With this paper assignment we are entering into the realm of the DOCUMENTED ESSAY. When any college instructor says to you “Write an essay about this topic . . .” she MEANS a paper with proper documentation.
Your third paper will be a 500-1000 word essay explaining a theme in Robert Frost’s poem, “Mending Wall.” Find out what others think by doing a little research online and prove the points you see by quoting lines from the poem AND citing one other reputable source, quoting or paraphrasing from that source. Of course you’ll be weaving phrases from the poem into your sentences to show the theme in action.
There are three major styles of documentation you may encounter: Chicago Style or Arabian is not common, but you may encounter it. SPA, The American Psychiatric Association, has its own rules for writing a paper, and if you’re in medicine, some social sciences, etc., you will learn their rules. But we will be using the Modern Language Association (ML) rules for writing a documented essay. These three approaches differ slightly, but they all have the same goal: giving proper credit to sources we quote, paraphrase or summarize in the text of our papers. ML just changed some of its rules for listing sources on the Works Cited Page, and I’ll be posting these rules as we go along.
Your third paper will identify a major theme and quote from the poem, Mending Wall by Robert Frost. As you make your arguments supporting the theme of that poem, you will also quote or paraphrase from one outside source who agree with your position. This outside source must be reputable and expert (NO WIKIPEDIA or WORD DICTIONARIES ALLOWED FOR FORMAL SOURCES) and you may use reputable sources talking about the poem, or expert sources commenting on a THEME in the poem.
You will be citing sources in the Frost paper, and here are two tips for that process:
1) In your PARENTHETICAL CITATIONS in the text of your paper, when you quote a line from Mending Wall, use the author’s last name and the page number of the poem (not the line number). This means that your in-text parenthetical citations will look like this: (Frost 62). By the way, the lesson here is that when quoting or paraphrasing from a WORK INSIDE AN ANTHOLOGY (as you’ll be doing here), start your listing on the Works Cited Page with the author and title of the work, and THEN add the editors’ names and the anthology book information..
2) On the Works Cited Page, when quoting or paraphrasing from a WORK INSIDE AN ANTHOLOGY (as you’ll be doing here), start your listing with the author and title of the work, and THEN add the editors’ names and the anthology book information.. In other words, when you list the Frost poem on the Works Cited Page (which you MUST do since your quoting from it in the text), the listing will begin, Frost, Robert. “Mending Wall” – and THEN the textbook info.
You can see that now everything will line up between your in-text Citation (Frost 63) and the first word of companion listing on the Works Cited Page.