CHAPTER 7

I read chapter seven more as a student than I did a teacher. I’m in the process of writing my thesis research paper and this chapter definitely brushed up on some of the specs. It’s important to know the difference between different writing genres as that is the only way to be clear on what the expectations are. One semester I took a course called “History of the English Language” and at the end of the semester my professor asked us to write a ten page final paper on any topic relating to the class. I did my research, used MLA style, meet the page requirement, but nowhere in the paper was my voice present. Now I’m wondering if I did it wrong (I passed the class though and I think I remember getting a good grade on the paper). So as I read chapter seven, I’m assuming ‘term paper’ and ‘final paper’ are synonymous, I asked myself “What are the specifics for a final paper? Are there any?” I was hoping Benjamin would elaborate a little more on that since she was touching on research and term papers being different from each other.

Under the “Science Research vs. Humanities Research” section Benjamin provides a brief description of the writing process for each.   Her explanation makes sense; I’d expect a science research paper to be more factual and contain more data meanwhile a humanities research paper  would have more scholarly comments. My thesis research paper is due for a humanities class and as I envision what I want the final product to be, I notice that I’m fusing both the science and humanities process together. My topic is discussing how different countries cater to the academic needs of their special education student body. My research will include: data, graphs, analysis, drawing conclusions as well as “reviewing commentary that already exists in scholarly literature” and I’m basing my literature review off of that.  Something that I won’t be including is any type of experiment as Benjamin discusses is protocol for science research papers. I understand why each type of paper would have their own research process but I don’t necessarily see anything wrong merging the two.

I can’t apply much of chapter seven to my students now because it would be very overwhelming and advanced for them. I like the break down on pages 114 and 115 which are grade specific in sequence.  It’s all a learning process and every year they continue to build upon skills they learned the previous year in order to produce efficient research papers by the time they leave high school.