Overview: Essay 4 Informational Research
The Assignment
Write a 850-1,000 word essay using objective informational research and Modern Language Association (MLA) documentation style. The research requires a minimum of three sources including an article from a general website, a source from NC LIVE database, and an e-book. The essay requires a clear thesis structure with the development of a central idea and sufficient supporting detail. The final essay constitutes 50% of the grade while the preparation activities constitute 50% of the final project grade. Step-by-step activities include brainstorming, outline, Annotated Bibliographies, paraphrase/summary/quotation preparations, editing/revising. These activities are submitted via Journal entries in ENG 011. The final project is due April 25 23:59.
The Sources
1) An article from a general website, with or without an author.
2) An article from NCLIVE, the collection of databases available to all community college students. RCC research librarian Donna Windish has produced a tutorial that
takes you through the online research process. The LRC staff is available for individual chats and will help you with your personal research questions. Through the Libnotes for our course available on the LRC website, you are able toreceive customized support for your research topic. You only need your student ID to access these resources. More about that later.
3) A book source – Due to our singular situation during COVID restrictions, the book source was most likely to be an E-Book. However, the RCC library is again available for checkout. Online librarian chats are very helpful finding all source materials.
4) Often students have a longer list of sources cited in the essay, but three is the minimum requirement. For each source you will prepare an Annotated Bibliography; if you use more than three sources, additional annotated bibliographies are not required, but by the time you become familiar with the process and appreciate its conciseness and clarity, you may want to continue the process.
When you are ready to write your essay draft, you will already have accumulated half of your final grade through the step-by-step process. So the key to success is the following: eliminate procrastination; keep up step-by-step, and you will be well pleased with the results. Falling behind makes it very hard to complete the necessary steps.
