What should you avoid in a research proposal?

A research proposal is a common academic assignment in the colleges and universities of the UK and USA. Such tasks allow students to obtain many valuable skills which help them thrive in their area of study. A quality research proposal requires communicating complex ideas in a clear, concise, and structural way. However, suppose you feel stuck trying to write your proposal. In that case, there’s a chance that you’re making some common mistakes that unnecessarily complicate your writing and prevent you from generating original ideas. But don’t worry, we’re here to help you simplify your learning experience, so we decided to share some tips that will aid you in improving your creative writing skills by avoiding common mistakes. 

The topic is too broad

A research proposal is a short and coherent summary of your subsequent research. Writing from scratch is always challenging. But when you choose a topic that is too broad, trying to cover it from all possible angles, this approach only makes your task unnecessarily complicated. Ultimately, you may find yourself confused and overwhelmed attempting to coherently discuss controversial ideas as well as formulate and support your main argument. Therefore, it is crucial for a top-notch research proposal to narrow down your topic and focus on the central issues you want to address. 

What are the benefits?

• You clearly understand your research question, which helps you structure your paper in a more professional way.
• It significantly reduces the time and effort you spend creating the list of keywords to guide your search for the most suitable online sources for a bibliography section.
• Your research questions, aims, and objectives are more structured and focus on one central topic, so your research proposal will not be rejected due to their misalignment.

Poor theoretical foundation and factual description

The expert college papers require a solid theoretical foundation and factual description of the main issues. If a student doesn’t have a comprehensive understanding of the topic and ideas they want to address, the content is too vague. It doesn’t have a logical, factual description to support its central arguments. Poor theoretical foundations make essays superficial; therefore, they miss the main points of a research proposal and don’t keep the reader’s attention. 

So, what’s the solution?

• Consider the importance of your research topic. As soon as you can clearly state the number of benefits it suggests, it’ll be easier for you to get straight to the point when writing your essay.
• Generate a few ideas on how you can make your paper original and personalized. The best papers are written when you’re excited about the topic and support the statement that relates to you.
• The research proposal has to include credible sources to improve its theoretical foundation. Search for the materials on the university library website, Google Scholar or JSTOR. These services provide many helpful academic resources, and the vast majority of them are free.
• Sometimes it’s also helpful to review the examples of professional writers’ work. It will allow you to have a better understanding of the vocabulary and structure of the research paper, as well as gather some ideas on how to come up with the original and logical approach to your future assignments. Certain companies provide students with assistance when it comes to writing academic papers. They suggest the entire range of valuable services for English-speaking customers. For instance, CustomWritings writing company offers a research proposal service that allows a customer to buy cheap and versatile academic papers from top PhD writers.

Grammatical errors and poor writing

Poor writing always distracts the readers from the primary points of your research proposal. Even if you built a solid argumentation and supported it with reliable sources, redundancy, typos, and grammatical errors will catch the reader’s attention in the first place. Every writer also should pay attention if their paper has a flow and logical structure of the argumentation. Some papers are difficult to read because a writer jumps from one idea to another. Remember that it’s necessary to guide your readers with a coherent narrative that leads straight to the point you want to make. 

Thus, here’s what you can do:

• Edit and proofread your paper before submitting it. You may also use the Grammarly service that helps its users eliminate wordiness, as well as spot and correct errors.
• Make sure that you use formal language, avoid slang and redundancy. Use either UK or USA English to ensure that your language is consistent.
• Don’t neglect double-checking if you use proper formatting and have the exact number of sources listed in references.
• Improve your argumentation with proper reasoning, premises, and conclusions.
• Start working on paper beforehand. Most of the mistakes are made in haste.

A paper doesn’t follow the instructions

Every university and college may have slightly different requirements for students’ coursework. The instructions may ask you to focus more or less on a certain section, add headings, use specific font types and sizes, or organize literature reviews differently. So, if your research proposal doesn’t meet these requirements, most likely, you will be asked to resubmit your paper. That’s why it’s essential to pay closer attention to the nuances to improve your chances of getting high marks. 

What should you do?

To avoid these issues, make sure that you carefully read the guidance document and assessment criteria matrix. These documents always provide all the details regarding the proper formatting, vocabulary, and structure. Take some notes in your notebook if necessary, so you can double-check if you follow the instructions while writing your paper. 

Final note

Academic writing always requires thought-provoking ideas, theoretical foundations, and logical structure. It all may sound overwhelming at first, but when a student puts some time and effort into figuring it out, they learn many valuable skills, such as critical thinking, research skills, and communicating complex ideas in a clear and coherent way. Custom writing may be challenging, but it makes essays riveting and interesting to read.