Preliminary Research Plan
Preliminary Research Plan
This assignment is intended to provide the “raw materials” you’ll need to plan and write
the Research Essay (see Assignments for instructions and due date). It will also allow me to
give suggestions and comments on your plan before you write the final draft of the Research
Essay.
For this assignment, you will create a plan and not an essay. The file you submit will
have two parts. First, write a 1-2 page summary of your plan for the research essay. Then, find
two secondary sources that relate to your plan, and for each source give the citation as you
would on a Works Cited page and underneath it, write a 1-2 paragraph summary of the source.
Please read the Guidelines below for step-by-step instructions, and let me know if you
have questions.
Guidelines
Step1–Read through the Research Essay file under Assignments, so you have an idea of
the way this Preliminary Plan will prepare you to write the Research Essay.
Step 2–Choose one or more of the writers/works on the syllabus and formulate a
“working” topic and approach. Here are some examples: examining irony or social
criticism in Flaubert, the Modern vision in Baudelaire, the nature of religion in Tolstoy,
the magical realism of Marquez—or your own choice of any workable research topic.
Step 3–Write a 1-2 page discussion of your topic and approach. Here are a few prompts
to get started:
–Why did you choose the work(s) and writer(s) that you did?
— Are there aspects of the works that you don’t understand fully?
What are they? Where could you look for answers?
–Brainstorm your topic, and then summarize the results.
–Come up with 3-4 questions that could be used to direct your
research. List them along with possible answers.
–Is your thesis starting to take shape? State it and discuss how you
might support it.
Step 4–Find two secondary sources that are relevant to your plan. Please
do not use any .com sources—I know there are some good ones, but
they are not allowed in this assignment or in the Research Essay. The
Online Library (see Web Links) has hundreds of scholarly articles,
and you may find also find good sources using Google Scholar,
Advanced Search, minus .com. There are also excellent video lectures by scholars
from universities and colleges across the country.
Step 5–For each secondary source, write the citation in MLA format as you
would on a Works Cited page. Most articles in the Online Library
journals will give the correct citation at the end of the article. If you
need help with citations for other sources, use the OWL (Online
Writing Lab at Purdue University):
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/01/.
Step 6–Under each citation, summarize the article (or parts of it that you
think may be useful to you) in 1-2 paragraphs. Examples of
summaries can be found here:
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/563/1/.
You may incorporate quotes as well. Be very careful not to plagiarize.
Review the definition of plagiarism before you write:
https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/589/02/.
Scroll to see the next page for an example of the way the completed plan will look.
Student
Instructor
ENG 272 Research Plan
Date
Preliminary Research Plan
Write a 1-2 page discussion of your research topic and approach (your “plan”).
Next, cite your first article and write the summary beneath it like this:
Smith, Amy. “Article on Your Source.” Scholarly Journal 1.3 (Spring
2013): n. pag. Web. Date you accessed the article.
Begin here and write your 1-2 paragraph summary of the article.
Cite your second source as you did above.
Begin here and write your next 1-2 paragraph summary.
