Research paper
Hi, I've never posted on this community (tended to be more of a lurker). But I'm struggling with an assignment and thought this community might be a good place to ask for advice.
I'm an undergraduate Asian Studies major, and I'm taking my first 400-level class this semester. The class requires us to write a research paper, and I haven't put much effort into a research paper before, so I'm not sure how comfortable I am with the format. In addition, my biggest challenge right now is trying to figure out what I should be writing about!
I'm assigned to the group writing about the "Information Exchange Theme". We have not yet covered this topic in class, and when I asked the instructors to explain the basic concept, they were pretty vague and seemed willing to accept almost any topic. Each member of my group has to write a ten page paper involving a comparison of an Asian country and somewhere else (it can be another Asian country). My group chose Japan as our common nation and we each have our own topic and country of comparison. I chose South Korea because I recently wrote a paper about Korean cinema, so I figured having the material fresh in my mind might be helpful.
However, I'm not sure exactly how to proceed from here. As I said, I have little experience writing research papers, and I'm having trouble coming up with a thesis, not to mention figuring out how broad or specific a topic I can manage in ten pages. The class is focusing on urbanization, and initially I thought I could do something to do with the Korean Wave, but I don't know how I could do a comparison using that.
Basically- I'm trying to figure out what my topic is and how specific should I be? Obviously, I should limit it to one type of media (i.e. cinema, music, television, etc)- is there one where a comparison between the Japanese and Korean form could be especially telling in any way? And what exactly IS information exchange? Is there some great field of research out there on this topic that I'm just totally missing??
One final note is that I need to avoid the topics of celebrity figures as they represent their home country and media propaganda, as both of these topics are being covered by other group members.
I'm sorry this is such a long question, but any and all advice would be appreciated, as I'm feeling rather stumped at the moment. Thanks again!
I'm an undergraduate Asian Studies major, and I'm taking my first 400-level class this semester. The class requires us to write a research paper, and I haven't put much effort into a research paper before, so I'm not sure how comfortable I am with the format. In addition, my biggest challenge right now is trying to figure out what I should be writing about!
I'm assigned to the group writing about the "Information Exchange Theme". We have not yet covered this topic in class, and when I asked the instructors to explain the basic concept, they were pretty vague and seemed willing to accept almost any topic. Each member of my group has to write a ten page paper involving a comparison of an Asian country and somewhere else (it can be another Asian country). My group chose Japan as our common nation and we each have our own topic and country of comparison. I chose South Korea because I recently wrote a paper about Korean cinema, so I figured having the material fresh in my mind might be helpful.
However, I'm not sure exactly how to proceed from here. As I said, I have little experience writing research papers, and I'm having trouble coming up with a thesis, not to mention figuring out how broad or specific a topic I can manage in ten pages. The class is focusing on urbanization, and initially I thought I could do something to do with the Korean Wave, but I don't know how I could do a comparison using that.
Basically- I'm trying to figure out what my topic is and how specific should I be? Obviously, I should limit it to one type of media (i.e. cinema, music, television, etc)- is there one where a comparison between the Japanese and Korean form could be especially telling in any way? And what exactly IS information exchange? Is there some great field of research out there on this topic that I'm just totally missing??
One final note is that I need to avoid the topics of celebrity figures as they represent their home country and media propaganda, as both of these topics are being covered by other group members.
I'm sorry this is such a long question, but any and all advice would be appreciated, as I'm feeling rather stumped at the moment. Thanks again!