Reflection Essay

Clayton Peppler

Research Reflection

December 2, 2015

Research, Research, Research

As the semester concludes, I believe that I have acquired a vast amount of knowledge from the essays and assignments given in English Composition 121. I will use this knowledge in my future endeavors, not only in my academic life, but my personal one as well.

There are a few goals that I set for myself at the beginning of the year: improve my writing skills by becoming more clear and concise, get an A in the class and learn more about citations. The first essay of the year was supposed to be a maximum of two pages, mine ended up being almost three times that. The essay’s following, I really tried to stick to the page parameters set by professor Jenn. This really forced me to cut back on my word usage by using more exact language and better word choice. Professor Jenn and the peer review also helped me to see areas where I could condense my writing. In addition, peer reviewing other people’s writing really helped me to understand different thought processes and sentence structuring that I could apply to my own writing. My next goal for the semester was to get an A in the class. I achieved this goal through hard work and determination. I think that the peer revision and comments from professor Jenn also contributed to my grade. I believe that it is always best to get a second pair of eyes before you turn in your essay and doing that in class was very beneficial. Lastly, coming into this class I was pretty familiar with MLA formatting, but there was always something new to learn from Professor Jenn and the different exercises that we completed. For example, when you say “according to the author” before a quote, it is not necessary for you to do an in-text cite at the end of the quotation. Additionally, I learned that the proper heading to cite your work is “works cited” not “work cited”. These are tips that I will continue to use throughout my academic career and more than likely they are going to save me points on my future writing assignments. There was one goal that I am still struggling with and that is my ability to break paragraphs up in a logical, flowing succession. I often write paragraphs topic by topic so it is hard for me to break up paragraphs that are of the same topic.

As a student and an employee at a school, the topic of homework and its negative effects always interested me. After completing my research essay, there were many things that surprised me about homework’s detrimental effects. The thing that surprised me the most was the idea that too much homework can actually be counter-productive. Before the paper, it made sense to me that the more homework a child has the more the ideas would be cemented in their brain. After writing the paper, I found that too much homework can actually cement in the wrong ideas, something that I never suspected. I was also surprised to find that homework can cause physical complications. The reason that this surprised me was because it sounded ridiculous/fictitious but after doing the research I found that it is very real and present in children who attend schools with excessive homework practices.

I believe that the best part of my essay was my counter-productive argument. The reason that I believe this is because it is very practical and applicable. The one thing that I was unsure about keeping in my essay was my explanation of spot checking in my counter-productive argument. I thought that it was imperative to keep in because I did not want any confusion about what spot checking was, but one of my peer reviewers said that it is common knowledge and should be taken out. I can’t wait to hear what professor Jenn thinks. I think that professor Jenn is going to agree that my best paragraph is my counter-productive argument but I think that she may also like my social health argument. I think that she will like my fact about the amount of math problems that a child actually needs and how homework takes away from family time.

The research process was daunting and time consuming. Not only did I have to navigate the world wide web, but I also had to find my way around different databases. It was difficult/time consuming to figure out which key words to put in the databases to get the correct results, but once you find which words work and which ones don’t it is very easy and quick. After I found all of my data, writing the essay was smooth sailing. To make the research process faster, the advice that I would give to other students is be very specific in your wording and use as many databases as possible. It may take a little longer to find the data on the databases, as you have to find the appropriate key words, but you will save so much time citing as the citation is already done for you. In addition, the data from the databases is often more reliable than the information from the world wide web. After completing this essay, my computer and web skill definitely improved.

I have learned so much from English Composition 121 and am looking forward to taking English Composition 122 with professor Jenn next semester. I am always looking to improve my writing skills and can’t wait to see how my writing improves upon the completion of 122.

Photo from: http://blog.mnsu.edu/cdc/?p=138