Writing A Thesis Proposal
Writing a thesis proposal can be challenging, especially in graduate school where you are transitioning from undergraduate work, or doing your studies part-time like me. And there are a lot of guides online that will show you hacks and thingamajigs to glide your way through thesis writing, but in this article, I will share what I learned from my professors and my journey in writing the proposal.
The literature is lit, so better start here.
We are always tempted first tackle the introductory part of our manuscript because we think that it will set the foundation we’ll follow while writing along. However, reviewing the literature first will widen your perspective about the field, narrow the focus of your study and identify what you need more.
The review of the literature is your chance to meet and greet the pioneers and the experts of the field that you want to study. Reviewing their work will introduce you to their methods and their line of thinking about the research subject. It is also an opportunity to look at how academic writing works. According to Librero (2012), doing the literature review will also guide you in forming your theoretical basis for your topic, and it can serve as a comparison point for your results.
Your preliminary literature could lead you to other researches as well! Check the citations and take note of what is relevant and what you will need.
In doing the first task of surveying past studies, you are making your life easier because past research will tell you what has been done and what needs to be done. Don’t forget to check the author’s recommendations in their studies on what concepts or phenomena you could still explore, thus getting that elusive ‘research gap.’
Combining what you know about the field and the existing problems and gaps in research, you will quickly form the goals or objectives of your study. The variables of your study are now also taking shape. Moreover, now that you know the current trends in examining the topic you want, you can pinpoint what you still need, like new methods that can bring a fresh breeze to the body of knowledge.
A researcher is a storyteller.
We are researchers, but we are also storytellers. We don’t want our ideas to get lost in incoherent paragraphs and disorienting thoughts. We must know how to present our ideas in a thesis proposal in a manner that is coherent and somehow relatable. I am still learning to practice this advice myself, but here are some tips that I got from my mentors that I find helpful:
Telling a story can be challenging because we sometimes get excited to present different ideas simultaneously, which could bombard the reader (I’m guilty of this). My adviser’s tip was to create a pattern or guideline, starting with the general to specific or from international studies to national studies or from the past scenarios to the present problem. I’m thinking of this as guiding our readers to the point that we want to make, and at the same time, orienting them to ideas and knowledge from past researches. A technique that I do is creating an outline and buckets where I can put ideas and topics in one place.
For example, in the literature review, you could subdivide the topics into themes or variables or regions where the studies were conducted.
Why is the research relevant to the reader? How could the research help them? What is the contribution of the study you are planning to make? In answering these questions, you could connect to your readers and, most importantly, determine who your primary audience is.
Now, it’s time to write.
After doing the literature review and creating the ‘story flow’ of your research, it is now time to put them into words, but remember to:
I know, I know you might say, “There are deadlines to meet!” but doing only what you can do today can pay off in the long run. Try reading 1–2 studies a day, take notes about its findings, methods, etc., and reflect on the studies you reviewed, absorbing what you learned from the authors. On the other hand, if you only wrote one paragraph or one section in a day or a week, that is still progress.
Prioritize your mental health and treat yourself. Research is challenging but we can do it with enough rest and recreation.
If you search the synonym for research, it will be revision (just kidding). Take all the comments as ways to improve your work and as avenues to see your thesis proposal from another angle.
These are some of the things I learned when I wrote my thesis proposal. I hope this could help you, too, in your journey, but I barely scratched the surface. If you have tips, share them in the comments section and help a fellow researcher! Good luck!
Reference
Librero, F. (2012). Writing Your Thesis (A Practical Guide for Students). University of the Philippines Open University.
Originally published at http://erwinsiron.wordpress.com on November 8, 2021.
