Walking students through MLA citation on a one-by-one basis turned out to be a must in ENGL093’s first essay. Those who were not ready for help with sources or those who missed classes during week 7 showed it in their essays. Misconceptions abound, largely from high school. Most students, even those who believed they had MLA style down, showed glaring gaps in process and execution. Most still believe that a paraphrase does not need to be cited. Most still confuse ” ” with ( ). And several fall into the trap of just placing web sites at the end.
The reading midterms started this week (week 8). All but one passed with a C; the remaining student had a 65%. My hope is that this success will translate on the Accuplacer placement test.
Prep included a powerpoint jeopardy game, practice sites, and the course software. Several questions were pooled from the later two, with the rationale that courses in the future will give practice tests from large question pools (e.g. physics) for students to study. Those that do, do well.
language arts boost 