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Carolina Ortegon

Oscar E. Martinez II

ENGL 1302-217

26 April, 2024

Final Reflection Essay: My Semester Experience

In this course, I learned about academic research, which involves investigating a specific

area of interest and making an informed argument supported by different sources in the same

field. Effectively working on an academic conversation consists of a compound process, such as

completing different steps to facilitate and help me reach the ultimate goal of

completing my semester-long project of creating an argument of my own supported by the

evidence and knowledge I got from sources. Some activities and homework that helped me

understand my writing process and how to do it were the many worksheets assigned to me by my

professor; one example is the research genre invention; this assignment allowed me to

brainstorm ideas for the topic I was going to research. For example, in this assignment, I had to

respond to several questions like, "How do you feel about this topic? What do you really want to

know about this issue?" and "What do you need to know to engage in the discussion about this

issue?", these questions allowed me to think about my topic in a more profound way giving me

different perspectives and making me think outside the box in order to see if the topics I had

interest in were worth researching and writing about. I also learned about proper borrowing

practices, such as quoting other sources and making proper citations when using other people's

work to avoid plagiarism. One activity and homework that helped me understand this process

and how to work through it was the annotated bibliography. This assignment allowed me to
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create a list of references naming the author, the article's title, and the year it was published, as

well as briefly describing the source's content by making annotations about their main focus and

methodology in order to make it easier for me to know what the sources were about for me to use

them later in my argument. The knowledge of academic research and its process that I gained in

this course will help me in other courses by allowing me to work on something that I had

experience with and was familiar with, such as knowing how to cite correctly and how to get

relevant evidence from different types of sources in case I have another assignment of making an

argument in a topic.

I learned about the writing process in this course that it involves more than just good

grammar; it also involves being able to write with quality and precision. To effectively write

something good that will reach its purpose and audience, I had to be specific and remove

unnecessary information to be able to improve my writing in terms of quality. I remember that

most of my professor's advice was to be the most specific I could be when writing, and he

recommended that I rephrase a lot of my work to make it make more sense. Some activities and

homework that helped me understand the writing process and how to do it were the multiple

drafts I had to make when writing my essays. In essay 2, the literature review, one error that I

always made was not being specific when writing explanations. For example, I changed the

language that I was using from "… (Martinez and Alvarez 1). Also…Lee, J.Y., Ha, Y.J., Wei, Y.

and Sarala, R.M….)." to "Lee et al. aligns with Martinez et al.…", which made it shorter and

more straightforward which was exactly what my professor wanted me to accomplish. My

writing process and analytical thinking skills that I developed in other courses, such as UNIV

1302, for example, improved in this course by learning to enhance the quality of my text by
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making my paragraphs shorter but maintaining the essence and meaning with better precision in

terms of explanation.

From the process of creating and revising my research genre assignments, such as my

argument essay, I learned that every topic can be very interesting and complex given that it can

consist of multiple aspects, for example, if I had chosen the medical field even though my main

focus should be in medicine, it also has aspects like regulations and law, business negotiations,

the use of technology, human resources, etc. What I'm trying to say is that I had never put so

much thought into how systems are made and all the complications they can have. I never

realized everything that relates to just one thing. Because of this, when I was revising my writing

assignment, I had to make some choices to approach my topic more appropriately, and I had to

focus on explaining my argument thoroughly. For example, I chose the business industry and

how competition can be good for maintaining a balance in the economic system. To explain how

this system wasn't always followed, I stated, "In the article "Can Common Business Practices

Ever Be Anticompetitive? Redefining Monopolization" Konstantinos Stylianou states, "Firms do

not think in terms of legitimate business justifications or efficiencies, but rather in terms of long-

term sustainability and appropriation of value. As a result, antitrust law becomes detached from

the subjects it purports to regulate" (169)". This quote helped me explain why it is crucial to look

more deeply into how companies are following laws because, as I mentioned, this industry

consists of more aspects that, if not working correctly, can affect the rest of the industries or

economy. That is why I chose to use quotes in my introduction to give an overall idea of my

argument.

