How to write a proposal essay

HOW TO WRITE A PROPOSAL ESSAY What is a Proposal Essay? A proposal essay is exactly what it sounds like: it proposes an idea and provides evidence intended to convince the reader why that idea is a good or bad one. Although proposals are generally a significant part of business and economic transactions, they are not limited to those two areas. Proposals may be written for any college classes, scientific fields, as well as personal and other professional areas. As such, knowing how to write one is a very valuable skill. This article will go over how to write an effective proposal essay and provide a sample one that was actually submitted and implemented.

How To Write A Proposal

Essay/Paper

What is a Proposal Essay?

A proposal essay is exactly what it sounds like: it proposes an idea and provides evidence intended

to convince the reader why that idea is a good or bad one

Although proposals are generally a significant part of business and economic transactions, they are not limited to those two areas Proposals may be written for any college classes, scientific fields, as well as personal and other professional areas As such, knowing how to write one is a very

valuable skill

This article will go over how to write an effective proposal essay and provide a sample one that was actually submitted and implemented

Before You Start: Pre-Writing Strategies

Most people think that to write an essay you sit down at a computer and start typing But much of the work is done before you even type a single sentence Before sitting down to write your proposal you’ll want to spend some time on each of the following

1 Get to Know Your Audience Remember, a proposal essay is an effort to convince a

reader that your idea is worth pursuing - or that another idea is not worth pursuing To that end, you have to know who you’ll be writing for Are they business people? Academics? Government officials? If your audience is primarily business people you’ll want to justify your proposal by pointing to possible financial benefits If they’re government officials, you may want to emphasize how popular a certain proposal is

2 Do Your Research Having secondary sources who can support your claims will go a long

way to persuading others of your proposal Spend some time talking to experts or reading their research

3 Pre-Write Before starting the actual essay, spend some time ferreting and brainstorming

and let the excellent ideas just pour out of your brain Once you have a bunch of good ideas, spend some time thinking about how you’d like to organize them

4 Revise, Revise, Revise Never turn in a first draft! Have a trusted peer or colleague read

your paper and give you feedback Then take some time to incorporate that feedback into a second draft

Main Parts of a Proposal Essay

The main parts of a proposal essay are summarized here It is important to keep in mind that

depending on your proposal parts may need to be added or taken out The parts below (with

the exception of the introduction and conclusion) may be rearranged to suit individual proposals

 Introduction

 Proposal

 Plan of action

 Desired outcomes

 Resources needed

 Conclusion

1 Introduction

The introduction serves to inform your reader of the history of the proposal (if applicable) or to introduce a subject to an informed/uninformed audience

This is the most important part of your paper in some respects You need to both introduce the topic and show the audience why they should care about this topic It’s often helpful to begin with

an interesting fact, statistic, or anecdote to grab the reader’s attention

2 Problem

Typically, people only make proposal to solve a problem As such, you’ll want to highlight a particular problem that you think your proposal would solve Again, it’s helpful here to know your audience so that you can emphasize the problems and benefits that they would be would find compelling If there's not an immediate, actionable problem to solve, you can skip this section and discuss the benefits later on - the sample below does exactly that

3 Statement of Purpose

This section should be brief and discuss what your proposal is

4 Benefits

In other words, what current problem would your proposal solve? Or what future benefit would it produce Again, it’s helpful here to know your audience so that you can emphasize the problems and benefits that they would be would find compelling

5 Plan of Action

How will you go about achieving your proposal? What will you do to show your audience that you are prepared? This is where you go into detail about how your proposal will be implemented A couple things to keep in mind:

1 Why You? You may need to convince your audience not only that your proposal is a good

idea but also that you’re the person who needs to carry it out Highlighting your qualifications

or expertise or any relevant information about why you’re particularly equipped for the task would be helpful

2 Strike a Balance of Detail In discussing the implementation, you’ll want to give enough

detail to show your audience that you’ve thought about how the process will work That said, you don’t want to bore them with overly-technical or boring minutiae

3 Anticipate Obstacles Pre-emptively anticipating potential implementation problems is

both good practice and communicates to your audience that you’ve thought carefully about your proposal and that you’ve been proactive about thinking about potential stumbling blocks

6 Will it work?

Focus this area on why the proposal will work Quite simply, is it a viable proposal? You can draw

on similar past experiences to show why this proposal will work just like previous ones If you do not have this "past experience" option, focus on what you think your audience wants to hear For example, if your manager really likes getting things done on time, then perhaps you might mention how your proposal can speed up productivity Think logically here

7 Desired outcomes

Simple State what the goals of your proposal are It might seem repetitive with the sections where you mentioned the benefits, but it serves to really "drill" home the point

Tip: Do not structure this section the same way as your "Benefits of " section.

8 Necessary Resources

Another simple part What is needed to complete your proposal? Include tangible (paper, money, computers, etc.)and intangible items such as time

9 Preparations Made

Show the audience that you know what you are doing The more prepared you look the better your chances are to get the proposal passed (or get a better grade if it is for a class)

10 Conclusion

Do NOT restate your introduction here if you choose to mention the "history" of a certain proposal However if you did not introduce your proposal with some historical background information, here is the part where you can quickly restate each section above: Proposal, plan of action, all the "why's"

of the paper and so on

11 Works Cited/Consulted

As in any essay or paper, cite your sources as appropriate If you actually cite quote from a

resource in you essay then title this section "Works Cited" If you do not cite anything word for word, use "Works Consulted".

