Research Paper

My students are engaged in the first part of their research paper--the definition argument. Though I talk and talk and assign pages and chapter and put up examples, I sometimes wonder if I have been yelling into a wind because none of the students seem to have any idea what I am asking them for, and they are afraid to jump into the breach and make their own topics or use the research to argue it though I have modeled it for them again and again. It is a new curriculum for me this semester. Perhaps I will do better next time at guiding them so that this stage will seem like a natural progression, the way I intended it.