Assign a Research Paper

[LibrarianMom]

I believe I'm "preaching to the choir" here, but please make sure your college-bound student has written a researched paper complete with citations. I work for my day job at a university. I just finished conducting a session as part of our freshman orientation on using our institution's preferred citation style (Turabian). In this session one of the students self-identified as a home-schooled student and admitted she is scared to death to write a paper because she has never written a research paper and had no idea what a citation was. Granted this is one example, but please make sure your students have written a research paper.

[Kareni]

One of the classes I insisted my then high school senior take at the community college in 12th grade was a composition class entitled "Writing the Research Paper." I just asked my daughter if she was glad to have taken the course before heading off to college last year, and she admitted that she was. It was a quarter long (thus leisurely) class whose sole goal was to write a research paper.

 

I concur that writing a research paper is a great task to have accomplished in high school when the pressure can be far less than in college.

 

Regards,

Kareni