by Scott Lutostanski – Director of Academic Consulting
Writing a paper is a uniquely challenging task for students. It perfectly encapsulates most of the academic skills that a student needs to be successful. First, it usually comes with longer, more complex directions, components that must be included, citation requirements, and maybe even a rubric. Second, papers take place over a longer period of time. They are much more spread out and place more responsibility on the student to plan the assignment and manage their route to completion. Third, they often tap into multiple modes of manipulating information: reading, note taking and annotating, organizing ideas, and written expression. In all my years working with students, I have found that papers are the most challenging task to complete successfully in school.
Considering how prevalent and frequent this assignment happens in college, it is important that students are able to hone in and master the skills required to write a paper while in high school. So how can students be more successful with their paper writing? Let’s focus on each step independently.
Directions: Thoroughly read the directions and repeat them back to someone else. More often than not, students skim this part or “tune out” when the teacher goes over the assignment. This will lead to misinterpreting or, more importantly, misjudging how long the assignment will take or how difficult it is. Make sure you, the student, explain the assignment to a friend, teacher, or parent. If it is explained well, that person won’t have any questions for the you.
Time Management and Planning: Estimate how long it will take to complete the research, outlining, and paper writing. Now add more time. These tasks always take longer than we expect. Set up personal checkpoints to have certain amounts of work done such as: readings will be annotated and completed by Tuesday the 15th. Coordinate with a friend to introduce a level of competitiveness for completing these checkpoints or make sure that you have someone checking in with you.
Using Information: Remove ambiguity. If taking notes from a reading is difficult, start with a template or graphic organizer. Include the categories that are relevant to complete the paper (examples, connections, quotes to use, other sources to explore, etc.). Once the information is gathered, create your own system for brainstorming and organizing all the ideas you have gathered. Online tools such as inspiration are effective, but so is cutting out strips of paper and organizing them into “main idea piles” on the floor or using a whiteboard to create the template that helps organize ideas.
With support and coaching, students can get through the paper writing process and begin to learn the best and most effective method for writing a paper. Eventually, they will need to complete this process with little-to-no support. Paper writing incorporates a set of wide-ranging skills that schools often give a one-size-fits-all method for completing. It is important that students are able to develop the ability to be independently successful on this task.
