<p>Hugcheck–student composition courses typically move from essay to research paper, often passing summary, reaction/response writings, annotated bibliography, etc., along the way. I don’t think they are typically just sitting around the LAC being told to write with no citations. I think writing classes explain assignments, and students who are unclear need to question, rather than freelancing (“well, she said no citations, so that means I just don’t name my sources.”) Any good student who’s gotten into a decent school ought to be past that kind of self-dissembling.</p>
<p>(Of course, it’s also unlikely that students have not written essays in high school, since these days they’re ubiquitous in standardized testing–albeit taught badly because they still emphasize the hoary 5-paragraph–thesis, 3 example, conclusion-- format.) So that the idea that this is a foreign skill is suspect from the start.</p>
<p>I also think you’re conflating all paper writing into an artificial conception of what a “research paper” is. In the Princeton example, the student is writing a paper on Hamlet, using research as support, not simply reviewing or even synthesizing scholarly takes on Hamlet (which would be a lit review).</p>
<p>This kind of paper is what I spent most of my college/grad school efforts on. I’d have a general subject (maybe an aspect of a Keats poem, or a motif in Dickens’ novels, or a comparison of some theme in several Shakespeare plays or 18th century novels, etc etc).</p>
<p>I would read the work(s), think on it, develop ideas. Then i would research scholarly work in that area–what do others say on that topic? Then i’d use those stances as foils, commentary, support, alternate directions, jumping off points, etc, in my paper. If I needed to outline another author’s argument, I could paraphrase it in such a way that made it clear that it’s a summary of someone else’s thoughts; I wouldn’t be claiming the structure as mine, and since it’s summary, the structure of sentence pattern would not be the same as the original.</p>
<p>Overall, I think that, while well-intentioned, your comments are really red herrings, finding ambiguity through somewhat misunderstanding how writing classes and writing in general works in colleges. But your repeated assertion, that a student could make the error of presenting others’ work for her own because she is afraid/unwlling/unclear/unable to formulate her own thoughts, and think it’s okay, is troubling to me. I simply don’t find it defensible, and I definitely don’t think that the average thoughtful student is making that error and encountering charges of plagiarism on account of it.</p>