Step 1 from Ballenger book

I have assigned Step 1 from the Ballenger text. I thought in all fairness I would do a little "fast-writing" of my own in response to the prompt. I think it's kind of difficult though to write about what most students think about research papers though now that I'm approaching research papers from the teaching perspective.

Anyway, here goes. I do think that most students still think of research papers in a traditional kind of way. Most of the thinking is probably filled with "supposed to"s. They're supposed to use so many book sources. They're supposed to quote so many times. They're supposed to have a wonderfully formulated thesis statement at the end of their introductions and they're supposed to avoid using "I."

I remember being told that to say "I think that" or "I believe" made it painfully obvious that that was just our opinion and the reader cared little for our opinion. Readers wanted facts. I agree with this to an extent. If you ask readers, they will say they trust facts, but I also know that as a reader, I also like it when I trust the writer. If the writer is incredibly boring, I have no desire to trust him or her. Now, using I doesn't mean the writer will be more personal and less boring, so I don't think students should just use I for the sake of using I. Like everything else, I think there ought to be a balance and students should determine why they are making the choices they are making instead of just doing them haphazardly.

When I was a student I didn't worry too much about whether or not the instructor would agree with me, but I have heard horror stories from many people who have felt they were graded poorly just because of disagreements between them and the instructor regarding the topic. Sidebar here: I'm thinking about creating a list of topics that I've heard too many times before or find tedious. The problem is I don't want to stifle anyone or make them think I think most topics are bad because I really do think that certain people can make them work with enough initiative. It's just the "I'll do this just because" people who have ruined those topics for me and I think it would be nice if everyone had fair warning. We'll see...

Looking at the list of things on page 2, I would say that most students unfortunately practice the last two: the paper won't be revised substantially and form matters more than content. I think half my semester is spent trying to convince people otherwise, but that's probably a story for another blog on another day.

I'm not sure how long I spent typing this as I was interrupted by a phone call.