The assignment that helped me most and taught me the most was when I had to research each section of the research process. It was helpful that I had to critically read and summarize several websites for each topic. Because of this assignment, each student had several websites to reference when it was our turn to write a research paper. Also, we were required to send out the website we found to each of our group members. This gave us even more articles to reference. This assignment also helped us practice researching and citing.
The most helpful feedback I got on my paper was surprisingly when I went to the writing center. The man working there was extremely into my topic and gave me a lot of great suggestions and what he personally would want to learn more about my topic. At first, I was extremely scared to share my paper with anyone because I thought it was not good enough and I was embarrassed. I thought no one would understand the point I was trying to make. So, when I went to the writing center and my helper really enjoyed my paper and was interested in it, it made me feel great about my work and made me want to work a little harder because I now knew there were people out there really wanting to learn about my topic.
The most challenging part while writing my research paper was the introduction. It was hard to start to get the ball rolling on the paper. I was not sure exactly what I wanted to add into the introduction without even doing my results yet. After I did the introduction, everything else seemed to get easier and easier. I also got a chance to go back several times to the introduction part of my essay and revise it to make it better and more relevant to the rest of my paper. The easiest part for me while writing my draft was writing the results. It was fun to collect my results and it was easy to place them into my paper. It was interesting to me to see what results I received back from my participants. They were all very willing to help me and I was glad to receive their feedback.
During this process, I believe I became a much stronger reviser of my own paper and peer’s papers too. I am so glad I feel this way after this class because revision is crucial in every paper that I write. The part of the draft that I feel like I did most strongly is was honestly my hook. I thought I used a great idea to get the reader’s attention and I did a good job explaining what they were going to be reading about.
Deborahh, I totally agree with you about the most helpful assigments being the different steps of the reseach process! Unlike your experience at the writing center, mine was not as pleasant or productive.
Hopefully it will be better this next time! I thought the Lit Review was the most difficult portion of my paper to write because I couldn’t get all of the information to flow perfectly for quite some time. I’m glad we got a head start on our portfolio! For the first time this semester I feel ahead of the game!!!