Con-position proposal: working thesis and research plan

The brief draws one distinction and everything else follows from it: a proposal is not an outline, because it does not structure the paper. It offers direction for research needs and gives your professor a chance to give feedback before drafting begins. That means the document is about what you do not yet know. An outline says here is section one, section two, section three; a proposal says here is the claim I intend to defend, here is what I need to find out before I can defend it, and here is where I expect to find it. Students who submit a skeleton of the finished essay have written the wrong document, however good the skeleton is, and the feedback opportunity the assignment exists to create is lost. Write it as a plan of enquiry addressed to a reader who can still change your direction.

Working is the operative word in working thesis statement, and it licenses something a final thesis does not. A working thesis is a claim precise enough to be researched and provisional enough to be abandoned. Vaccination policy deserves closer scrutiny is not researchable, because nothing could confirm or disconfirm it. A claim that state-level exemption policies should be narrowed because non-medical exemptions cluster geographically and depress local immunity below the threshold for measles is researchable, and it tells you exactly what evidence you have to find. Notice that the second version could turn out to be wrong, and that this is a feature. Say in the proposal what would change your mind. A professor reading a thesis with a stated falsification condition knows immediately that the enquiry is genuine and can give useful feedback on it. A thesis nobody could disagree with is not a thesis, and a con position in particular needs something to be against.

Context, audience and purpose are named separately and each asks a different question, so answer them separately rather than blending them into a paragraph about why the topic matters. Context is the state of the conversation: what has already been argued, what has recently changed, and where your claim enters. Audience is who you are trying to move, and the honest answer is rarely everyone; a proposal aimed at parents weighing a decision needs different evidence from one aimed at legislators weighing a bill, and naming which changes what counts as a good source. Purpose is what you want the reader to do or believe differently by the end, which is not the same as what you want to prove. Being specific on all three does more to improve a draft than any amount of extra reading. Answer them in three short labelled passages so the professor can respond to each one on its own.

The con article you have been asked to review is a model, not a source, and confusing those two is the commonest error in this assignment. Read Counterpoint: Vaccines: Caution Advised for how it works: what it concedes and where, how it handles the strongest opposing evidence, what kind of authority it appeals to, and where its argument is weakest. Then say in the proposal what you will do differently. A con position taken seriously requires you to state the strongest case against yourself, which the Points of View database makes easy since it publishes the point beside the counterpoint. If your proposal cannot say what the best opposing argument is, you are not ready to research yet, and that is precisely the thing your professor can help with at this stage. Say so plainly in the proposal, because naming the opposing case is part of what is being assessed here.

On execution, the six required sections belong to the supplied template and the template's own headings are the structure, so complete it rather than writing a continuous essay. Potential sources means exactly that: sources you expect to use, described well enough that a reader can judge them, not a formatted reference list of things you have already read. Say why each is likely to be useful and what you still need to find that none of them covers. The example on pages 269 to 270 of the textbook shows the register the assignment expects and is worth reading before you start rather than after. Use APA formatting for anything you cite. Keep the proposal short and specific, since its value lies in being easy to give feedback on. Anything longer starts to become the outline the brief told you not to write. Its value lies in being easy to read and easy to answer.