MLA Research Essay
Fall Dates:
October 8 – November 16, 2012
Instructor:
Susanne Barrett, MA Literature
Tuition:
$249.00 per student
Class Size:
15 students
Ages:
10th - 12th grade students
This course walks high school students (grades 10-12) through the steps of writing a persuasive essay using the Modern Language Association (MLA) format, the most common format used in high school and university research papers. Students will write a 5-7 page persuasive essay with a minimum of five sources used in the paper.
Students will work directly with the instructor in the following areas:
- Selecting an appropriate and engaging topic
- Writing and using a hypothesis as a research aid
- Locating and evaluating source material
- Writing source cards according to MLA format
- Writing three types of note cards: quotation, summary, and paraphrase
- Avoiding unintentional plagiarism
- Evaluating and organizing note cards
- Outlining source material according to MLA format
- Writing a rough draft of an MLA research essay using parenthetical citations
- Providing constructive feedback of other students’ rough drafts (a virtual “read-around”)
- Composing a final draft of the essay according to MLA format
- Editing and proofreading the final draft
- Composing a title page according to MLA format
- Including a Works Cited (bibliography) for the paper
Familiarity with the elements of formal essay writing is a prerequisite for this class. The instructor assumes that students taking this class are well-versed in writing formal essays via one of these three methods:
- The student has taken Brave Writer’s Expository Essay and/or Advanced Composition courses;
- The student has learned to write a formal persuasive essay using Brave Writer’s Help for High School or;
- The student submits a sample persuasive essay to help@bravewriter.com for evaluation for admittance to the class.
The meeting of firm deadlines is an important factor in this class. Assignments are due each Friday and will be evaluated by the instructor over the weekend, with the exception of the final paper submission which will be evaluated and returned to the student via e-mail within 10 days of the last day of class. Falling behind in this course endangers a student’s ability to submit a completed essay on time. Students should consider this class as a realistic introduction to a university-level MLA Research Writing course.
By the way, it is a fantastic class! One of the chief benefits of this particular course as it is taught in the Brave Writer pedagogical model (in other words, in its online teaching format) is that students get to read each other’s papers as they evolve. That means each student reads not only his or her own paper with instructor feedback, but also each other student’s with instructor feedback, as well. No other teaching model gives this amount of feedback to writing for the perusal of all classmates. I strongly urge college bound high school students to take advantage of this course.
