 a PhD scholar and you have your research proposal submission lined up next week. Are you worried about how you're going to write a research proposal so that it gets approved by a guide? If yes, then don't worry, you are absolutely at the right place because in this video I'm going to guide you in a step-by-step manner on how to write a research proposal. Now if you are not a PhD student and you ended up landing on this video, you must be one wondering what is this PhD research proposal or what do you even mean by coursework? If you have these questions in mind, then let me explain it to you right away. Once you enroll yourself in a PhD program, the guide as well as the university where you're doing your PhD, they would ask you to go through a coursework period which is somewhere around 9 to 12 months long. In this coursework period, they are going to tell you how to do PhD, they are going to give you a lot of knowledge about different areas of research and how you need to write a PhD thesis and what all things you should keep in mind while you are doing a PhD. So it's basically a kind of learning workshop that you need to attend for a period of nine months before you submit your PhD research proposal. The next question in your mind, what is a PhD research proposal? A PhD research proposal is basically a tentative plan of action that you submit to your guide and in this plan of action, you write what you are going to do in the period of next three years. If the guide approves it, only then you can further do your PhD. If not, then you have to revise and rewrite the PhD research proposal unless and until it is not appropriate and according to the norms of university. So a lot of students face this struggle on writing a PhD research proposal. I already made a video which went viral where I talked about how to do a PhD, about entrance test, about writing a research proposal and choosing a topic but it was a very brief video in which I was not able to explain all these points and I got a lot of queries and a lot of comments where students were asking me to make a detailed video. So I thought of making a detailed video in which I can actually tell you how you need to write a PhD research proposal. I've already made a video on how to choose a PhD topic so if you have not watched that video then it's time to do that because unless and until you've not finalized a topic you can never write a PhD research plan or a PhD research proposal. So once you have chosen your topic, get back to this video so that you can understand how to draft a 10 to 15 page long PhD research proposal and how to write it in such a manner that nobody can reject it. So the first important page that you are going to attach with your research proposal or research plan is tentative title. Now why do we call it a tentative title? Because you are submitting a research proposal. Now the guide and the other jury members would look at your research plan and then decide whether the title should be finalized for your PhD or do you need to make some changes in the title. That is why we call it a tentative title. It's not yet finalized. So the first thing that you are going to write in your PhD research proposal is tentative title. I've already made a detailed video on how to choose a title for research so just have a look at that video so that all your doubts and queries are resolved. The next important element of a research proposal is research problem. Now what is a research problem? Research problem is basically the area or the problem on which you are going to do your research. Is that means a problem that you face in your life? No, that's not a research problem. A research problem is the area where you are going to research and what is the tentative solution that you try to draw out. For example, if you are a psychology student and you want to do a research on the gender inequality and its effect on Indian females then what is your research problem? Your research problem is gender inequality and the impact it has on Indian females. You're going to actually look at this problem and see what caused this problem, what can be tentative solutions and what can further be done in order to eradicate this problem from Indian society. So that is the research problem. In case of a literature research, you don't have a research problem basically. You don't try to solve anything in any novel or any particular genre. What you do in a research problem area is you write the area where you would be researching. For example, I love mythology so if I do a research on any particular myth of Mahabharat, my research problem would be evaluating and analyzing the myths of Mahabharat in contemporary scenario. The third important thing in research proposal is the definition of key terms. In your research, throughout your research, you're going to use a lot of terms again and again. Now it is important for you to define what you exactly meant by the term. If I'm doing a research on some feminist study or a feminist work, I would first be defining what is feminism, what I meant by patriarchy. If I'm doing a research on mythology, I would define what do I mean by myth? What do I mean by mythology? What is oral tradition? So all the major key terms that I would be using again and again in my research must be defined by me. And then you finally talk about background. So you give a brief overview of background of the area where you would be working. So you would just be talking about the major theories or maybe a background information about the topic that you have taken. If I've taken a topic on Indian myths, I would going to talk about what I meant by myth and how this term myth origin and how it has evolved over a period of time. The next important area that you have to touch in your research proposal is review of literature. What do you mean by review of literature? Review of literature means that you need to go through all the previous researches which has been done in the particular field and find out the research gap. So if you look at different research papers, you will find out that a lot of research has already been done in the topic which you have selected. Then why your research should be new or why your research should be approved? What are you going to do or how are you going to contribute something new in the existing body of knowledge? So when you talk about all the previous researches, you're going to highlight the research gap. Research gap means the unexplored area in the field of study. So if I would like to do a research on Indian mythology, I would look at the research papers done on Devdatt Patanaya, Kashyok Banker, Rameesh Tripathi, for that matter, Ashwin Sanghi, I would also look at Chitra Banerjee, Namita Gokhale and I would look at all the different research works that scholars have already done on these writers and then I would be selecting a particular area which has still been left unexplored and that is going to be my research topic. So by looking at different journals, articles, research papers, you would be able to find out the topic that has not been explored as of now and that topic is going to be researched by you and in this review of literature, you will justify why you have taken this topic. You will justify that see all these works has already been done but the topic that I have chosen for my