Let me talk about my most commonly used methods of writing course papers. After all, course papers may not be as rigorous and simple as real academic research:

1. Remember carefully what the teacher said in class and see what the teacher mentioned but didn't expand, and you will be interested. To make this problem concrete and narrow down the scope, we must be able to come up with a definite time, relevant people, general content and so on.

2. Try to exhaust the relevant research results and understand the basic viewpoints through libraries and HowNet.

3. Collect information according to what you have learned. For example, if you study the ancient history of China, you can look up official history, chronological history books and anthology of main figures. If you can't think of the source of information, you can look at the references attached to relevant research results, select original historical materials, focus on research, and gradually form opinions.

If you have difficulty in determining the scope of the topic, or have no directly related research results, and sometimes don't know where to start collecting historical materials, you should ask the teacher for help.