More Help

 Writing Your Proposal for an Essay or Project

More details about what to include in each step along the way Notice the difference between the number of sections There is no right or wrong amount, just keep it organized and to the point

Sample Proposal Paper

Collage Proposal

Introduction

In 1912, Pablo Picasso, an avid painter of nature and still life, tore part of a makeshift tablecloth

and glued it to his painting, Still Life with Chair Caning, and thus, by adding different items to aid his

painting, he began the art of collage making (Pablo Picasso – Still Life with Chair Canning) A collage is simply a group of objects arranged together to create a complete image of an idea, theme, or memory For example, David Modler created a collage called “Big Bug” to represent the irony that is the importance of insects to our natural world in comparison to their size The bug in the image is the smallest feature of the collage yet it is to be viewed as the most important aspect (Modler, David) All these parts of a collage collaborate together to create a unifying theme or message and can be used as a helpful tool in education

Statement of Purpose

I propose that each student make an artistic collage to be presented to the class that will symbolize the context, audience, setting, structure or any key ideas found in one of the readings this

semester Students who make a collage will be able to drop the lowest quiz grade

Plan of Action

The students will have one week from the announcement of the project to complete the collage and prepare a presentation for it Each student must choose one reading that we have done so far or will read in the future, and no two students may choose the same work Conflict with students wanting to present the same work will be resolved by a first come first serve basis The students will be given a rubric with the exact requirements of the project and what the purpose of the project is

I will make the rubric myself and submit it for approval, or we can use the rubric that I have

attached

Benefits of Collage Proposal

1 Making a collage would allow the students to think and inspect the readings and ideas visually (Rodrigo, “Collage”), thus giving them another perspective, or possibly clearing up any misconceptions and confusions they had about a work when we were just discussing it in class verbally

2 A collage provides the opportunity for revision of a certain work and would certainly help to clear up any topics in the readings that might come up on the final exam or a future test, via a visual and more creative method

3 If a student received a bad grade on a quiz because they did not understand the reading, the collage would give the student an opportunity to go back to the reading and understand it,

or to read ahead and grasp concepts that might be useful to present to the class before the class does the reading A collage would allow the student to become familiar with the work in

a visual way and give them an opportunity to understand the main themes, topics, and ideas

of a work, even one we might not have read yet

Viability of Collage Proposal

Since a collage would be like giving the student an opportunity to go back and review a subject and

at the same time would resemble preparation for a presentation, the time and effort required to go back and re-read a work as well as prepare the collage creatively would be sufficient to justify replacing the lowest quiz grade

Our course mentor said that this project would be a nice addition to the class because, just like any play is better seen than read, the collage will allow students to get the visual aspect behind a work and help them to grasp the ideas better

Past visuals that we have used in class to describe scenes from our readings such as The

Tempest and The Odyssey have greatly helped me to understand some of the ideas of the stories

For example, I always pictured the cyclops as a nasty, vile creature, but after some of the “fuzzy” drawings on the board done by some of my peers, I imagined and understood that he could in fact

be a gentle creature that was just angered by Ulysses trespassing and blinding him I could not have seen that perspective of the story had it not been for some of the more innocent visuals on the board

Finally, I have discussed with the students in our class about the idea of a collage replacing the lowest quiz grade and the overwhelming majority approved of the idea Since a collage will

substitute for a quiz grade, the assignment will be optional Just as a quiz is almost always optional based on class initiation of discussion, the collage will also be optional based on similar student effort parameters The students who do not want to do a collage can choose “door number 2” and take a quiz that would be created by the teachers and/or myself This quiz can be used to make the total number of assignments for each student in the class even, and may or may not be graded based on the professor's discretion

Desired Outcomes

The first goal of my collage proposal is to give students a chance to be creative and step outside the boundaries of classroom discussion They can use their imaginations to find a way to creatively put together a collage that will help the class as well as themselves to better understand the course reading

A second goal of my proposal is that the time and effort put into making the collage and presenting

it in front of the class will equal the worth of dropping the lowest quiz grade Because this collage requires the creator to examine the context, audience, setting, structure of any one of the readings,

it is essentially like a quiz itself, which includes questions on similar topics

Necessary Resources

The literary work that a student chooses to create a collage on will determine how much time is necessary to fully complete the project One week to create a collage should give each student—no matter what reading they choose to do—ample time to create a presentable and educational collage for the class

In terms of tangible resources, this project is not very demanding A simple poster or a series of photographs or drawings assembled neatly together by the student will be about as resourcefully demanding as this project gets

In addition, a few hours of class time will need to be allocated in order to present the collages If each student takes at least five minutes to present the total time needed for the presentations will

be 1 hour and 15 minutes The presentation day(s) and time(s) can be decided by the class as a whole

The rest of the resources needed are already available:

 The readings are all published online if a student needs to refer back to them

 Craft supplies are readily available

Skills for Successful Completion

 As a good planner and organizer I made a rubric that is specific enough to give the

students a good idea of what they should be doing for the collage The rubric can be made available upon your request

 In addition I can also come up with a quiz if there are students who want to opt out of the collage project

 I can talk to the class and come up with a good presentation time and date for everybody

 I would volunteer myself to hold an early presentation session a few days before the due date so the others can get an idea of what their collage could look like and why they can benefit from the project

 I will make myself available to the class if they have any questions about the proposed project

A collage will allow students to understand visually a reading or topic in a reading that they may have been confused about The project is a fun and creative way to get students to think about a reading more in depth as well as review for future exams As a result of the effort and time put into the collages, the students should be allowed to drop their lowest quiz grade in the semester