Vivanco 1

Carlos Vivanco

Mr. Powers

ENGL 1302

12 March 2023

Essay 2 Reflection

I understood the distinction between MLA and APA formatting in essay 1 and used it in

essay 2. I changed the author's last name and publication year in parentheses in APA format to the

author's last name and page number in parenthesis in MLA format. In my second essay, I applied

what I learned about ADHD in my introduction to psychology class. I added some information

from class regarding ADHD, childhood, and mental health. In essay 1, I mostly employed statistics

and measurements because the research for the essay consisted of testing a hypothesis through an

experiment. In essay 1, I predicted that less aspartame consumption leads to overall improved

health; hence, I lowered my aspartame consumption and physically experimented, which I was

unable to incorporate in essay 2. The use of statistics was not widely used in essay 2 due to the

fact that essay 2 did not require the additional experiment.

I learned a great amount about the human mind and how we recall things. In future essays,

I can add the usage of mental cognition. I learned how to correctly cite evidence in text in the

second essay. I will use this in future tasks that demand citations, like a research paper for

psychology––as research papers require an immense amount of evidence. I learned how to add

headers to papers in my second essay; however, many of my classes, such as introduction to

statistics, do not require any form of essays. In general, constricting an annotated bibliography can

aid with the improvement of writing by keeping the writer structured. When creating an annotated

bibliography, I start by highlighting key content and then writing it down in the bibliography. This
 Vivanco 2

keeps me organized because it covers all of the points I discussed in my essay. Creating an

annotated bibliography can be a helpful strategy to approach writing tasks in the future because it

helps me identify any gaps in my research and motivate me to gather additional information if

needed.

According to the comments of my peers, my strength in writing is my conclusion; however,

my biggest weakness is failing to provide a page number after an author's last name in parenthesis

at the conclusion of a sentence that included any proof or material that required to be mentioned.

My problem, not citing appropriately, comes pretty frequently while writing, although it is not the

same as when writing an essay. 1. My first essay was not as difficult to write. Based off the

comments of my professor, I needed to fix some issues regarding proper MLA citations. In my

future essays I will be sure to include proper in-text citation––the particular reason being many of

my peers commented on the same weakness. Finding sources that best suited each other and

integrating them in my essay in a manner that produces fluidity and discussion was the most

difficult portion of this unit.