FYP Law and Accounting: Writing the Research Proposal

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FYP Law and AccountingWriting the Research
Proposal

• Íde OSullivan, Lawrence Cleary
• Regional Writing Centre, UL
• www.ul.ie/rwc

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Workshop

• Freewriting / writing to prompts
• The research proposal
• The writing process
• Planning
• Assessing the rhetorical situation
• Establishing an Organising Principle
• Strategies to develop writing

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Writing to prompts (Murray 2005)

• An area of Law and Accounting that I would like
  to research is
• Keep writing non-stop for 5 minutes.
• Write in sentences.
• Do not edit or censor your writing.
• Discuss what you have written in pairs.
• Joining the conversation
• Broad and narrow conversations

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Research proposal

• Title
• Background
• Research question and objectives
• Method
• Initial bibliography

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Writing a page 98 paper

• My research question is
• Researchers who have looked at this subject are
  
• They argue that
• Debate centres on the issue of
• There is work to be done on
• My research is closest to that of X in that
• My contribution will be
• (Murray 2006104)

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The writing process

• Prewriting
• Drafting
• Revising
• Editing and Proofreading

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Prewriting

• Planning
• Evaluating the rhetorical situation, or context,
  into which you write
• Choosing and focusing your topic
• Establishing an organising principle
• Gathering information
• Entering the discourse on your topic
• Taking notes as a strategy to avoid charges of
  plagiarism
• Evaluating sources

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Planning Assessing the rhetorical situation

• Occasion
• Audience
• Topic
• Purpose
• Writer

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Occasion

• What has prompted you to write?
• What do I need to know?
• What are my obligations?
• What are the procedures?
• When is it due? How much time do I have?
• Whats involved?
• My guidelines tell me about procedures that I
  must follow.
• When do I submit a proposal?
• Do I need to submit project reports? When?
• When do I submit my finished document? Do I need
  to defend my discoveries orally?
• What kind of project will I choose?
• How do I write about it?

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Occasion

• When we consider the occasion for writing, we
  think about
• What has prompted me to write?
• How much writing do I have to do?
• How much time do I have to do it?
• How much time should I allot for planning and
  organising, and for drafting and revising?
• What tone should I adopt? Formal? Informal?
  Authoritative? Conciliatory? Assertive?

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Audience

• Your audience affects how you write.
• Terms that need not be explained for one
  audience, may need to be explained to other
  audiences.
• General audiences may not have your subject
  knowledge, but they are usually thought of as
  intelligent, thoughtful readers willing to be
  informed or persuaded.
• Your classmates make good audiences. Write for
  them. Let them read your dissertation and give
  you feedback on the ease with which they were
  able to read and understand it.

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Topic

• Your topic is something that will have your
  supervisors approval.
• Some things to think about
• How much do you already know about this topic?
• How much am I going to have to know in order to
  do this project and report on it? To say
  something meaningful?
• How much research am I going to have to do?
• How much time do I have to do it?

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Topic

• Strategies for choosing topics and narrowing or
  broadening the coverage you will give it.
• Taking suggestions from your supervisor
• Brainstorming (individually or in groups)
• Listing
• Clustering or mind-mapping
• Free-writing or discussing
• Asking wh-questionswho, what, when, where, how
  and why?

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Topic

• Topics do not stand in isolation. They exist in a
  context.
• What is the relationship of your topic to your
  course of study?
• What are people saying about your topic in the
  literature you have read?
• What are the issues of concern?

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Purpose

• What is your purpose for writing?
• To express your feelings?
• To inform?
• To persuade?
• As you draft, revise and edit, make sure that
  every contribution to your report works to
  realise that purpose.

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Purpose

• If informing is the purpose of your report, then
  the point of order is a triangulation of your
  audience, your topic and your purpose.
• Audience analysis
• Relevance
• Rhetorical appeals

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Writer

• What do I already know about this topic?
• How quickly do I learn? Read? Write?
• How much writing have I already done?
• Have I developed an academic or authoritative
  voice?
• Have I addressed this audience before?
• What are my weaknesses? What are my strengths?

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The writing process

• Drafting
• Revision
• Editing and Proofreading
• We will return to these in November

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Dialogue about writing

• Peer-review
• Generative writing
• The writing sandwich (Murray 200585) writing,
  talking, writing
• Writing buddies (Murray and Moore 2006102)
• Writers groups
• Engaging in critiques of one anothers work
  allows you to become effective critics of your
  own work.

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Resources

• Ebest, S.B., Alred, G., Brusaw, C.T. and Oliu,
  W.E. (2005) Writing from A to Z The Easy-to-use
  Reference Handbook, 5th edition. New York
  McGraw-Hill.
• Regional Writing Centre, UL http//www.ul.ie/rwc/
• Strunk, W. and White, E.B. (2000) The Elements of
  Style, 4th ed. New York Longman.
• Using English for Academic Purposes
  http//www.uefap.com/index.htm
• The Writers Garden http//www.
  cyberlyber.com/writermain.htm
• The OWL at Purdue http//owl.english.purdue.edu/
• The Writing Center at the University of North
  Carolina at Chapel Hill http//www.unc.edu/depts
  /wcweb/handouts/index.html