Research Applicants: Choosing a Research Topic and Writing the Research Proposal

Choosing a Topic

Female student If you apply to do an MPhil or PhD by supervised research, or to do the MRes programme or the Integrated 'New Route' PhD, we ask you to give us details in your application of your proposed topic. That is because all these schemes, whether they involve a taught training element or not, are focussed from the start on your research project. (On the taught MAs, on the other hand, it is rare for anyone to have a research project in mind at the start. Rather you discover one during the course, and do the dissertation on it). Your research proposal gives us an idea of what your interests are and the level of your background in that subject as well as helping us determine who might be an appropriate supervisor. We would encourage you strongly to look on our website at the profiles for each member of staff, and the topics of current research students. These suggest the kinds of topics that staff members are particularly interested in supervising. Also you can suggest the name of a suitable supervisor on your application form; as far as possible, we try to accommodate your wishes. If we see any potential problems with your prospective choice of topic or supervisor, we'll let you know.

Some thoughts on choosing a topic:

Research at MRes, MPhil and PhD level is required to demonstrate not only research expertise in the relevant field but an appropriate level of originality. One way to achieve this is by a piece of work which applies existing ideas (e.g. previous findings, theories, research methods) to a new domain (e.g. provides a competent analysis of new data in terms of an existing theory or approach). Another way is by a piece of work which proposes a new and interesting account (maybe a new theory) of existing data. Clearly, the highest attainable level of originality would be to propose a novel theoretical account of novel data (a goal all academics strive for but few attain!).
Clearly, your chosen topic should be one which excites and stimulates your intellectual curiosity, and which is going to retain your interest throughout the period you work on it.
It may also be a topic which has some direct relevance to your future career aspirations, or special importance in the context where you normally work (esp. if you are a teacher)
It should be a topic which you personally feel confident that you are able to master within the time available for your research. For this reason, it is important not to be too wide-ranging in your choice of topic. On the contrary, there are a number of reasons for focusing your research as narrowly as possible on a topic which is highly circumscribed and specific. One reason for this is that the existing research literature is growing at such a rapid pace that it is no longer possible to keep up with the whole of the literature in a broad field, so that narrowing down your research topic reduces your background reading to much more manageable proportions. Secondly, the broader the topic you choose, the more open-ended your research becomes - and the less likely it is that you will complete it on time (so putting yourself under unnecessary financial, emotional and intellectual pressure). From this point of view, ‘Language Acquisition by Bilinguals' is far too broad to be viable as a research topic; by contrast ‘A case study of the development of personal pronouns in the grammar of a two-year old bilingual child' is a much more restricted, and hence more manageable research topic.

Writing a Proposal

Choosing a topic is one thing, but writing a research proposal is another. A good research proposal generally will:

Focus clearly on some specific question(s) that the research will answer, or on hypotheses to be tested
Demonstrate some familiarity with key current work in the relevant area
Show awareness of descriptive frameworks or theories in the relevant area, and also of research methods that have been used there
Describe clearly the methodology to be used for your research: what data you might gather, from who, where and how; what linguistic, statistical or computational techniques might be involved.
Where relevant, indicate clearly the possible implications for real world practical activities (e.g. for language teaching, business, speech therapy, etc.)
Be written with professional layout and conventions: subheadings, references properly made in the text and listed at the end, etc.
Be clearly aimed at the interests of some member(s) of staff that we have here.

A good proposal will not:

Provide an overview of an area (e.g. ESP, corpus linguistics, optimality theory, language teaching methods…) without showing precisely what your study will be focussed on
Mention only very old sources, and/or propose to research something that was popular 20 years ago but researchers have now moved forward
Propose to research questions that are too broad and unresearchable
Propose an unimaginative duplication of research already done many times
Fail to give proper details of the proposed method of answering the research questions (e.g. exactly how and where the data would be gathered
Be too short (less than a page)
Be too long (e.g. ten pages) - aim for 750 words
Be incoherent
Be an excellent proposal except for the fact that we have no member of staff working/supervising in that area

Your proposal is just that, a proposal, and it is not expected to be the perfect final statement of what the research will cover. Naturally you refine it with your supervisor in the early days of study here. Also of course we expect a better / fuller proposal for the pure research MPhil and PhD than we do for the MRes and the New Route PhD. However, it is an important indicator of your readiness for work at this level.

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