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The purpose of this 10-week course is to help students learn to succeed at college-level research writing. Through workshop-style classes and weekly deadlines, students will gain repeatable skills that can be deployed over the length of a college-level course that relies on a term paper as a major course-end grade.

Over 10 weeks the successful student will learn the fundamentals of research, including how to source, summarize and cite scholarly sources. Students will use their own interests to research and develop an original, thought-provoking thesis. 

The thesis statement will then undergo testing by the student through additional research and note-taking until enough material exists in note form to draft a five- to seven-page original research paper. Through drafting, students will then learn how to further test their ideas, reach a concrete conclusion and anticipate criticism from an instructor. The final weeks will provide strategies for self-editing and proofreading that should result in a flawless term research paper turned in on deadline. 

The class is structured as a series of short research and writing assignments that provide a clear, repeatable path to success in a real-world academic environment. Assignments turned in complete and on time will receive written feedback prior to the next lesson. 

Each week builds a single skill that feeds into the next week's lesson. Because of this building structure it is highly recommended that students attend every class and do each homework assignment diligently. Doing so will maximize their learning experience over the 10 weeks.

Week 1: Building Powerful Sentences into Strong Paragraphs
The key to improving your writing is to understand how specific weaknesses and avoidable errors undermine your message. As a class we will focus on subject-verb-object sentence logic, parallel construction, active voice, variation of sentence length and essential punctuation. For homework, students will draft, edit and proofread a 12- to 15-sentence paragraph based on a quality-control checklist. 

Week 1 Goal: Learn to write strong sentences that create a single, narrative message without grammatical and stylistic errors that distract the reader.

Week 2: How to Writing Descriptively
“Show, don’t tell.” The primary goal of any written argument is to inform and persuade. Readers want to be drawn into your argument through descriptive writing. Students will learn how to choose visual words and phrases, employ metaphor and simile and use selective word choice to win over the reader. For homework, students will rewrite a dry, uninteresting sample paragraph by employing stylistic tactics learned in class. 

Week 2 Goal: Learn to recognize when your own writing is boring and how to improve your work substantially through descriptive writing.

Week 3: Coming Up with a Winning Idea for a Paper
A great research paper chooses sides. Where you land can change based on research, but you can’t get far without first choosing a topic that elicits strong opinions either way. Working from a list of suggestions, students will develop initial research ideas, one of which will form the basis of their final paper for this class. We will conduct a free-form brainstorming exercise in class that students can use for future academic work.

Week 3 Goal: Learn how broad interests are narrowed into sharply angled opinions, how to anticipate objections and counter-arguments and find a productive direction for research.

Week 4: Finding and Evaluating Sources
The purpose of academic research is to test a potential thesis by reviewing scholarly interpretation and opinion (secondary sources) and by identifying factual information such as speeches, testimony, autobiography, contemporary news reporting and empirical data (primary sources). Only by intimately understanding the cloud of discourse around an idea can one sharpen an initial research idea into an original intellection contribution. As homework, each student will choose an initial thesis based on Week 3’s brainstorming session in order to curate a robust and relevant research reading list. 

Week 4 Goal: Learn what types of sources are valuable in testing a potential research paper thesis and how to procure them in advance of your writing stage.

Week 5: Creating Useful Summaries of Research Material
Building on the previous week’s work, students will learn how to read and summarize ideas from primary and secondary sources using examples presented in class, with a special focus on avoiding the trap of accidental plagiarism. Students learn to weigh the value of each source and choose which to include and which to discard for their final research paper in the class. For homework, students will use this skill to further focus their theses based on careful research.

Week 5 Goal: Learn to identify and quickly summarize quality research material. As a bonus, quick, accurate summarizing often is required of students on standardized tests and college exams.

Week 6: Developing and Supporting a Thesis Statement
A solid research paper doesn’t meander toward a conclusion, discovering counter-arguments along the way by accident. Students will learn how to use their research notes to write a strong thesis and develop a solid, research-backed outline that supports that thesis. In class, students will critique sample thesis statements and suggest how to strengthen them. For homework, each student will create a simplified outline for their eventual full paper for the class based on their thesis, research reading and summary notes. 

Week 6 Goal: Learn how to turn research notes into a solid, executable plan for expressing a thesis in writing, then back it up with primary and secondary sources as evidence.

Week 7: Writing the Initial Draft
Structured writing takes many forms — the inverted pyramid of newspaper reporting, the “beginning, middle, end” of Greek drama, the time-jumping of modern cinema. Research writing is structured as well. Formal academic writing begins with an abstract, then an introduction, evidence and conclusion. The college research paper is similar (minus the abstract). Students will learn how to turn an initial thesis and outline into a full-blown paper. As homework, students will write an initial draft of their final paper.

Week 7 Goal: Having done the work of brainstorming, research, summarizing and developing a strong thesis, students will learn how to make the jump from static notes to a vivid, well-written argument.

Week 8: Sharpening the Draft
If you think your first draft was great, brace yourself — it’s not. But that’s okay. Only by engaging in the argument in writing does any writer face up to the potential in his or her arguments and address them honestly or, perhaps, choose to alter course.

Week 8 Goal: Many college students start late on their final paper and turn in a rough first draft as final work. Students who complete this course will learn why that’s a huge mistake and how to avoid it.

Week 9: Finalizing the Draft
You have a draft and you spent time rewriting. It’s likely you moved a lot of ideas around, added new ones and cut out weaker passages. The paper feels more solid but the flow of the writing is a mess! Here’s where we learn how to effectively self-edit. Professional writers have many tricks here, but the fundamental strategy is time: By giving yourself ample time to draft and rewrite you can now afford to leave the paper alone for a day and come back to it with fresh eyes.

Week 9 Goal: Learn the essentials of self-critique and self-editing, as well as how to allow your ideas time alone so that your mind can reset and see your words from a fresh perspective. 

Week 10: Presentations and Submissions
Students will come prepared to present for a few minutes their own research and findings as they might in a typical college class. Prior to class they will be given a checklist of best practices and urged to practice presentation before family and friends under timed conditions. All papers are due within 48 hours of the end of the last class for evaluation of both the paper and presentation. Feedback will be returned within five business days. Parents are welcome to request the final paper with feedback for improvement and an explanatory grade.

Week 10 Goal: To create close to real-world pressure on students to meet a hard deadline for a live presentation of findings.