Learning how to plan your research project is an important academic skill that will serve you in a number of future contexts. This proposal will be a presentation of the controlling idea for your research essay and a breakdown of what will be your scholarly approach to it. Within it, I am requesting that you explain your essay topic, clearly state your researched position, and present a few of the sources from which you gathered your information and materials. Remember: your topics was/is your choice, but the research questions (from the DP activity), the annotated bibliography (lead up 1 of final project), and this assignment (lead up 2 of final project) are all connected.
How to Format Your Proposal:
Answer the following questions in this order. Number the answers.
- Subject of essay (lay out the larger topic be as specific as possible).
- Audience for your essay and why them (be specific here – “all Americans” is not specific. “Teenagers who play organized sports” is a specific audience).
- Your purpose for proposing this essay. Why is this topic important to you?
- What is your working thesis statement/controlling idea? Remember that this should connect to the research from your annotated bibliography. What did you discover? What will you be able to “prove” to the reader in this essay you are proposing based
on your research? - What themes/major ideas of your topic would you be examining? How would you be approaching these in your writing task? Here you can briefly explain how you would break your ideas down…what in particular you would be analyzing. Think about the sources from your annotated bibliography here and also about how you will organize.
- What are the larger implications of this topic? What’s at stake? Get to the “so what?” of your essay idea – explain why it matters to the world outside our class.
- Research is about discovery - What is something you learned about your topic from the research that opened or changed your mind or challenged your prior understanding or knowledge?