LG575-7: Research Methods
2024-2025 (Spring Term)
Research proposal
Your completed assignment should total 2500 words (+/- 250 words) and needs to be submitted
in .doc or .pdf format ONLY.
The write-up should conform to APA guidelines for citations and references (See the student
handbook, or refer to http://www.apastyle.org/learn/index.aspx)
Please remember marking is anonymous, so your document should be saved as your student number
(e.g., 2002938.doc or 2002938.pdf). It should not include your name!
Submission deadlines
• Draft essay for formative feedback: March 20, 2025, by 11:00
• Essay: April 22, 2025, by 11:00
Essays will be marked using the standard marksheet adopted by the Department of Language and
Linguistics. Please see the following pages for examples of marking criteria.
Topic
Write a full research proposal for a topic of your choice. It is strongly suggested that you choose a
topic that is in line with your MA dissertation research!
The specific format of a research proposal includes, at minimum:
1. An introduction and a short literature review
2. A list of research questions and hypotheses
3. Discussion and rationalization of the research approach (i.e., qualitative, quantitative, mixed
methods) you intend to adopt for your research
4. Description of the method(s) you intend to use for collecting and analyzing data
5. A conclusion, demonstrating how your methods will allow you to answer your research
questions
See below for a suggested outline to the research proposal and rough estimates of word count per
section.
Research proposal: Suggested outline
Introduction (1-2 paragraphs)
• What is your topic and a rationale for the choice of the topic? Show why your topic is
important or useful within the concerns of the discipline.
• Only 1-3 paragraphs
Literature Review (1000 words or less)
• Not completely comprehensive but should cover 2-4 relevant theories or published research
articles that shape the way you think about your project
• For higher marks…
◦ Make sure the covered literature flows together into a coherent idea – not just a list of
separate articles
◦ For each bit of literature, point out why it’s important to include (e.g., adding depth to an
idea, pushing a theory into new territory, testing an idea on a new population, and so on)
Research Questions (1-4, maximum)
• Outline the research questions for your project in a numbered list.
• Good research questions:
◦ Follow on directly from your literature review
◦ Are clear and specific
◦ Are answerable and manageable in the scope of an MA dissertation
Hypotheses/Predictions (1-3 paragraphs)
• Given what you have presented in the literature review and your research questions, what do
you think you might find out?
• Make sure you state:
◦ What you think you may find, and
◦ Why/how you come to this conclusion
Research Methodology (around 1000 words)
◦ Describe your proposed research methodology (qualitative, quantitative, or mixed
methods)
Participants
◦ Who will be the participants? What characteristics do they need to have?
◦ How many participants do you need to recruit? Why this number?
◦ Where will you find them?
Data collection
Explain how you intend to collect the data, and what instruments (e.g., surveys, scales, tests,
etc.) you will use. These will depend on your chosen type of research. The more detail here,
the better!
o What kind(s) of data will you get and how?
o What kinds of experiments will you use?
o What kinds of corpora will you use?
o What kinds of observations will you make?
o What kinds of questionnaires will you use?
o What kinds of tests will you administer?
o How will you structure your interviews?
Data analysis
o What will you do with your data?
▪ Code it? If so, what kinds of codes might you start with?
▪ Analyse it? If so, what kinds of comparisons might you want to make (between
groups, between sources, between types of words, etc.)
Conclusion (1-2 paragraphs)
• Restating what you hope to find out
• Pointing out how the research you have planned will help answer the questions you have
outlined
