Colomb Gregory G. - Students Guide to Writing College Papers

This book was written in the belief that research matters and that your students can, and should, do it.

We have what we think are good reasons for those beliefs. Research matters because

it is ubiquitous in the workplaces of our information age, especially among those who do not think of themselves as researchers;

the experience of doing research is the best preparation for a world in which we constantly depend on the claims of experts;

the questioning mind-set of a researcher fosters the kind of critical thinking that students need now more than ever;

the ability to do research can free us from the tyranny of false authorities, including our own prejudices.

We believe students can do research because

the core activities of researchfinding information to solve a problemare a part of everyone's daily life;

the core elements of a research argumentgiving good reasons and evidence to convince someone to act or think differentlyare also a part of everyone's daily life;

the two of us have taught thousands of students to do it, starting as early as the eighth grade.

Why then do so few students actually do it well? Because, we think, the research they do in school is framed in a way that cuts off, rather than enables, students' intuitions about how one uses information to solve a problem or to convince others to change what they do or think; also because schools have not, for the most part, helped students understand why the distinctive forms of research and argument we expect in school are rational applications of what they already know how to do.

This book repurposes the ideas, principles, and practical wisdom in two earlier guides we wrote for advanced students and practicing researchersThe Craft of Research (3rd ed., 2008) and the Turabian guide to theses and dissertations (A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, 7th ed., 2007). We describe what we've done with that odd, new-media verb repurpose because we have not approached this beginners' text in the usual way: We have done more than simply translate our advice from researcher-speak to student-speak, though we have done that. We have done more than eliminate what is beyond the experience or resources of beginners, though wehave done some of that too. But, most of all, we have refused to redefine the task of research, distorting it in the interests of simplifying it.

Too many students have arrived in our classes with falseand damagingideas of research: that its core activity is collecting information; that the writing that researchers do is pure report and the writer pure conduit; that in the workplace researchers are those who look up information for other, more important people to use; that in the academy, the only reason to do research is some quirky interest in a subject no one else cares about. These views, predominant among the students we see, handicap them not just for writing what their college teachers ask of them, but for their entire career as learners, citizens, and workers.

Research is above all about having a purpose, about solving problems. Its most important activities happen before and after collecting information. And it depends far more on thinking than on doggedness in the library or lab, or over a keyboard, though it does also depend on that. Although this book will help students write papers more pleasing to their teachers, its chief design is to lead students to develop a truer, more useful, and more attractive under-standing of research.