Interrogating the question or title

For most formal writing that you undertake at university your starting point will be a title or a question.  One of the most common pieces of criticism levelled at students’ written work is that it fails to address the title or question.  In most cases you will have some sense of what the subject is about: you will have attended lectures and completed programme readings.  You may have found certain aspects of the subject particularly interesting or you may have inadvertently omitted important areas for consideration.  Unless you think about the title carefully you run the risk of straying completely off track.  You might ‘hear what you want to hear’ in a title and write about what interests you or you might develop an argument with which you are comfortable.  If you have little time you might panic and regurgitate lecture notes.   In all cases what you write will have little relevance for the assignment title or question.  It is therefore worth taking some extra time to consider the title carefully.