HOW TO WRITE A THESIS PROPOSAL

A thesis proposal is different from the thesis itself. As the name suggests, it is a proposal. That means that it is simply an outline of the student, or graduates idea for a thesis that is presented to the professor so that they may approve it for a thesis or that they may suggest some alterations to be made. Being that it is not the main thing does not make it any less important since it determines the fate of the thesis itself.

The first thing to do is to find the topic where the proposal will be based on. A topic acts as a map and guides the student on what to write one without divulging outside the parameters and writing down unrelated content. The key is to make the topic itself as precise as possible. This will help in limiting the instances of going away from the ideas of discussion. If the topic is wide, it always helps when subtopics are developed and the proposal written from one of them.

As much as a thesis proposal is not a thesis, it helps if you treat it as one. That means that the same knowledge that you have and plan on using in writing the thesis is the same one that should be used in writing the proposal. You should not depend on resources from outside and in literally works. Rather, you should create your thesis proposal from your own resource of knowledge; from the information that you have gathered over the years of your study and interpret them into a literary composition that is the proposal. It helps when you develop ideas as your own instead of depending on something developed by someone else.

Once you have this foundation, what follows is quite simple. All it takes is a little command of language and compilation of data picked up over the years in your own understanding and you are home free. Start with a paragraph introducing the topic. Try personalizing it and presenting it in your own way during this process of description. The paragraphs that follow should be the ones with all the details, supporting the topic and citing examples that again have been picked up during the course of study. But in all this remember this is just a proposal and all the juicy details should be preserved for the thesis itself. That is to say, your proposal should point your professor in the direction that your thesis is likely to go. It should communicate the intended message with ease. Think of the proposal like a compass and the thesis the map. The proposal should guide in which way to go.

Always keep in mind the proposal-thesis relationship and don´t mix up the two as that would be considered unwise. It should not be too hard especially if you lay out your proposal in chapter form and expounding each chapter later on in your thesis. If you do this, make sure that the arrangement in the two documents is similar.