How much time should I allow for a research paper?

[Kelli in TN]

We have been pitiful about writing and now dd is in 11th grade and we are both panicking about her writing skills. So we are going to focus on that between now and graduation.

 

I am assigning her a paper about the similarities and differences between the American revolution and the French revolution, thinking if I kept the topic simple she could concentrate more on the process.

 

If a student is very weak in writing, how many pages should we start with and how long (in terms of days/weeks) should I allow before the assignment is due?

[MaryM]

The old board had some wonderful links to SWB's thoughts and suggestions on the research paper!

 

In lieu of finding those, we used Sadlier-Oxford Writing a Research Paper that included several time lines and length suggestions.http://www.sadlier-oxford.com/catalog/category.cfm?category_id=5823

 

We opted for 10pages in a two month time frame.

 

HTH!

 

Mary

[Michelle in MO]

We do Abeka grammar, and every year they assign a research paper, and every year my obsessive/compulsive side can't decide whether or not to let go of the grammar portion. The obsessive/compulsive side always wins. :D Abeka assigns a bunch of grammar exercises while the kids are doing their research paper. Drives me nuts! :cool: Anyway, I think the instruction for research paper is best if you can set aside grammar instruction for a while and focus completely on the paper. (Of course, when you edit you go through the mechanics of grammar at the same time.) For a ten page paper, I think two months sounds good. I also dislike Abeka's way of giving the kids, say, two days to decide on a topic and, perhaps, a few more days to get an outline done. Give me a break! They never give enough time for reading and researching, either. You have already chosen an excellent topic, but I think it takes a while to do the reading, research, mulling over, and then writing the outline (taking notes while doing the reading) and then writing the paper.

 

My best high school class was a one-semester course in Advanced Research and Composition. We did several smaller papers at first, but then had at least several months to do a 25-page research paper. This was in the days of typewriter, so our dear teacher taught us how to do footnotes by counting up from the bottom of the page. Ahhhh---those were the days! :)

[Amy in NH]

It just took my 13 yo about 3-4 weeks to complete his first research paper. He worked on it for about 1/2 hour per day, and it turned out to be two solid pages.

[Nan in Mass]

:)

My son did a rough sort of one last year, and is doing one this year (junior year). Fairly early in the year, I latch on to one of his comments about his literature and suggest that it would make a good research paper. Then he spends the fall, a little each weekend, doing research for it. Since this usually involves reading or watching movies, and my son is a slow reader, this is time consuming. Then some time after Christmas, we look at his original idea and try to come up with a thesis statement and he figures out what the parts of the paper are going to be. This, so far anyway, has resulted in a few parts that still need more research. Then, again working weekends or the days when for some reason we can't read aloud together, he begins to write the parts he can and does the research for the ones that he can't. Then he puts all the pieces together and makes them into a paper. Probably doing more smaller ones would be useful from the point of view of practice with the process, but we both have trouble skimping on the research, which as far as we can see requires the bulk of the time needed to write the sort of paper he's interested in writing. It might be shorter if he were willing to write about what other people say about a topic, rather than gathering the info himself. Maybe we should try a non-literary one and that would be shorter. I should go back and reread SWB's directions for writing a research paper, and look at what she says in TWTM.

 

-Nan

[Kelli in TN]

I think for this first paper I would like to assign one that can be realistically completed in 4-5 weeks. So, for a writing phobic kid, how many pages should I require? How many sources should I expect?

 

Thanks in advance for helping me work this out. I am wanting to do several smaller papers this spring and summer and have her do a major paper in the fall.

[LibrarianMom]

I would suggest allowing 1 week per page for first papers. Don't discount the importance of shorter papers though. A longer paper (10-12 pages) sometimes tends to be padded with lots of quotes and filler in order to meet length requirements, while a shorter paper (4-6) requires being more selective about word choice and clarity.

