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Barbara Ramirez

Professor Martinez

ENGL 1302-217

10 February 2024

My experience making my first annotated bibliography: Reflection

In this short essay I will talk a little bit about what I learned in the process of

writing my first annotated bibliography, the steps I took to complete it, and how learning

from this assignment will help me in future homeworks in other classes.

One of the main things I could highlight that I learned while doing my annotated

bibliography was that it is very important the sources one looks for in one's work. What I

used to complete this was to look for several articles that were from a reliable source and

that were previously reviewed by someone else. I completed one of the first activities I

had during the class before starting my annotated bibliography, it was to search for 15

articles related to the topic I wanted to do my research on. Doing this work made it easier

for me to choose the 10 articles that I would use for my annotated bibliography, since

when I finished this work I had already done the most difficult part of the work, which

was to look for articles related to the topic of children and cell phone use and that were

also from reliable sources. In that same assignment I also had to write down the reason

why I felt that the article would help me in my research and what was the main topic that

the author(s) mentioned. I learned that by completing an annotated bibliography it is

easier to know what each of the sources I found for my final paper is about as well as the

methodology the authors used for the article and how it will help me do my final paper. I
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will be able to use this learning in other classes where I need to record the sources I use

for an essay.

The completion of this annotated bibliography helps me to have ready and

reviewed the sources that I will use for the preparation of my final paper. The creation of

this paper helps me to have a more complete base for the realization of my research, with

this already done I do not start from zero and it is easier to start the real research. Besides

this paper was revised several times throughout the process that I did in this class. First

when I handed in my first draft I was able to get feedback from my professor and 3 of my

classmates, then in the peer review I had a more in depth analysis done by one of my

classmates. This made the paper feel secure and with her comments I was able to make

several changes that improved the wording I gave in some articles.

Something in particular that the conferences and receiving feedback helped me

with was that I was missing some important elements in each of my first sources that I

had in my first draft. For example, I failed to add citations from the authors in the small

paragraphs I added for each source, and I also did not take into consideration that when

putting my sources in a document I had to put them in alphabetical order. Especially what

I learned about alphabetical order helped me in my UNIV-Clickbait class since I had an

assignment where I had to post 3 sources about fake news and with this knowledge in

mind I did not make the same mistake of arranging them incorrectly.

The meeting I had during class time with my classmate to do the peer review

helped me since she highlighted each of the points in which I could make some changes

that would benefit me when delivering this project. For example, she mentioned to me
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that maybe I could add more examples since that would help the audience have more

connection with the topic of the article. She also told me that the tone I used was

understandable to the intended audience of my annotated bibliography, so I tried to

maintain the same tone throughout each of the descriptions of the sources I used.

The most complicated thing about this exercise was that I had no experience with

doing multi-page research before writing an essay, normally I only looked for sources and

already on the way to writing my essay I chose two to three of the first sources I found

for my job. And now I learned to look for even more sources and do an analysis of each

of the sources. The easiest part of this job was making the citations for each of the pages,

I only needed to enter a page that a tutor recommended to me to find the format in which

I should write the citations correctly in the MLA format.

Completing this task helped me find a way to do more in-depth research on each

of the sources that I considered useful for the essay that I will soon complete. The

practice of annotated bibliography will be very helpful for my future research in some

other classes. I have learned and will continue to perfect my way of organizing my

annotated bibliographies for my future assignments.