I have had the opportunity of being an instructor for almost thirty years, and involved in education for more than 3 decades. During those years I have taught grades K-5, grades 9-12, preparatory academy and most recently post high school students. For me, it was a constant struggle keeping lessons fun, interactive and rewarding for each pupil. As my lessons focused on older learners, making the gradual leap from young to older, I noticed a common concern that each maturity level of kids became overwhelmed by: how to write a research paper.
Initially, I thought nothing of the reaction I received when asking for research papers to be completed. At first, I simply defined the usual groaning as a student’s dislike of my love for outside assignments. But, what I was dismissing and defining as being disgruntled, actually had much more depth; these students were sometimes downright panic stricken when they heard mention of a “research paper”.
Worry about the something outside their comfort zone, being buried in volumes of pages, and not having a clue how to brainstorm research paper ideas was frequent. older teens envisioning a brick wall to climb, because they didn’t know how to write a research paper, rarely truly believed me that in life’s big picture, completing a dissertation, even one that was very lengthy, was barely a grain of sand on a beach, compared to much more significant, life impacting challenges they’d eventually face as grownups. Those ideas fell on a non-responsive audience usually.
Unable to look towards the whole essence or the long overall result, their immediate truth was a looming time limit that could only be met by participating in something they weren’t interested in, that conflicted with their social life or that made them uneasy facing the unknown: how to write a research paper, and do it right - not just to pass or fail, but earn the marks that high schools, universities, colleges and graduate schools, both public and private, hold in high importance.
When I first began teaching at the post high-school level I planned to give a semester-long specification to write a research paper on a(n) topic of that particular student’s most passionate concern.
A wise colleague warned me that this would cause me many headaches. He said that even at a university level, simply hearing that you have to write a research paper usually sent many students into a tail spin.
Determined, I ignored his best intentions and ventured into research paper neverland. The first day of the term I handed out the syllabus for the semester. This included the name of the selected text, test dates and the requirement that everyone would write a research paper.
I explained that the reviews as well as the participation in classroom discussions would be a majority of the semester grade and the research paper would be the other 33%. I handed out schedules and due dates for the paper. I wanted the topic they chose as well as a rough outline completed in the first 14 days and then various progress reports throughout the term.
My plan and execution of my set schedule “forced” the paper to be done in small chunks, rather than the typical giant one, when many students, kids or adults, sit down at the last minute and try to accomplish a semester’s worth of work in one marathon of study. Unnecessary worry and anxiety in my way of thinking. And with the fundamentals of how to effectively write a research paper tackled in small sections throughout the class, semester or year depending on curriculum and / or institution, initial panic about even the most simple section, research paper ideas, seemed less and less a major undertaking.
Whether narrowing down a long catalog of clauses formatted neat and succinctly summarizing research paper ideas, writing each necessary element, keeping each research paper properly formatted for an educator who was known to be a stickler about such fine points, or pacing themselves to guarantee paper completion by the due date, when deconstructed into smaller sections, how to write a research paper concerns slowly, but surely go away. Watch for for the up and coming article: Research Paper Ideas, the Easy Way - Minus the anxiety.
In the first of an up and coming series of reports highlighting how to write a research paper without the all too common nausea, instructor Ron Smithers provides one of several, a lesson he extracted from his teaching days. Next , to avoid research paper anxiety, only to be found at the the site that hands over free stuff to college students, and helps you tap into more money with federal education loan consolidation.
- Jackie Black
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