Assigning more and more term papers for students which are smaller in size will train students in academic writing, leading through to college and professional career, where proper writing is mandatory.

This process can be problematic today perhaps because writing skills have declined, but should only

seem to make the case for more. However, longer papers may be difficult over a period of time to

manage when you have to oversee it for 150 students, and more difficult to sustain student

interest. I try to tackle the skill building with shorter, essay type questions, and I also try to

help students learn how to research. Many comments on the blog may indicate that formal research

papers are difficult as many of them turn up plagiarized-- a cure that I find means more help for

students to understand how to research and properly credit others. We often lack the help the

resources to figure this out because we're not funded for verification search engines such as

"TurnIt-In.com" which can detect plagiarism from the internet (or papers that are bought by the

myriad of online sites that sell them-- type in any question into Google and you will see what I

mean.

I try to counter all of this by doing more in class writing on historical questions. Chunking it

into smaller manageable bits and then helping to expand gaps, improve arguments, and stitch this

into a larger coherent question. I'm not as well trained in helping student gaps in skills in, say,

grammar-- beyond pointing out that a students usage is poor and is interfering with their

arguments. So, while much of the writing is is not as formalized for my students, it is more

frequent, probably more connected, and easier for me to give more immediate feedback and help.

I know that I learned more about writing when I was in high school, and the one formal paper with

cards, annotations, etc. only taught me the value of thorough research and academic honesty, but

probably didn't do as much for writing skills as frequency and immediacy in feedback. This all

said, we probably have room to grow in our practice in this new digital frontier, when it would

seem that as information grows at the rate of millions of pages per day, the real skill that we

must help translate to students is how to find information, how to judge bias, and how to evaluate

the quality, depth and usefulness of what is available.

Research papers? County public schools are too concerned with BCRs and ECRs and I don't even think the thought of research papers crosses most teachers' minds. I teach remedial English courses at the community college level and many students tell me they've never written a 5 paragraph essay before. Thesis statement? They have no clue. Topic sentences? Transition words? It's a shame they aren't learning how to write a basic essay in high school, since so many college classes require writing.

Is writing deteriorating? Definitely. Last week, I had to teach a community college English student that not all plural words get an -s on the end. Womens and mens are incorrect. She wasn't aware of that and she has a high school diploma (and English is her native language). She is only one example of many. Another mistake I have had several students make this year is writing 'in' instead of 'and.'
"We went to the store in did some shopping."
Many students cannot even put together a grammatically correct sentence. They write the way they speak. Sometimes they even write text message abbreviations in their assignments. For those of you who think that the majority of high school students are sitting at home working on research papers, I hate to dishearten you, but they're not.

Do not get me started on this topic. We have the research paper as part of our curriculum from 9th grade on in various forms or guises. Our problem is not the writing skills but the availability of research materials and computers to get the job done in a reasonable period of time. We don't even have access to enough computers to get the Bridge projects done with our seniors in a timely manner. With a school population of 1600, we have two computer banks of 30 each that are available for use by the general population. We have five other computer labs that are dedicated to specialized programs that no one else can use. Do the programs utilize this equipment? NO! One of the labs sits absolutely idle three days a week but we can't put other classes in there because the money came from a dedicated source. We might as well not require any kind of research from our students. Then there is the issue of going to the library. Library is only open during school hours; students cannot go on their lunch period or before/after school; students can't print out anything if the librarian (excuse me--media specialist) is not there. So don't just knock the non-teaching of English writing skills. Make the sources available and let the teachers have access to the proper tools.

Issues may arise for the teachers if they are not ready for the errors in the term papers received from students. Most submissions are plagiarized and turnitin can help identify those. Using Ms Word for checking grammatical errors is another tactic. However, the length is the prerogative of each teacher based on his/her reading stamina. Rest assured that writing term papers is a great exercise and should be continued.

@Vetern Teacher~ I assume you would agree that reseach papers are important? The librarian at my school is in an hour or more early every day and stays almost two hours or more after dismissal most days. She works a fixed schedule but still allows all students to come whenever to type, research,write etc.She does the printing to control costs but everything worthwhile gets printed. She helps all studentsas well as one librarian with 20 fixed classes a week can help. She has gotten book donations and grants to help build a collection. The BCPSS system subscribes to many valuable data bases (about 15 or more) which kids get to through TSSS. I could not do my classroom job without my librarian. Further, she teaches kids how to locate and evaluate sources and how to use what they find. Do we need more resources? Sure!But we need to make better use of what we do have. I find working with my librarian makes all the difference! Collaboration is a great stategy. As for writing skills; I find them weak across the grades. I believe the person who teaches at the community college. We need to find ways to teach writing skills and have kids wholove to write. David, you are on the right track! Great posts here!

@elisabeth--Of course, I believe in term papers and I am thrilled that you have a media specialist that is willing to respond to the needs of your students. Unfortunately, she is the exception rather than the rule. Writing skills are weak in some of our teachers also. Some colleges never require that English majors take anything but Creative Writing and no grammar classes at all. Research data bases are wonderful but you have to have access to the computers to utilize them. I am glad you have a media person who is willing to work with students. Maybe you could clone her?

i am sorry it starts at the top and Nancy Grasmick and these foolish HSAs are to blame for many of the skills lacking. If one would go to NY and see the two diploma system than that would make sense. Right now we are hurting both the high and low preforming student with these tests that takers are force to center their studies on. In fact there isn't even a bcr or ecr on these exams any longer because to many students were failing and the mighty Grasmick now allows an English exam without an essay. it starts at the top fire grasmick

I taught freshman English for a few semesters and was distressed at the poor writing skills of many of my students. Several said they'd never had to write an essay during high school. Many of them didn't have very good analysis or critical thinking skills, either. What high school English classes purported to teach them, I'll never know.

