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The introduction to research at the University is rarely the subject of explicit pedagogical discourse. It is as if everyone took these matters for granted: teachers do not discuss their practices or their pedagogical problems. This article is aimed at breaking this silence by presenting a recent teaching experiment with students preparing a licence diploma in sociology at the University of Rouen. This experiment, which links up with similar approaches which are scarcely given attention, consists in familiarising students with field work by sending them out for a year to conduct original research to be written up in a report presented at a final conference. The system makes it possible to change the usual teaching relationship, based on transmitting and mastering theoretical knowledge, and to discover genuine research abilities in students who are often perceived as weak from an academic point of view.