ou’ve reflected your way to a number of general research questions, used a resource like Wikipedia to familiarize yourself with relevant issues and terms and hopefully narrow your question, “played with sayables” to deepen, complicate, and challenge your thinking and perhaps narrow or shift your focus, and used Google to begin making a reading list.
It’s time to use the reflections and materials you’ve generated to write, or finish writing if you’ve already begun, one or two research proposals.
Each research proposal should include the following, in this or another order. Under each element, I’ve included questions, suggestions, and notes that you can consider while writing.
A research subject or topic—the subject or topic that you’d like to read about, learn about, and think deeply and rigorously about.
A research question—your question about the subject or topic, a question that inspires (or should inspire) uncertainty or disagreement within the community of relevant experts — not a question about which there’s a clear, justified consensus.
Question to consider while or after writing: “In my research proposal, do I make my research question clear, or do I present a research subject (like drugs or computers) without clarifying what exactly my question is?”
Question to consider while or after writing: “Does my research question inspire uncertainty or disagreement within my scholarly audience, or is it a question that we can answer by consulting an authoritative text?”
A brief review of sources already consulted—reviewed here to establish that your research subject and question are in fact important, that they do or should inspire uncertainty or disagreement within the community of relevant experts, that there is a need for your research project.
Suggestion: For our purposes, you can use Wikipedia and the articles you found through Google to establish that your research subject and research question are important and that they do or should inspire uncertainty or disagreement.
Convention: Your scholarly audience will expect you to use quotation marks when repeating someone’s words and to cite your sources whether they’re quoted word for word or paraphrased. In the coming weeks, we’ll discuss academic citation styles and academic norms concerning plagiarism. In the meantime, you can at least practice using quotation marks where appropriate and using hyperlinks or another method to cite sources.
Note: The review of sources already consulted shouldn’t simply be a list of URLs. It should be a paragraph that uses a few sources to introduce me to the conversation that people are having about your question or subject.
A tentative description of the methods you plan to use or the kind of research you plan to conduct — a plan, even if it’s only tentative and provisional, can inspire confidence by demonstrating that the question is in fact researchable, that the project is in fact doable, that the researcher has already thought carefully about the project’s demands and can be trusted to work hard on it.
Suggestion: When you played with sayables, if you did it well, you identified a wide range of possible answers to and perspectives on your question. In this section or paragraph of your research proposal, you can share your plans for investigating, evaluating, and deciding among those possible answers. What kind of research will you need to do, what kind of evidence will you need to find, to rule out sayable #1 or prove sayable #2 etc.?
Suggestion: This section is a good opportunity to share how much time and effort you plan to invest in your research project and how you plan to manage your time and energy over the coming weeks.
A rationale for pursuing this research in this English course—an argument defending the need and appropriateness of this research in this English course, an argument answering the question, “Why should the college give you English credit, and access to its resources, for this research?”
Suggestion: This section of the proposal is a good opportunity to explain how your research project might help you achieve (1) your personal educational goals, (2) your responsibilities as a college-educated member of the community, and (3) the purposes of this course.
Suggestion: To address item #2 (my responsibilities as a college student), I might reflect on how my project addresses a need of the broader community (if I haven’t done that already when reviewing sources). Alternatively, or additionally, I might explain how working on this project can help me develop into the person that my community needs me to be or become.
Suggestion: To address item #3 (the purposes of this course), I would reread and cite the parts of the syllabus on the nature of the course, the SLOs, the course objectives, and perhaps the assignments. I might also share my thoughts on the meaning of college-level English credit and a college degree.
A transparent summary of any work you’ve already done or plan to do on this question for another course (past, present, or future).
Note: If you haven’t done any work on your research question for another course, the research proposal should make that explicitly clear.
Addressing all of this will probably require at least four substantive paragraphs (at least one for each of the major parts, from the brief review of sources consulted to the transparent summary of prior or concurrent work). I recommend doing the usual prewriting for this proposal, planning the when, where, and how of your process and using any brainstorming methods that you find useful.
The research proposal’s main purpose is to convince me (your audience) that your research question inspires uncertainty and disagreement, that you’ve thought seriously about the kind and amount of intellectual labor your project will require, and that your proposed research is appropriate for our introductory composition course.
If you wish to attempt two different research projects, I’ll need two research proposals, but you don’t have to submit them both at the same time. You can submit one now (by clicking the “Submit” button) and another later (by clicking the “Resubmit” button). Remember that the second research project’s research question should be about reading, writing, or rhetoric.
Last Completed Projects
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