All I know is that for the past seven years, I have been able to supplement my income by working as an adjunct faculty member at two local universities to teach GRADUATE students how to research and write a paper! Yep, students in a master's degree granting program who are totally unprepared to write their theses. Sad.

A couple of thoughts here: First of all, you don't learn how to write by doing a "term" paper. Think about it - a "paper" that requires an entire "term" (10 weeks) to develop and write?? When do they get feedback - 2 or 3 weeks later at best? Don't confuse research skills with writing skills.

Kids learn to write by being given lots of practice and lots of FEEDBACK! Short assignments that require kids to organize thoughts, draft and revise develop essential writing skills in an effective manner. Lengthy assignments have their place, but short asignments that can be reviewed and returned to students quickly with written feedback work best.

Thus the problem - take a look through your kids' written work - how much written feedback and guidance do they get from the teacher? My kids get "checks" or an occasional brief comment. I'm not blaming teachers here - because of all of the valid reasons that we have seen in other posts (AIM, increased reporting, data logging, discipline, parent phone calls ...........) our teachers simply don't have the time needed to provide the feedback that kids need to develop essential writing skills. Think about it - the typical middle school teacher has 120-150 students. If they took 2 minutes per student (which would be prety damn quick) to read an essay and provide some constructive feedback, that's 240-300 minutes (5-6 hours!!!).

Let's not forget another contributing factor - In emphasis by the state has been on READING and not writing. There is no state writing test. The reading tests do not measure language skills; therefore, they are not prioritized by teachers.

There is no simple fix here - writing skills, like math, science ... etc are suffering due to poor decisions at all levels by the folks calling the shots. Thank God for spel chek!!

I teach history in a large public high school. In the past, I did assign term papers, but discovered to my chagrin that the students don't know the difference between "research" and "write" a paper and "cut and paste from the internet"

Apparently, this is rampant at the college level. Research papers have become a farce. It is more meaningful for the students to learn proper writing skills -- how to craft a thesis statement, how to support it, how to organize an essay -- these are the skills that students need to learn.

While it would be wonderful to be able to introduce students to research using only primary sources, in an archive where they could do original research and propose a unique topic to defend. this is virtually impossible with 180 students per teacher.

So the best we can do is help them write a simple essay.

As a student returning to college after 40 years, I see this everyday, poor performance and low expectations are rewarded.

I agree with historyteacher that if students are given research assignments, teachers are going to see a lot of wikipedia copy and pastes in the papers. I also agree with realteacher that students hold on to research papers for too long and are not given enough feedback.

I have taught college remedial writing courses and we did nothing but essay writing and I always wrote a lot of feedback on their essays (which I could do since classes consisted of 16-20 students). A lot of students quickly started correcting careless mistakes that they never paid attention to before because their teachers had always ignored the mistakes.

Many students have no clue how to use an apostrophe or a semicolon. We spent the majority of the semester going over run-ons, fragments, and the construction of a basic, 5-paragraph essay. Many of the students really catch on, and by the end of the semester they can efficiently put together an essay. It's just a shame that they made it through their entire k-12 education without mastering these skills.

Students don't just magically learn to write; they must be taught. Unfortunately, many students do not even speak correctly, and that reflects in their writing. Students leave the plural -s off of many nouns and they leave the -s off of many singular verbs, and then their writing looks like it belongs to a third grader, when in fact these writers have high school diplomas.

Just wanted to throw in a line. I'm in my first full year of teaching, and in addition to a standard bunch, I have an AP history course.

The writing skills, across the board, are bad. But I don't think term papers are the answer. It's hard enough getting 1-2 page papers back to a class of 20 in a timely fashion, let alone 3, 5 or 8 page papers to all 100 students of mine?

Meanwhile, I have found that frequent writing, frequent feedback, and consistent reinforcement of good writing skills is beginning to help.

But even so, in my AP, some students still don't even use paragraphs to organize ideas in a 1-2 page essay. I know it's laziness, but it still makes me unsure that they understand how to use a paragraph, topic sentence or organize a series of thoughts.

In any case, I think consistent writing is the key. And length is hardly the issue. The students who will 3-4 pages on an assignment for me are generally overloading the pages with useless, unrelated or inaccurate information. Writing is all about focus, emphasis and analysis.

Plus, writing anything beyond a 5 page paper is really just writing several 3-5 page papers in conjunction with each other. Section headings and dividers should be used at that length.

And, of course, which kind of paper are you more frequently asked to write on a regular basis as both a college student and adult? A short, argumentative or explanatory essay. Even emails and office communication tend to fall into the category of 'making my point quickly and professionally.'

It is not going to get any better: this year the state abandoned the written portion of the government HSA because (assumedly) it was too expensive and took too long to grade. Writing is under emphasized.

I was shocked to learn that the government teachers are assigning "create a brochure" in lieu of the paper. That's the level of synthesis and application for our students these days.