THIS IS A FOUR-SESSION COURSE.

Designed for students in their early secondary school years, this course gives maturing writers advanced practice with MLA research assignments, guided by the award-winning Michael Clay Thompson language arts curriculum’s Advanced Academic Writing I text.

In this course, students will:

• Learn how to conduct independent research while evaluating sources
• Develop the kinds of note-taking habits that will enable them to avoid plagiarism
• Use advanced MLA formatting for citations
• Receive extensive feedback on each assignment, allowing them to improve relative to their own strengths and weaknesses
• Prepare for academic writing at the university level

Because this course is research-intensive, in-person meetings will occur every other week, with exchanges of feedback by email between each meeting. Students are not required to attend the class meetings, and recordings will be available.

Class Meetings: Wednesdays, 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time
Dates: June 4, June 18, July 2, July 16
Note that this course meets every other week.

Student Expectations: Students will complete two short research assignments and a capstone research essay with scaffolded MLA requirements. All work must be typed and submitted in one of the following file formats so that the instructor can add comments and tracked changes: doc, docx, odf, or rtf.

Student Support: The instructor is available via email. Struggling students can request up to two one-on-one meetings with the instructor during the term.

Feedback/Assessment: The instructor will provide extensive feedback on all writing assignments.

Materials/Supplies: Students will need to purchase Advanced Academic Writing I from the MCT language arts curriculum. They also would benefit by having the newest (ninth) edition of the MLA Handbook, available online and in bookstores.

Prerequisites: Students should already be familiar with basic MLA essay format. Good English grammar and mechanics are required.