asking a focused question through searching, evaluating, synthesising and writing up. The step most drafts skip is the return: if nothing credible addresses your question, the question is the problem rather than the search.
Choosing a topic inside your own discipline makes every later step easier, since you already know some of the vocabulary, have a sense of which journals and bodies carry weight, and can say why the question matters to a reader. The brief invites topics from business, engineering, humanities, interdisciplinary areas and science.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Three texts compared, and the features that separate them
- 02
Purpose, audience and convention as what shapes any writing
- 03
The narrowing funnel read as addition rather than subtraction
- 04
Four different ways a research question fails
- 05
The question that is too narrow, and how it shows up
- 06
The five step research process and its return loop
- 07
Why a question from your own discipline is cheaper to research
- 08
Settling the question before the outline deadline
Repair two questions that fail for different reasons
- 2Diagnose each failure separately.
- 2Repair the closed question by changing what it asks about.
- 2Repair the broad question on every unbounded axis.
Key terms
- Researchable Question
- A question that is focused, specific and answerable through evidence rather than opinion, and bounded tightly enough that a small set of sources can address it.
- Closed Question
- A question whose answer a reader would accept before seeing any evidence, which leaves a report confirming rather than investigating.
- Loaded Question
- A question phrased so that it presumes its own answer, so that any evidence gathered can only agree with the premise already built into it.
- Defined Context
- The population, place or setting a question applies to, supplied at the third stage of the narrowing funnel and needed before sources can be judged for relevance.
- Academic Convention
- A shared expectation of scholarly writing, such as objective language, evidence-based claims and citation that lets a reader check the source.
Academic Writing and the Researchable Question FAQ
Is my question too broad or is something else wrong with it?
Ask both diagnostic questions before rewriting. Breadth is only one of four failures; a question can also be closed, loaded or definitional, and narrowing repairs none of those. If a reader could guess your answer in advance, the problem is what the question asks about rather than how much ground it covers.
Can a question be too narrow?
Yes, and it usually shows up as a search that returns nothing relevant rather than as a question that looks wrong. If your searches come back empty, suspect the scope before you suspect the database, because a question about one class on one day has no published literature behind it.
Does the topic have to come from my own subject?
It does not have to, and it is much easier if it does. The brief invites topics from business, engineering, humanities, interdisciplinary areas and science, and a topic from your own field gives you vocabulary for the search, a sense of which sources carry authority, and a reason the question matters that you can state for peers.
When is the last sensible moment to change my question?
Before the outline is submitted in week seven. The group evaluation in that class rates your shortlisted sources against the question you wrote down, so a question still moving afterwards makes the feedback nearly worthless and leaves you holding sources chosen for a target that has shifted.
Assessment move
Draft three candidate questions rather than one, run both tests on each, and take the survivor to your first consultation. Drafting one question and defending it is slower than drafting three and discarding two, because the two you discard tell you what the survivor is really asking.
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