[Michelle in MO]

because sometimes I think that "less" is "more," if you know what I mean. Writing is a very slow, ponderous process for my kids. The older two are just now learning how to do essays, and they are up to 1-1/2 page essays, which can take them up to a week to complete!

[Kelli in TN]

Think you Michelle and Librarian Mom!! Your advice was exactly what I needed! I will plan for one page per week.:)

[Liz CA]

If a student is very weak in writing, how many pages should we start with and how long (in terms of days/weeks) should I allow before the assignment is due?

 

For a student who is just getting warmed up to research papers, I'd keep it to about 3-4 pages unless she has no problem with getting more on paper. A paper like that could be researched in one week and written during the next week - again cutting a little slack for the fact she is new at this.

 

I would also require a cover page and a bibliography since this is expected for college writing.

[Anne/Ankara]

We do the National History Day research paper project each year, and it takes about 6 weeks to write (and research a ten page paper).

 

http://www.nationalhistoryday.org/

[8filltheheart]

If your dd has not written a research paper before, instead of planning how many pages, etc, I would break it down into the process.

 

I would allow approximately 1 week for the gathering of sources and narrowing of thesis, becoming familiar with MLA notation (both bibliography and citing within a paper), learning about notecards, etc.

 

I would allow approx. 2 weeks for notetaking and organizing into an outline (I would personally require a very thorough outline b/c it will make writing easier)

 

1 1/2 weeks for the rough draft/revision

 

1/2 week for the final copy.

 

For a very first research paper, I would expect approx. 5 pages.

 

One other suggestion I might make is to plan on doing 2 papers over the rest of the year. I might have the first one be more on the simple reporting research type paper (more factual vs. comparison/contrast) That might help ease into the process. Once the process has been experienced once, an analytical type paper might not be quite as overwhelming.

[Laura K (NC)]

I would definitely not recommend that method.

 

I give my son 2 months. He gets it done in the last week before it's due.

[Kelli in TN]

Dd's assignment for today was to watch part of an IEW dvd (she has not done it yet) and read certain sections from the Owl website (she has not done that yet).

 

She was also given the assignment of going to the library and getting some books. She did, a grocery sack full!! How will I help her narrow this down? She cannot possibly read all these books!!

 

Currently she is upstairs, she cries everytime we try to talk about the paper. She wants to get better at writing but she is just so writing phobic. Add to that they she decided to stop taking a prescription medication (on her own, without asking me first) and the few days off it followed by restarting it a couple of days ago have led to a massive headache that is not touched by pain relievers.

 

There is a lot of crying, some yelling, some apologizing, some more crying, some more yelling, some more apologizing.......

 

Can someone objective and not emotional come over and teach the two of use how to write a research paper, please?

 

Why did my high school never require a single paper of me? Why did I forget to go to college where I might have learned how to write a paper?:mad:

 

So, who wants to hold my hand and help me help her, step by step, through the process?:)

[Laura K (NC)]

I'm trying to narrow down my topic for a college history class. It's very hard when you aren't given specific instructions on what to research.

 

Your daughter can go to Google for some general information. She should not use Google as a source in her bibliography, but she can use it to get a general idea of what the topic is about, what kind of sub-categories can make up sections, what smaller sub-subcategories will make up her paragraphs.

 

Tell her not to write the first paragraph or the last paragraph. Tell her to write 3 or 4 1 - 1 1/2 page papers on things related to her topic.

 

My son wrote his first 5 page paper last year on a composer. He wrote about the composer's personal life, how his environment affected his music (using examples), and how he made an impact on the classical world. Each of these subtopics turned into its own paper. Next, he had to write connecting paragraphs in between each one to tie them together. Next he concluded his paper, and finally, he began the paper, giving a hint about what he would cover.

 

The hardest thing is getting started. I used to think writing outlines was for sissies, and I let the muses guide my thoughts. But then again, I used to crank out papers in long overnight sessions, so the muses were heavily influenced by sleep deprivation and excessive caffeine. Now I am older and wiser and I would not think of starting a paper without an idea.

