And – bouncing off your point – I do think confidence comes when students have some knowledge base to work from, which they don’t (typically) in the first year. Rushing to teach the format of researched writing – how to cite sources, for example – makes me wonder whether we aren’t emphasizing the wrong things, or at least taking them in the wrong order. A lot of students never get past the idea that “I have to cite something, so I’ll write my paper and then throw in some quotes” or “I’ll find some sources and smush them together, and that will be my paper.” They’ve learned rules of conversation that don’t actually engage them in the conversation at all.

I know I had very few research papers as an undergraduate the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, about 15 years ago. In the English Department, the emphasis was very much on our own analysis. And when we used sources, we were often given them, in a course pack or otherwise on reserve.

As a librarian, I do see a lot of students struggling to do research that’s way over their heads, and thus we end up with students who will take the first three articles or books that seem even vaguely relevant. I think part of the problem is that we’re asking students to participate in scholarly conversations before they’ve even gained the confidence to formulate, and then argue, then own opinions.

http://chronicle.com/review/brainstorm/bauerlein/the-lunsfords-on-student-writing