Basically, every research starts with a problem or problems. Just before you defend your Research Proposal, you already have this idea about the problem that you are going to research. At the start, the problem you may have chosen is very broad. In this case, it needs to be made specific. Or the major problem may be broken into smaller, limited ones. In order for your topic to be specific, you need to read a lot of reading materials. Your topic is broad because you do not know about it yet. On this matter, you need to survey the literature. Let’s say that you have chosen “writing” as your topic in your Thesis or Dissertation. The first thing that you should do is to define “writing”. Get the definition from several sources. Learn how to take down notes and write your definitions on cards. Bear in mind that you may still restate the problem later but in this way, you have a beginning.