writing proposal

The fifth session

Writing proposal introduction

Writing an introduction for your proposal might seem a little scary at first but no worries!!! Here are some guidelines which can make the task easier for you.

Generally speaking writing a proposal consists of three moves:

1. Establish a research territory
2. Establish a niche
3. Occupying a niche

Establish a research territory

In this stage we generally talk about the importance of our area of study. You should also explain about the background of your research topic. Your background is short and very general. In this part you have a review of the latest researches conducted. Clarifying the operational definition of your key terms, genre awareness meaning that how to present argument, purpose, significance of the study etc are done in this move.

Establish a niche

In this section you try to see in what aspects and where there are some gaps in our knowledge of the topic. You consider the previous studies and try to see where there were not or there were a few studies regarding the topic. You should introduce them and then try to address them.

Occupying the niche

This part is where you can take the floor and show such a great researcher you are. You explain what you are going to do about the gaps you have already mentioned. You determine your research questions, hypotheses and more specifically talk about the significance of your study and what makes your study so special. You should also talk about the chapters.

Up to here we only got a very general view of what a proposal introduction is about. Now letrsquo;s get more specific and get down to the business of writing an introduction.

Proposal introduction comprises 7 sections. In these sections you should go through details.

1. Overview
2. Background of study (literature review and state of the art)
3. Statement of the problem (explain what gaps are and why you think they are important)
4. Purpose of the study (explain how your study is going to fill those gaps)
5. Research questions and hypotheses

Research questions (you get familiar with this part in your research course but just keep in mind the way you ask your questions shows how you are going to do the research. Is it qualitative or quantitative? Is it a corpus study? Is it a descriptive study or prescriptive?)

Research hypotheses (like research questions you will learn about research hypotheses in research course. You can have null hypotheses or directional hypotheses).

6. Definition of key terms. (bear in mind: you need to give operational definitions).

7. Significance of the study (this part is of great importance. You should persuade your readers why you think it was essential to conduct this study. Everything depends on you and how you illustrate the point).

This topic is better learned if you reaally try to put it into practice. I personally think it is a good idea to read some thesis introduction before getting ready to write. in addtition, your research knowledge is really essential.