College Preparation Writing for High School--Crash Course! MLA Citations

In this class, students will be introduced to all aspects of MLA style formatting and citations! Using the most up to date of the Modern Language Association handbook, the class will be broken into three sections which will utilize lecture, in-class examples, and activities for students to test their knowledge.

Part 1: Paper Formatting--Students will learn how to properly format their writing to MLA specifics and learn where to find the tools they need in their word processor. The instructor will cover line spacing, margin size, fonts, headers, and more! Students will be provided with a link to an instructor-produced YouTube video after the class that reviews these aspects so they can follow along when producing their own work. 

Part 2: In-Text Citations and Plagiarism--For the bulk of the course, students will learn about in-text citations. The instructor will outline why we use in-text citations to prevent plagiarism, how they are formatted, and where they are placed in the body of a paper. Students will look at an example paper and discuss why the citations are where they are before looking at a few example paragraphs where they will be asked to place the citations. Students will look at Google Docs and its citation tool for in-text citations, as well as the Purdue OWL MLA guidebook for after-class assistance.

Part 3: Works Cited Pages--In the final section of the class, students will learn how to produce a Works Cited page for various common sources, including books, articles, and websites. They will discuss the difference between in-text and work cited citations, practice putting together their own citations, and look at various online resources to aid them with producing their citations, including Google Docs citations, Purdue Owl, and EasyBib. Students will receive a PDF citation cheat sheet upon the completion of the course.