Egl 202 Week 1 Reflection

ENGL 202 was a tremendous experience for my second quarter at Humphrey's University. I feel that I have benefited from the knowledge gained from the course and learned vastly to working and analyzing not only my own writings but also with other writings. In the beginning of this course, we have learned how to specifically understand how a well-versed paper can be defined and what it is not. The first essay that we analyzed was based off a concerned parent to beauty pageants for children under 10 years of age. We first analyzed her topic and learned that while it is a concerning issue, her essay was no more than a simple rant that lacks research and specific data that would be relevant to her essay. From there we analyzed other topics that, while they were well-researched topics, they had specific “holes” in them that affected their credibility, such as a lack of authority towards the author or missing valuable research. One in particular was to an author that relied on emotion for being against the death penalty. These helped us to analyze essays better and to learn what not to do in a research assignment. This next element of
the class also taught us what not to do as well. This was my personal favorite part of the course, next to researching the assignments.
The one attribute that I have had difficulty in the past for research assignments was proper citation. In other English classes that I have taken in the past, I was only given a website, OWL Purdue, to read, follow, and nothing else in the end. In this course, I was able to go in depth with learning proper citation for MLA and APA format. For one or two class session, I spent time how to properly cite my sources and build a strong reference page. Before this class, I would just simply use a website known as Knightcite that made the references for me and hoped that they were written correctly. In here, I was taught about putting the reference page in alphabetical order and even received practice so I can learn how to do the citation correctly on my
own. The last point that I wish to show what I have learned and had difficulty on was the literature review. What I had gained from the literature review was analyzing text of someone's research rather than compile my own interpretation and personal opinion of the subject matter. The literature review had helped me learn to just stay focused on the subject without taking a stand. It also taught me to find research and find more on the subject that relates to its topic. This was so that if there is a controversial topic and there are numbers or data that can back it up, then it makes a stronger research assignment. ENGL 202 has taught me specifically to analyze papers, note the credibility of my research, and learn how to reference my research correctly. I was also taught about what style of writing to avoid, such as fallacies, so that I am able to make my essays stronger and to avoid confusing the reader. I feel that I am able to write more elaborate research papers and analyze others so I do not feel as though I rant in my assignment or write gibberish.