Could you thoroughly translate what my teacher wants?

Question

This is his directions
"A research paper of between 5-8 pages in MLA style with Works Cited and Works Consulted lists, quotes, and opinions."
Im doing a paper on Hector the Trojan. So Id like some help fully doing this paper accurately.

Answer 1

why don't you ask the the teacher for some clarification?

Answer 2

First off, listen to the first guy who said ask your teacher because the more people you ask the greater the probability of the information becoming inaccurate (ever play broken telephone with several people?)

Secondly, to help you begin the process of understanding this assignment, the directions are as follows.

You need to write an essay that has a thesis. This is called a research paper because you will be looking at other written documents for information that either defines, expands on, or simplifies your thesis. Or, you will be looking for arguments that support or argue against your thesis.

Such that: Hector the Trojan's most famous battle took place in Calamarca, part of the Ancient Roman Empire (totally made up btw), is your thesis.

Find documents (books, essays, book reviews, encyclopedia entries, text books, etc.) that as said before, define, support, argue against, expand, or simplifies your thesis/statement.

MLA stands for Modern Language Association. MLA (like APA American Psychological Association) sets a writing style standard for published works of writing. Style not only refers to what it is allowed (like unbiased words) but also the presentation of the writing. Thus it contains rules you must follow. When writers talk about Works Cited they mean where did the author get X information (quote, idea, statistic) as found in the essay. Readers want to find the source, so MLA has rules on how you write out that source. Works Consulted on the other hand means the written documents you did NOT quote or restate in your essay, but rather that you merely skimmed through and got a lead from or read but decided not to quote. I like how your teacher says "lists, quotes and opinions" because it evidences the fact that when researching a topic (i.e., thesis/statement) you can find a whole lot of stuff out there in the form of lists (internet search), quotes (as explained earlier), and opinions as stated by face to face conversations with experts in the field (history teacher, or historian), which you would note as: personal communication on X day and X time.

Never forget that ultimately the process of developing a research paper will teach you invaluable general skills for the future as well as topic specific information that should make you feel like an expert when all is said and done.

Good luck!

Answer 3

Okay, MLA is a writing style that has specific rules about quoting and paraphrasing your works cited, and if you haven't discussed it in class then you'll want to look at this website: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/557/01/ . Next, you'll obviously want to meet the length requirements. The works cited page contains all of the work that you quote or paraphrase in your paper in alphabetical order by author (you can find more info on it on website). And I've never had to do a Works Consulted list, but I'm sure your teacher just wants you to list every source you may have read in order to make sure you aren't plagiarizing. With the quotes and opinions, I don't know if your teacher wants you to have photocopies of all your sources or what, so I would ask him/her.

Good luck!

Answer 4

MLA style is referring to the works cited page. Visit the site below for an example of how to put your references in MLA format. The second link will describe the difference between Works Cited and Works Consulted.

Answer 5

Between 5 and 8 pages long.

Use the MLA handbook to set up the paper's format (it will tell you about spacing, paragraphs, how to quote properly, etc).

Works Cited and Works consulted lists should be covered in the MLA handbook. Look them up in the index, and read about these lists to see what the difference is and when to use each one (I personally don't know the difference, but if I wanted to know I would look them up in the book).

Answer 6

You probably should go to the library and read a book like this one

http://www.mla.org/store/CID24/PID159

Basically I can tell you what I know, but it could be a bit outdated. It's basically the common format for White Paper publishing in technical journals.

1" margins all around

Double spaced

Numbered citations from multiple reference sources.

This means you better READ about HECTOR from a variety of sources and about TROJANS from a variety of sources.

And then you need to QUOTE those authors, quote what was written about him by contemporaries.

In other words you have to MIX IN what other authors and people say about Hector and Trojans along with your own research wording.

I did one of these on the Arab Isralli conflict and I re-did it for the internet WITHOUT the citations, but I must have taken home 15 books on the establishment of Israel and the Zionist movement and the history of Palestine.

I didn't do a lot of quotes YOU need to do more quotes...

John Q. Foobar, in his book, The Life of Hector1, says "Hector was a heck of a guy!"

These are quotes

YOUR citations MUST include the NAME of the book, Author, Publisher, Date and Page

The WAY I learned it is that if you make a further citation from the same book in the same paragraph WITHOUT citing another book you go like this

1 The Life of Hector by John Q. Foobar, PH.D., Non-Random House Publishers, 1991 page 2

2 Ibid. Page 234

3. Ibid. Page 319

This way you don't keep repeating the same book citation over and over. Ibid means, same as before.

so you can't use IBID once you switch reference sources.

You should rpobably GROUP reference sources in the same paragraph is possible.

THEN when you have another book you present another view

Jim Farnsweather in his book "The Hector You Never Knew Before" seems to be at odds with Dr. Foobar's views on (this, that and the other)5

Your annotations are GENERALLY at the end of the paper in the form of a Bibilography of Citations

They can also be at the bottom in a footnote, but that's not usually used in SCHOLARLY papers, only popular reading books.

FORMAL SCHOLARLLY has them at the end.

Go to a COLLEGE library and read a THESIS or DISSERTATION written by a student or go to the MEDICAL ABSTRACTS and read something in a Journal on Internal MEdicine or something

You'll see how they write (it will be single spaced there BUT it comes from a DOUBLE spaced original) and cite things.

There are special forms for citing LAW and PATENTS and other things.

YOur citations should be in superscript (small numbers above the end of the quote or the end of a statement you make about something your read.

So, basically YOU are going to tell the story of Hector AS YOU LEARNED IT from 7 to 12 sources

You need to start this from the first line

Hector lived in Such A Place in Such a date.1 According to Brown 2 Hector got detension in school numerious times 3

1 History of the Trojan Empire by A. Brown, J. Smith, T. Jones, et al. McMillian and Sons 2002 page 210

2 Hector, The Early Years by D. Stafford Brown, PH.D. McGraw Hill 1983

3. Ibid page 92-93

Get the idea

You do REALIZE I'm making all of this HISTORY garbage up as simply an example.

This is my POPULAR re-working of the term paper done for UCLA without the NUMBERED citations.

EVERYTHING in there about people and places come from reference works.

There are some internet citations at the bottom.

http://www.issues-mag.com/palestine.shtml