Research Practice Writing 3 Instructions Research Practice Writings provide you with a chance to work on research writing skills like quotation and citation ahead of the research essay but make no mistake—these are real assignments for a real grade, so you need to do your very best. Minimum Length: Over 1 page of double-spaced, size-12 text Grammatical Correctness: Grammar is the most important thing to me, and it’s how most students end up failing essays. Pay attention to spell and grammar checks and use services like Grammarly. Only major grammar errors affect your grade on Practice Writings; both major and minor errors are counted in essays. Basic Writing Elements: Your writing should have the following elements: 1. an original and engaging title that indicates the content of the assignment 2. introductory sentence(s) or a short introductory paragraph 3. supporting detail sentences/paragraphs 4. concluding sentence(s) or a short concluding paragraph Refer to the Writing Essays presentation in the Essays folder in Blackboard for more info on these elements. MLA Design: I have made instructional videos for how to format MLA writing in both Word and Google Docs. You can find them in the Essays folder. Do what they show you and make your writing look exactly like what you see. Research Writing Elements: Your submission must also have the following research writing elements: ✓ Researched content- Your assignment must include research from at least 1 source. You may certainly have more than one, but remember that the more sources you have, the more you have to keep up with. ✓ Correctly formatted quotes- You may use direct quotes from your sources if you feel most comfortable with that method, but you are welcome to paraphrase as well if you can do so without plagiarizing. ✓ Correctly formatted MLA in-text citations- See my In-Text Citation Presentation in the Essays folder on how to construct your in-text citations. Consult Purdue OWL or me for any sources they don’t cover. ✓ Correctly formatted MLA works-cited citations- See my Works-Cited Presentation in the Essays folder on how to construct your works-cited citations. Consult Purdue OWL or me for any sources they don’t cover. With research assignments, you have a responsibility to correctly use and cite your sources. There are tough penalties for ignoring this responsibility or failing to take it seriously. ✓ MLA is all we have discussed this semester, so it is all I want to see. Submissions with any formatting and citation system other than MLA (APA/Turabian/Strunk and White/your own style of formatting or citations) will receive a zero for MLA Setup