research that has not been explored as of yet. There are a lot of websites where you can find the previous research papers. Two of my favorite one is Shodh Ganga which is a particular journal associated with India and the other one is Acadmia. So you can go there and find out a lot of research papers and then write a review of literature. After writing a review of literature, the next topic you need to incorporate in your research proposal is research methodology. What do you mean by research methodology? You are going to do a research for next two years and there is a method that you are going to use. Researchers can be of different type, quantitative, qualitative. In case of literature, mostly we indulge in qualitative literature and qualitative methodology. In case of psychology and other branches, we look at quantitative. So suppose if I want to look at the effect of TV in Indian teenagers, I would do a quantitative research. I am going to give some questionnaire to different teenagers and they are going to fill the questionnaire and on the basis of those questionnaires, on the basis of case studies and interviews I have conducted, I am going to come to a conclusion. This is a perfect example of quantitative research. In case of literature, we don't need to survey anything. We don't need to interview or we don't need to use questionnaires. In that case, what do we do is use qualitative method. What is qualitative method? When you have a detailed analysis or you have an in-depth analysis of a particular work, that is known as qualitative research. It's a descriptive research where you are going to analyze a particular text from different lenses and you are going to use close reading as a method of research. Another important thing that you must know here is that in research methodology, you are going to mention the tools that you're using. If you're doing a research which is quantitative in nature, you need to mention that you're using case study or are you using interviews or are you using natural observation or is it an experiment or is it a questionnaire or survey that you are going to use in your research? In case of literature, you're going to mention different theories and different theorists. But you know, whose theories you would be using and researching upon. If I'm doing a research on mythology, I might use Roland Barthes mythologies, the work and the key ideas given in that work. If I'm doing a feminist study, I might use Virginia Woolf's Room of One's Own Theory or I might use Sandra Gilbert or I might use the Mad Woman in the Ethic Theory. So all these different theories and theorists which I will be using during the course of my research should be mentioned in this particular section which is research methodology. After talking about research methodology, you need to talk about the tentative chapter scheme. What is a tentative chapter scheme? You would be dividing your research in different chapters and approximately four to six chapters should be there in your PhD thesis. So you need to give a tentative chapter plan. You need to tell that what all things you would be talking in which chapter. So that tentative chapter plan would be presented next in research proposal. After talking about tentative chapter plan, finally you talk about working bibliography. What is a bibliography? Bibliography is the area where you're going to write all the books and all the other resources that you have used in the course of your research. So by bibliography is basically divided in two parts. One is primary sources and one is second resources. Primary sources is the main material on which you would be researching on. In the last video, I gave you an example that if I would like to do a research in the field of psychology, I would take up a topic like quest of self-discovery, a comparative study of female protagonist in the works in the movie Dear Zindagi and Eat, Pray, Love. So what will be the primary sources in this research? The movie Dear Zindagi and the second movie that is Eat, Pray, Love. These would be the two primary sources. What would be the second resources? All other works, all other books, all other articles that you will use or read and work on in order to analyze the primary sources would be a part of secondary sources. For example, Roland Barth's Mythologies. If you're using that particular work in order to understand different books of Indian mythology, then that would come in the secondary section. I recently visited a great writer, Jasbir Jain who resides in Jaipur and she had done a lot of critical works on different, different topics. So she has done and written a book on filmography, she has also done researches on feminist criticism, she has done a critical study in the field of Indian English fiction. So all these critical study books which I would be reading in the course of my research in order to analyze the primary sources in a better way, all these works would be mentioned in secondary sources. Remember, your working bibliography is one of the most important section of your research plan because most of the questions that would be asked on the day of seminar when you would be presenting your research proposal would be from the section of working bibliography. So don't ever copy sources and put it in your working bibliography because if they asked you anything about a particular work, you have to answer it. Also understand a very important point that all the researches that you have already read in the review of literature section would also come in bibliography. You need to mention all the books or all the research papers that you have read and would you would be using in your research in the secondary sources section of working bibliography. With that note, I come to an end of this topic. You must be wondering that Arpita, you have explained us about how to write a research proposal. But what if I want to write a PhD thesis or if I want to write a research paper? Can you also make a video briefing us about the same? Don't worry, I already have that idea in my mind and I would be addressing it in my next video lecture. So if you have not yet subscribed to the channel, it's time to do so because next week I would be uploading a video on how to write a research paper and also I would be making a video on how to write a PhD thesis. So if you want to get notified about my latest videos, do subscribe to this channel. You can also follow me on all the social media platforms so that you can participate in the free Go Net quiz and receive updates about UGC net English literature. Apart from that, I would also like to tell you that if you've not yet visited to our website, arpitakarwa.com, it's time to do so. We are running a fabulous online course for UGC net English aspirants. The link is given in the description box below. You can get a list of all the important writers on my website. Once you look at the list, you find it interesting, you find it impressive, then it's time to join the online course so that you can clear net in your first attempt. We have about 800 audios in our online course. With that, we also provide you 200 PDFs and 3000 mock test questions. So if that appeals to you, we would like to see you as a part of our online batch. With that note, I would like to bid farewell. Thank you so much. Keep loving literature. Happy learning.