Tip:  When assigning research papers be sure to include some provision for what the student is personally interested in studying.
For example, I ask my students to decide what they are passionate about and then do a paper on that topic as it relates to ASL or the Deaf Community.

Here is a reaction from a typical student (posted to his "research blog.")
 

An ASL 1 student writes:

"I had every intention of procrastinating on this assignment (technically I am procrastinating, it is the middle of November!), I was going to wait till the last minute to work on this, just like my other assignments for other classes. I looked at the assignment (for the first time) on lifeprint.com yesterday and did a quick google search on my favorite topic (BICYCLES and CYCLING) + deaf culture and was totally shocked at the amount of information available! For the first time I'm excited to work on a research assignment earlier than the day before it's due!!"