Cardenas 1

Jose G. Cardenas

Professor Gonzalez

ENGL 1302-680

3 October 2021

Reflective Essay

I learned in essay 1 that was in essay 3 was making sure that my essay was in the correct

format, making sure I put a one next to my last name on the header. I learned that I did not go so

much into detail on the specific factors I was looking for. An example of this would be when I

talked about my experiment and never went into detail of what I was searching for in the

experiment. In essay 2 what I learned was how to use sources in a conversation way between the

articles, showing that research was done for the essay. The proper use of punctuation after using

quotation mark and where the period goes after putting the page number in parenthesis. An

example would be -Moreover, when nurses and surgeons go through a challenging surgery, they

listen to background classical music which is referred to “the Mozart Effect” (2773).

What I learned about essay 1 and did not include in my essay 3 was to not just explain a

certain thing in a body paragraph to fill up the essay because it will get the audience to think it's

too much and doze off. An example would be when I wrote a whole-body paragraph in-depth

about the daily workouts without talking about the factors being tested. All I did in that essay

was talking about all the workouts I completed throughout the whole week without measuring

certain factors of how exercise was beneficial. In essay 2 I learned that I was not providing

enough evidence from my articles and typing in what I was learning from the article with very

little amount of evidence. An example of this would have been the first body paragraph in my
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essay, I only included two short evidence sentences and the rest was freely typed, as well as my

topic sentence, it was very vague.

However, in this last essay we wrote I can say I learned the correct way to use

punctuation after using quotes, which will definitely help me whenever I have to do research

essay and include evidence from my sources. Another thing I learned from this essay that I will

continue to use is correct use of the times an article should show evidence. What I will not use

for other essays that I learned was picking a subject that could be very vague, because music is

beneficial in many cases, but having to find specific articles and make sure they are talking about

what you are researching is quite difficult. I would do a bit more of research before automatically

sticking to the topic I thought would be the easiest. The creation of an argument helped me

improve my writing by giving me reasons to show and prove with evidence, what I am arguing

should be supported and backed up by my evidence found. So, with the help of the argument, it

made it easier to understand what I was in search of and how I’d search it up. The creation of an

argument will help me approach writing tasks in the future, by helping me to find specifically

what I am researching about and what my thesis statement will be. Rather than cramming up so

many vague options in my introduction.

From the comments I received from my writing center, my tutor said that I was

improving compared to my last essay, and recent essay draft. She said that my introduction was

way better than it was in my draft and better than my other essays. What I did have a problem

was on how to organize it, I was placing great information in my intro, but a little bit too much

information was put. So, she showed me where extra information like that could have fit in either

of my body paragraphs or delete. Another strength was that I used more evidence in my 3rd essay

to prove my points on how music was beneficial to mental health issues. These strengths and
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weaknesses were different from the first and second essay, because in the first and second essay I

used limited evidence in my articles, my thesis statement was a very unclear, I went off and

talked about other things rather than what I was looking for.

From the comments coming from the professor, I believe that the comments on my third

essay would slightly be better like how I did use more evidence in my essays, my introduction

and thesis would be clear enough to understand what this research is about. Other than not

turning the assignment in on time, I know other comments will arose as, “did not complete under

the expected words. Although I know I tried my best with this research, just the lack of time I

had to complete was not enough and I know it is not an excuse either. I do think that maybe

some comments will be the same as the other essays.

The most challenging aspect in this essay was to find specific articles that can relate to

what my argument was, most of them were about music therapy in cancer patients, or patients

with covid. So, the most challenging aspect was it was difficult to find any articles in the

database that was about the effects and beneficiary of music on mental health issues as anxiety,

depression, and stress. Searched from database to database only to find one or two sentence of

how music was beneficial to those three mental disorders.