Seen in Print

[Rufus T. Firefly]

(The above cartoon...) Write her a check; all will be forgiven.

Shoes.........

[HONDO74]

[MurphOnMillerAve]

Do students do research papers anymore? Footnotes, anybody?

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Do students do research papers anymore? Footnotes, anybody?

Yes, they do, despite the implications presented within the cynical poster above.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

[rogruth]

No, no, no. I am NOT going to ask anything about that.

[MurphOnMillerAve]

Do students do research papers anymore? Footnotes, anybody?

Yes, they do, despite the implications presented within the cynical poster above.

Thanks for that update (of me), Rufus. When I retired from teaching English, in 2005, I found myself lurking at the local library, offering to help observed college and/or high school level students to stop suffering as they were plowing through their "term papers" or research papers. They enjoyed that. I did , too. But I noticed that not one of them had any notion of what Footnotes were or what a Bibliography was. We did use a variety of sources, though, as we constructed their papers, including periodicals, books, and on-line researching, taking particular care not to lift whole passages and present them as the student's own thoughts. That they seemed surprised about , too, as though discovering info made it their own.

To model doing research, I had them decide which car they would intelligently be able to recommend that their parents should buy, backed-up with researched info, from subjective material published by the manufacturers, viewpoints from such magazines as Motor Trend and Consumer Reports, as well as testimonials from satisfied customers, and govt. reports, etc. They enjoyed the hunt. And they would report back to me that their parents were particularly impressed with the footnotes and bibliographies, supporting the research and conclusions.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Do students do research papers anymore? Footnotes, anybody?

Yes, they do, despite the implications presented within the cynical poster above.

Thanks for that update (of me), Rufus. When I retired from teaching English, in 2005, I found myself lurking at the local library, offering to help observed college and/or high school level students to stop suffering as they were plowing through their "term papers" or research papers. They enjoyed that. I did , too. But I noticed that not one of them had any notion of what Footnotes were or what a Bibliography was. We did use a variety of sources, though, as we constructed their papers, including periodicals, books, and on-line researching, taking particular care not to lift whole passages and present them as the student's own thoughts. That they seemed surprised about , too, as though discovering info made it their own.

Might have more to do with area of study at the college level, but I will concede that the emphasis on writing has seriously declined in part due to the "too much homework" movement that has been applied to the dumbing down of our public school systems.

To model doing research, I had them decide which car they would intelligently be able to recommend that their parents should buy, backed-up with researched info, from subjective material published by the manufacturers, viewpoints from such magazines as Motor Trend and Consumer Reports, as well as testimonials from satisfied customers, and govt. reports, etc. They enjoyed the hunt. And they would report back to me that their parents were particularly impressed with the footnotes and bibliographies, supporting the research and conclusions.

Interesting what works, isn't it?

[HONDO74]

[rogruth]

I agree with Murph and Rufus. Many students will do the correct research if they understand why certain things are necessary. Murph showed them that.
I agree with Rufus concerning the too much homework. It was often too much of the wrong kind of homework.
I might be way off in my thinking about teaching. I retired in 1999.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

I agree with Rufus concerning the too much homework. It was often too much of the wrong kind of homework.

Getting students to write more than a page can get parents on the phone complaining............

I still recall writing 5-10 page papers in high school and then multiple 20-30 page papers for a single class in college. Sadly, none of the science departments (well, one did a very cursory exercise in writing....once) bothered to teach writing which really helps prepare students for that research career coupled with being in a publish or perish environment.

This leads to where I sit now reviewing manuscripts (and a PhD proposal) from that generation that's just barely able to write in readable English. Fortunately, I have a Reject option...........

[rogruth]

Rufus,
I'm sure it is not easy to get stuff by you and that is good.
Maybe some will be pushed to excel by you in your new positions.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Rufus,
I'm sure it is not easy to get stuff by you and that is good.
Maybe some will be pushed to excel by you in your new positions.

Oh, I'm not that demanding and I consider my writing to be round about adequate. I do like to see complete sentences and matching cases and tenses......little stuff like that. Nothing sets me off though like a sentence that starts with, "It is known....". I just want to reach through the internet and smack that author,

[rogruth]

As I said!

[Rufus T. Firefly]