 

To get an idea, though, she has to start researching. She might find patterns of topics that she finds interesting. She will start to begin to group her index cards together into topics, and then the writing will get easy.

 

For my last paper, which I finished just last month, I got all my index cards and taped them all over a wall in big groups. I placed some cards in the "introduction" group, some in each of the topic groups, and some in the "conclusion" group. I wrote the paper with the wall to one side of me. As I got to each mess of cards I'd take them from the wall and arrange them in paragraphs. As I used each one I'd throw it in a pile, and write my "Works Cited" and "Bibliography" pages as I went along. Word is awesome for endnotes and footnotes... much better than it used to be back when we had to use typewriters. (!) I didn't throw away the cards until I turned in the paper, though, because I usually mess up a citation somewhere and I need to see it again. It was good to see that big mess of a wall get cleaner and cleaner as I went along... it was good incentive to keep going.

 

She should finish the paper two or three days before it needs to be turned in. She needs to sleep on it, print it out, and then make her revisions with a colored pencil. It will look much different on paper than it did on the computer and she will see glaring errors in grammar, like dangling participles, not enough variety in the beginnings or the lengths of sentences, homonyms that spellcheck didn't catch, repetitions of adjectives or whole ideas, paragraphs and sentences that should be broken apart or joined together, and places that need further clarification. Better yet, after she has proofread it critically and made changes, she should have someone else read it before turning it in so they can put fresh, unbiased eyes to it and offer more suggestions.

 

The hardest part is definitely getting started. Forget about that stack of books. Have her do a good hour of general research via the internet, and then draw her paper out of her. Any mom can get a paper going by asking basic brainstorming questions about the topic, maybe at a coffee shop over a scone and a latte? Any paper I write includes at least one scone and latte. :)

[LibrarianMom]

Here are two resources I've put together for the college library where I work.

 

Begin Research covers narrowing a topic, types of sources to use, where to find them, and some basic citation information (all geared towards our institution).

Choosing and Defining a Research Topic is much more detailed about selecting a topic. I try to remind students that you can approach one topic from several angles or lenses which change your topic.

 

Hope you find these helpful!

[Tina]

I can't open the second link, Librarian. The first one looks great. Thanks for sharing!

[Samuel]

I think that there are two different tasks in writing a research paper; doing the research and then crafting the research into a paper. What seems to be putting your d off is the research part, which is understandable. Many of the college students I've graded have not really been taught. This is a quite separate thing from the nuts and bolts of actually writing the paper.

 

First, you need to get an overview of the topic, so you have some idea of what you're writing about. So, you need to start with a short, readable overview of both the American and French revolution. If you don't have anything that fits these I'm sure the hive mind can come up with some suggestions. At this stage you're just establishing a knowledge base. Then, you want to do some brain storming. What from our first reading do we see that are similar, and what might be different. You can start with an outline if you want here, but this process bogs some people down, myself included, and if the process is hard I would just jot down what her ideas are. This will serve as a starting point.

 

Then, you want to find more information about the points you want to make. Do not be surprised to find that more reading will change your mind. Here the challenge is not to be bogged down by reading everything in your big stack of books, but only the 5 or 10 pages or 1 chapter that acutally has to do with your topic. Say you think that the ideas of the Declaration of Independence are similar to the principles of the oath of the tennis court. You want to read a few pages of several books about this and then take a look at what the Declaration says.

 

When possible, you should read actual documents (primary source) rather than simply taking someone else's word for it (secondary source). Other people can be used to support what you think primary documents say.

You should also try to use scholarly sources. Anything published by a university press or academic journal is a good bet. Things published by well known trade publishers are also fine. At the high school level you shouldn't be terribly picky, but it does matter who is making the argument; there is a lot of rubbish written.

 

There are a lot ways to take notes, note cards, ms word documents, etc. Find something that works for her.

 

Once you've done this process the _writing_ of 6 or 10 or however many pages will be a lot less daunting.

 

I hope this helps.

 

S