Why Take English 103 (The Research Paper) On-Line?

by Instructor David McGrath

To some students, writing a research paper seems like the mountain in the picture: huge, imposing, even threatening. But the fear of writing a large research essay disappears when the task is divided into just four manageable tasks. All of us have written a three page essay, right? What if I told you that in this course, the requirement is that you write just 4, three page essays? That mountain is not so formidable any more, is it? Well, that's what you do in my English 103 On-line.

Don't reach for the mouse button — you're in the right place. This is NOT one of those college courses in which you are expected to start right in completing assignments as if you already know how to do everything. Nor will you be assigned a giant research paper and told "good-bye" until the due date two months later.

Instead, in each of the units in this course, you will be told what you are going to do, why you are going to do it, exactly how you will do it, and what it should look like when you are finished. And rather than having to complete the HUGE AND SCARY RESEARCH PAPER due (or die) at the term's end, you will do, instead, four short mini-essays (3 pages each), which you will finish and turn in, one at a time, throughout the term. After you get the fourth one back from the instructor, you simply staple all four together, and, presto, you will have a genuine 2,500 word research essay!

Is this "English 103 for Dummies," you ask? Quite the opposite. This is English 103 for smart students who really want to learn what the point is of all of this research and documentation business. And dividing a paper into four manageable, inter-related essays is the real-life way that the EXPERTS write them — the "mountain climbers" of writing. So let's call this course "English 103 for Beginning Experts."