One of the artifacts of your digital portfolio will be a persuasive research paper in which you state a position on an issue and argue your claim using supporting evidence along with rhetorical strategies. Before you begin researching information, you must first narrow down the scope of your research to a specific topic. Once you have selected an issue to investigate, you should also choose a position on the issue and develop it into a thesis statement. This preliminary thesis statement will help guide your research so that you can later collect useful sources that support or refute your thesis. This topic will offer helpful strategies for selecting and narrowing down a research topic, as well as developing an effective thesis statement.

Essential Questions

• What prewriting methods can you use to select and narrow down a topic?
  
• What makes a strong thesis statement?