What is your research question? What is your research plan? How do you plan to construct the argument in your essay? Since your audience will be an academic one, your planning document should follow an accepted academic structure for presenting your claims and your evidence.
Requirements: This assignment will be a little bit like an essay outline, and you need to include the following. You must address each of the sections below in detail. This will take the form of a very detailed outline. You must include:
1. Your research question. Remember, it needs to be narrow and specific. See notes below.
2. One important claim you have discovered in ongoing conversation on this topic (source).
3. An opposing claim you have discovered in the ongoing conversation on this topic (source).
4. What you think is questionable or problematic with some of these claims.
5. Your claim in this conversation (this can also be thought of as your tentative thesis)
6. What other people might doubt about your claim and how you might answer them.
An Acceptable Research Question: "Do so-called "green products" actually have a beneficial impact on the environment, or are they just a ploy to attract ecologically conscious consumers?"
An Unacceptable Research Question: "I'm going to write about the environment."
Too broad - needs to be more specific. This example gives you no direction. Also, it's not a question. What is it, specifically, that you want to find out about the environment and the social issues surrounding it?