Here freshman and sophomore students still need help to enlarge their vision. Often they approach the research task with a different sense of the project. Freshmen students frequently go to the library and spend time in the stacks not digging into the literature as such, but spend time looking at the journals or books to find those sources that readily give information and not take so much time. It appears that some beginning writers interpret the goals of researched based writing in very limited terms and that these may limited task interpretations may lead the to an prematurely closing, and a truncated, reductionistic approach to writing. Often students would check out a single book in the library and no more.
Professional writers evaluate their resources critically and rhetorically.
The questions these writers carry to the resources are more penetrating. They look for the content in order to extract it and their concern is not for expedience but not so with beginning writer. My class too seems to be consumed with task completion and product, and grades rather than learning to write well. This is characteristic of certain personality styles and a myopic view of the educational mission. Much of the research literature also contrasts the difference between student and professor in their approach to the research writing project.