A course in advanced English as a second language that focused on the writing of formal research papers revealed that even students who had chosen personally interesting topics and were able to organize facts and present them well still had difficulty. They had problems beginning and ending their papers, they approached their topics warily, and they either used very abrupt conclusions or lingered too long. Some suggestions for a better approach are the following: pay more attention to students' specific questions about the paper's length and contents, using a recipe-like assignment; reduce the pressure of the syllabus to allow more time for thinking, research, and organization of a smaller number of papers; provide more practice of research techniques that produce readable, useful research papers; have students choose research topics early in the course and refine them as the course progresses; eliminate oral reports on papers in progress; have some students distribute their papers for group revision each week; examine, in class, the writing contained in some of the sources; have students practice note-taking; use more praise; eliminate all required reading assignments; and limit the papers' bibliographies to five sources. (MSE)