An MLA Nightmare

Teaching sophomores how to research is such a hard task. As teachers, we take for granted the fact that we’ve been doing research papers for years and we and it is innate within us to cite sources, and end with a works cited page that shows the standard MLA documentation. This week I found out the hard way that sophomore students are not yet equipped with this tool and need much guidance. If plagiarism were a sin my whole class would be going to Hell on scholarship with gasoline underpants. They had to do a research project on a Chinese dynasty that was set up for them with guided questions to answer. Though the students did an excellent job of regurgitating information in essay form they neglected to give anyone credit for their amazing thoughts and ideas.

I think this is the first time this year that I had to completely re-teach something because I did an absolute poor job because I assumed the students were aware of a skill that they had never been taught. I took this as a lessoned learned because I had to reflect on myself as a student and when I was introduced to this skill. I had realized that even as a college student I never really grasped how to effectively use internal citation and I never (still to this day) knew how to use correct formal documentation in my works cited page as I have to look it up on MLA online every time I do a paper. I could I expect my students to perform a task I continually need help with myself.

Aside from the MLA issue, the students have truly gotten a lot better with their researching skills. Their key words they use in different search engines have become much more specific and relevant to the topics that they are studying. The sites that they use for sources are a lot more credible and they can, for the most part, decipher between relevant and irrelevant material, leading to a much more analytical focused paper.