The most challenging aspect of revising this research genre assignment one last time for

me was that I had to write everything from scratch. I made the mistake of waiting until the last
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minute to finish the essay, so, of course, it made it way harder and possibly easier to get wrong,

given that I didn't make visible changes throughout the whole drafting process. For example, in

my first draft, for the introduction, I wrote an explanation of what it means to have a mixed

economy instead of focusing on making an interesting hook for the audience and then a short

explanation of my argument, given that it was unnecessary to explain such an easy concept for a

business expert. Initially, in the middle of the paragraph, I wrote, "Through practice and

education, it is understandable how this matter can be very complex, and sometimes, it can get

hard to control such an extensive system. Consequently, the same system that makes the

American economy flourish is the one that allows it to fail at times". To change that, I made it

the hook for the introduction, for example, "The same system that makes the American economy

flourish by providing amazing opportunities and resources to the citizens, such as higher

education, job opportunities, theme parks, and even what is displayed on T.V., is the same system

that allows it to fail at times by allowing very few people to own entire industries such as the

entertainment and pharmaceutical industry without the proper regulation." This idea occurred to

me because of my instructor. He told me one way to make it interesting and relatable is by

connecting with things my audience sees as familiar, such as movies, but maintaining the

connection with my topic. Also, I had difficulty finding evidence, I’m not sure why but there

weren’t many articles specifically related to my perspective and I didn’t like the ones I used but I

thought it was too late to change everything. The least challenging aspect of revising my essay

was meeting the word requirement. I have a facility for writing a lot, I guess it’s because I talk

too much in a comfortable setting in real life.

To explain the course concepts, such as my drafting process and assignments, to a general

audience on my website, I looked back at the assignment's prompts. To explain my first unit, I
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went back and read the instructions. Once I did that, I tried to explain everything in a simple

way, trying to avoid complex terms, so that the general public could understand it without

question. For example, I wrote, "For this unit 1 writing assignment, I started a semester-long

research project on…The goal of this assignment was to create an annotated bibliography…by

creating annotations describing the content and evaluating it to explain the purpose of the source

so I could use it later, as well as creating references to organize detailed information such as the

author's name, the source's title, and where/when it was published". This explanation has a) my

project, b) the goal of that specific part of the project, and c) the assignment explanation. In other

words, it explains the ultimate goal of creating a long-semester project, the name of the first

assignment, and what it consists of. I did not go into detail on how to do it, but I still explained

the essence of the assignment so that it made sense and was not confusing when showcasing my

unit.

For my unit writing assignment explanations, I made the annotated bibliography,

literature review, and researched position understandable to someone unfamiliar with these

genres by explaining what they were about without making it sound too professional and

complicated. For example, for my second unit, I explained what the genre was about, “The genre

for this writing assignment, a literature review, was a critical analysis, which is basically, a

detailed analysis of scholarly research, such as articles, through summary, classification, and

comparison.” As well as explaining the purpose, “The goal was to identify and describe

patterns, similarities, differences, and gaps in perspectives and approaches….The aim was not

to…but to describe how the eight peer-reviewed journal articles approach and discuss the topic

across scholarly disciplines and methods.” Not everyone is familiar with what a literature review
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is, but by explaining that it consisted of similarities and a deep analysis of sources I made It

sound simpler.

The most challenging aspect of this course was the drafting process

for my assignments. Even though it helped me improve my writing skills and my ability to see

things from different perspectives, it also made me stumble a lot with my own flaws. I never

realized the potential I was missing out on just by not putting enough effort into my writing

in terms of revising and editing. For example, just by editing my draft, I was able to be more

precise and understandable when making annotations. In my first essay, I wrote, "According to

researchers, a company's CEO holds enough power to impact its performance and influence the

people around it. The chief and top executive positions are usually the most important for a

company because they act as leaders and guide their employees" and I changed to, "A company's

CEO (chief executive officer) and other top executive positions are usually the most important

because they act as leaders and guide the company granting them enough power to impact the

company's performance and influence the people from within it." This is a small change that

allowed me to be more straightforward and make my topic sentence way stronger than it was

before. Some challenges I faced in the research and writing processes were finding evidence to

support my claims and writing with meaning and logic. I find this as a challenge because

sometimes there can be a lot of information that can get me confused, as well as just having too

many ideas about what to write and not being able to put it in words.

The least challenging aspect of this course was the quizzes and small assignments

assigned by my instructor. I think a lot of the ideas I got were from the quizzes. They were

helpful in giving good advice and just opening my mind to what I was about to be writing to be

able to complete the assignments and meet the expectations. Some strengths that I discovered
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in my research and writing skill sets were my ability to write and be inspired

by myself and my surroundings. I think many of the ideas I got during the semester were from

other courses, my self-reflections, and even what I saw happening all around the world. I felt

that this course prepared me to become a part of the academic research community by

introducing me to the necessary process to conduct research and create an argument related to

an interesting topic. This is a skill that I will be using throughout my college career.