Help needed on writing a proposal 4 an Essay

JackieCorcoran

Hey,
I'm doing a Dipolma in Addiction Studies and have to write a Proposal for an Essay on Addiction. I've decided my final essay is going to be on Addiction, causative factors and solutions etc...The thing is i've never written a proposal and don't know where to start. CAn anyone give me some help, pointers, tips or a sample of one they may have done already for college. It's got to be 750words and use the Harvard Methodology of citation etc...ALL help would be greatly appreciated.
Many thanks
Jackie

looksee

First you need to narrow the area. Your subject is addiction, so using 'Addiction, causes and solutions' on the face of it looks to be far too big an area. Were you given any guidance on this? Usually they prefer you to do an indepth study of a small area, rather than a wide study that covers too much.

My take on this would be to find a topic of interest within the subject and say what you are going to investigate, why you are choosing this topic, what major studies have been done on it, and by whom. Without going into detailed arguments you show what you are going to say and what you hope to establish, and where you are going to get the information from. You need to mention an introduction, your arguments and a conclusion.

You need to assemble most of your information, papers, books etc before you write the proposal, and to have a good idea of the content. Don't make assumptions then try to prove your point, you will be at least half way through your research before you write the proposal.

JackieCorcoran

Sorrry, i forgot to mention, the area i've chosen is "Heroin/Methadone in addiction".....have so much research done, it's just hard to know how much of that to put into the proposal or to leave for the final essay. As mentioned the Proposal is 750words, so should i have 1/2 of my own imput and 1/2 quotes, facts and citations etc? thanks

littlefriend

http://www.mahalo.com/how-to-write-an-essay

^^ is worth a read (look at the bit about proposals)

750 words - break it into sections and focus on each one separately to begin with. When you have each one written you can go back over it and tie it all together.

Don't worry about many quotes - in just 750 words you won't be expected to use more than a couple. Also, in my experience, you can change your mind about some of the things you put in your proposal so you aren't stuck exactly to what you have outlined.

looksee

I think the 750 is the length of the proposal

JackieCorcoran

1. That is a helpful site, one question tho, i obviously don't need to have a bibliography of all research done (for my essay) included in my proposal, do i? Just the research notes im using in the proposal itself, yeah? Apologies if this sounds like an insane question but my brain is in meltdown mode from researching/studying etc....