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When teachers assign research papers to elementary students, they are often met with moans and groans from their students. How are teachers supposed to teach students how to write research papers if it is such a painful task? Fortunately, there is an alternative to the traditional research paper.
The analysis proposed in this paper justifies the reasons why Multigenre

Research Papers are valuable in upper elementary classrooms.

Students are simply not interested in writing long, mundane research papers. They often experience a lack of engagement with their topic, lack of creativity, and in turn display poor writing effort (Dickson, DeGraff, Foard, 2002). Traditional research papers have even been labeled "the most unoriginal writings the world has ever seen" (Macorie, 1980, p. 54) and usually are geared more toward academicians only (Moulton, 1999).

Students aren't the only ones who find research papers to be boring; teachers dread papers too (Zemelman, Daniels, 1988). They are faced with the daunting task of leading students through the process of choosing a topic, conducting research, drafting, editing, revising, and completing the final copy. The final copies are usually the standard five paragraph essay format. These can be repetitive and uninteresting to teach.
The process of grading the papers is also monotonous. Teachers often comment that traditional research papers cause students to become too dependent on the teacher and require more work for them than their students.
Additionally, at the end of the unit, teachers have to sit through presentations that often consist of students just reading their reports.

Another common problem with conducting research is students' tendencies to plagiarize work by another author, whether intentionally or unintentionally. When writing a traditional research report, it is very easy to copy directly or cut and paste ideas from multiple sources into a paper that students think they can pass as their own. Many teachers often comment that students seem to think that plagiarizing will go unnoticed (Grierson, 1999).

When given the chance to select their own research topics, decide which genres to include, and determine how to present their findings, students assume ownership and take pride in their work. A Multigenre Research Project can change the way students perceive writing research papers for the rest of their academic careers.

Instead of writing a standard research report, the student chooses many genres of writing to include

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