Reading before Researching

An article in the current issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education presents the results and recommendation of an investigation into Freshman Composition research papers on the college level. In their broad survey they concluded that students  "don't know how to analyze their sources." They recommended the following:

Rather than spending time in first-year composition trying to teach students how to find sources—or using computer programs to chase down plagiarism—faculty members in such courses should scrap the research paper altogether, the researchers said.

After all, students exhibit the same kinds of mistakes at the end of their first-year composition courses as they do at the beginning, regardless of the type of institution or whether the course is taught by a full-time faculty member or an adjunct, Ms. Jamieson said.

Part of the problem, she added, is the expectation that faculty members trained in composition have expertise in the subject being researched, whether it is abortion, the death penalty, or gun control: "Unless it's in your field, you don't know what a good source is and what isn't."

Instead, she said, students should work on shorter papers that are based on source materials assigned through class, with more guidance from the instructor throughout the process.

And, though she said she is startled to hear herself say it, Ms. Howard recommends changing the paradigm governing the teaching of the course. Typically, students are taught to begin a rough draft fairly early in the writing process, she said. But the evidence suggests that students should start writing later, after they are trained to read, analyze, and synthesize their sources, so that they can identify the argument and sort through the evidence.