Chapter 7
Research Papers and Webquests, Nov 8, 2012
I have to admit that I've never been taught the dos and don'ts of writing a formal research paper, so I needed this chapter! Again Benjamin offers clear, logical, structured advise. I liked her suggestion on how to focus a paper by first deciding what specific question it will address.
After laying out about the differences between analytical and argumentative research papers, Benjamin takes us though a litany of considerations from style guides: different types of notation used for the different types of papers, to the rules of formal writing: no contractions, a third person perspective, paragraphs with topic sentences, no bullet points, etc.
Since I'm studying to be a science teacher I was most interested in her thoughts on scientific research papers. She points out that science research papers differ from humanities research papers in that the former often includes, "posing a hypothesis, recording results, and drawing conclusions." I'd also add creating charts and graphs to that list.
The information in this chapter is useful, but I can't help but wonder what percentage of New York City high school students will ever write a formal academic research paper? I have another class I'm currently taking at Brooklyn College that requires me to go to different city high schools and observe classes being taught. I was at one the other day and I can attest that the last thing the teachers there were concerned about were teaching students the rules of formal writing.
The students at this school just weren't at that level. I don't mean to sound judgmental, but unfortunately, from what I've seen, a whole lot of NYC high school students are not going to be writing formal research papers anytime soon. That doesn't mean teachers shouldn't try to teach them how to write, but it does mean that teaching formal academic writing is not going to be high on the list of priorities in NYC public schools.
Interestingly, Benjamin does address my worry that formal writing assignments may be over the heads of many students. She says if students are given assignment that are too difficult for them they may become discouraged, and that this could lead to plagiarism. I agree that teachers need to gauge writing assignments to the abilities of their students.
Benjamin goes on to lay out the how writing assignments can build in complexity. The idea here is that no matter what's the student's level, a teacher can still find an appropriate writing assignment that brings the him or her a little closer to the goal of being able to write a formal research paper.
Finally, I really liked the section Benjamin offered on WebQuests. I wasn't familiar with WebQuests but I went to the website and they look great! I definitely can see myself directing students to this resource in the future. Cheers!
Hi Michael,
ReplyDeleteYou are quite correct that most New York City High School students are not ready to write full research papers. And I don't think most authors of standard text in the education field realize how low the levels of academic preparedness in some students are. However, this is a major goal in the Humanities to be achieved. While most students cannot produced a well-research paper with appropriate question /topic and citation format in early high school years, by developing smaller assignments throughout their high school career in which they they can practice the steps of research i.e. learning how to formulate a question (What is the main topic? Who are the actors? What actions (change, conflict) derive from the topic or learning to properly cite a magazine, book or web article, they are better prepared and ready to produce the formal research paper in the last year of high school.