To accompany your application for provisional enrolment in a PhD, if you haven't got a scholarship tied to a topic, you usually write a brief statement of interest about what you want to work on. This is little more than a couple of sentences. Early candidature Often, quite early in your candidature, you may be expected to put forth some kind of written proposal. You have to think about, not only what your topic is, but the aim of your research. As clearly as possible at this stage write down your main research question. If possible, expand on this by listing all the sub-questions you will have to answer in the process of your research in order to answer the main question. In your document, this would constitute your Aims section. If you are well advanced in your thinking about the topic, you could speculate on possible outcomes of your research and their significance. The next logical step is to think about what method or methods you could use to get answers to your questions. This would be an initial attempt to propose and try to justify your Methodology. You really have to show why you believe that the proposed methodology fits the research question best. Either before you state your Aims or following on from your Methodology, you will briefly review Literature which you judge relevant to your topic. This is by no means an exhaustive literature review. It really means finding the areas of possible relevance to your work then identifying within each area who the key authors are, and what are the ideas, theories, and the most significant findings that have made a difference to the ways of thinking in the discipline. You are doing this to mark out and map the field and to show where your research could possibly belong. If you're lucky, you might be able at this stage to point out the gap that your research could fill. In terms of formal arrangements, at this stage you would have to do little more than mark your sections clearly and provide a bibliography. Regardless of whether or not it is expected from you, writing this kind of initial proposal is a very useful thing to do. It helps you to focus on what it is you actually are doing, to establish why you are doing it, and to pin down how you will go about it-as well as providing a useful document for discussion and feedback. Late candidature In some departments and institutions, towards the end of the first year you will be expected to present a more substantial proposal. Often confirmation of your PhD enrolment is based on this and it could even be put to a review panel. The main ingredients of the initial proposal remain, but now it is all much less provisional. By now you would have your aims and probably your methodology firmly worked out. Depending on the nature of your work and your discipline, you could have done a thorough literature review, or in many cases you could have done a lot of your own work-interviewing, experimental work, pilot or case studies, etc. Now you would base your proposal on what had constituted the major part of your work to date. You would concentrate on what had been completed or was well advanced. This proposal serves two purposes: it shows the potential of the work to meet academic standards required of a PhD; and it indicates that you're on track to finish it within the required time. Apart from meeting the requirements, it is worth doing this proposal well. It allows you to take stock of where you are. Also, parts of it could form a base from which to write parts of your thesis. Putting together a substantial proposal gives you practice in writing, practice in handling critical feedback, and takes the terrors out of writing later on. As far as structure goes, in this case you will need to work out your own. It will always have your aims and your reasons for doing the work; but the rest will depend on what you have worked on which corresponds to what is seen as conventional thesis structure. Maybe you have worked on many parts and they would all be included, but with different degrees of detail.

	Apparently I have to write a research proposal. What do I need to do?
	What style of writing is expected?
	Use of the personal pronoun.
	Active vs passive voice.
	The use of tenses.
	Revising and editing.
	Revision.
	Editing.
	Sometimes when I'm writing I feel as though I'm saying the same thing over and over. How can I avoid repetition?
	I have difficulty showing whether it's my idea or someone else's. Do you have ways to help with this?
	Seeking, receiving and handling feedback.
	Strategies for getting the best feedback possible.
	Overcoming reluctance to seek feedback.
	Finding, formulating and exploring your topic.
	Designing and planning research.
	Wrestling with the idea of making an original contribution.
	Some writing tips.