Assignment link for Week Eight is now active.

The assignments discussed below are explained and discussed more fully in the weekly exercises.  You can find this link by following the weekly assignment tab for week eight.

Topics Covered Week Eight:

• The last of research notes. Say, "Yeah."
• Producing a second draft of your research paper.
• Keeping a working bibliography up to date.
• Basic MLA parenthetical citation.
• Introduction to a portfolio's reflective cover essay.
• Pre-writing for your mid-term reflective essay.

Discussion:

This week, you'll finish the last of your research notes for the King paper, write a draft of your King research paper/rhetorical analysis, and do the basic prewriting for a mid-term, reflective cover essay.  

Last week you explored the research notes taken by others, offering feedback and just learning what goes into a good research notes.  You received feedback on the research notes you'd taken on your two secondary source, journal articles, and you wrote a post integrating this feedback and planning how to best improve your notes for those in your group who will be using them.  The first half of this week, you'll be taking this plan forward and updating your notes into their final form.  You'll need to complete your work the first half of the week, because in the second half of the week, you and your group will need access to your notes.

The second half of the week, you'll finish a second draft of your research paper.  This time, you'll add an introduction and conclusion, and you'll flesh out your body with the addition of any evidence you can now add via the improved research notes on your group's blogs.  At this point, you should also feel free to bring in additional outside sources, but remember to cite them.  For many of you, citing will be new.  Each time you cite a source, you'll need to make sure it is in your working bibliography, and you, hence, create a citation for it in MLA format and put it in the correct alphabetical order by last name.  In MLA style, when you cite a source in the text of your paper, you do so within your sentences using something called parenthetical citation.  This means that just before the end of your sentence you stick in a set of parentheses, like this, ().  Within the parentheses goes: 1) the author's last name--use the first author's last name if there are multiple authors; and, 2) the page numbers of containing the material you're citing.  It should look something like (Brandon 231-4).  Note that the last name and the page numbers are separated by a space. Also note that if there are multiple page numbers, you shorten the final page number, so you don't repeat information and keep your citation short.  For instance, 231-234 becomes 231-4.  279-281 becomes 278-81.

Since MLA citation style was designed to cover the needs of print material, usually humanities books and articles.  The style becomes more cumbersome if you use online sources, which are likely not to list an author and not to have page numbers.  Since for right now, you've only taken research notes on journal articles, you don't have to worry too much about citing online sources.  Remember that the library has several pages set up to guide you through how to cite sources in different styles, including MLA, and their guide can help you with citing online sources.  You can find the library guide to citation here: http://libguides.reynolds.edu/mla

Last but not least, you'll do two brainstorming assignments to begin to gauge and write about what you've learned and about your performance in the class.  The exercise will make you conscious and, through your writing, me more conscious of how you are doing in the class, what you've learned, and how you're learning it.