Dazjanae DaileyApril 23, 2012

ENC 1102- 0109

Reflection LetterDear Mrs. Martinez,

This semester in ENC 1102, I have learned plenty of elements of research that I had no clue about. During research I learned that there are many parts to being able to effectively find what you are looking for. At first I had the impression that a research topic would just fall on me but after reviewing sources, we were asked to look at what those sources had not cover, which caused me to change my issue. I really enjoyed the pace that the class moved because it allowed me to make changes to certain errors and edit my papers the way that I wanted to. Research I found to be very difficult because I had to think of things that could be supplemented by each of the sources to come up with a common issue and actually make something out of a totally brand new subject. At moments, I became confused but my wonderful seatmate is such a wonderful writer and she helped me pull through by giving me advice during peer reviews. Because of the process that we’ve gone through this semester with this project, I have a new perception of research. In high school I did research papers that involved a topic and looking for as many sources that spoke completely on that topic, in this class it was taken to a more advanced level of being able to use related sources and compare them to get as close to answer as I could regarding my topic. I believe that having to go through this deep process has prepared me for any possible writing situation because we had two very important essays that we had write in order to get down to the final research paper.

When we began to write the papers, I was a little confused about each one but because you are such a wonderful professor, you gave us access to different examples that would assist us in being sure that our papers had all the elements that was required. In the annotated bibliography I was extremely lost when we started but eventually I got it, the first time around I didn’t spend much time on it but after peer reviews, I was able to read other people’s paper and get an idea of what was supposed to be included so that helped me a lot and allowed e to go back and correct many things that needed fixing. I definitely seen a progress in my writing after having to write that because it was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to write and it has taught me a lot about citation, making connections between sources, and explaining quotes. The literature review did the same thing for me but I was also able to put my topics in categories, allowing me to see what hadn’t been included in these sources that I was curious about.

I believe I’ve worked extremely hard in this course, it has definitely been a writing experience that I’ve never gone through until now and I’m thankful for it because I’m sure it will come in handy in the near future. I feel as if I deserve an A in this course because I always had my work turned in on time, I edited and drafted them the way that they needed to be, plus I actually learned a lot. Hopefully, my portfolio reflects that.

-Dazjanae Dailey

Table of Contents Thought Document

Annotated Bibliographyo Finalo Draft 2o Draft 1

Literature Reviewo Finalo Draft 1

Research Project Reflective Thought

For my research project I’d like to find out if social networks/internet do more or less harm to

our academic experience. I would like to find out because almost every student in this day in age must

use the internet for things that are done in classes. So, is this a benefit and if so, in what way? A lot of

assignments for different courses are even online. Is this making students use the internet more than

what they should?

I use the internet A LOT. I use it for personal, business, and school related things, mostly

personal though. I feel as if social networking does both good and bad to students. There are many

wonderful websites on the internet that I usually find through Google that are really good resources to

helping me find answers to questions that I had about academics. Many of my unanswered thoughts

from class can be answered or reviewed on the internet, which is great because my grade doesn’t have

to suffer just because I may have not asked a question or didn’t understand something. One thing about

that though, many students now seem to be ADD, not officially diagnosed but because many social

networks are addicting, they feel the need to get on facebook or twitter for a “break” while working and

that break turns into something much long, most of the time more time is put into the social networks

more than the work itself. I have proof of this because I do it quite often and I’ve seen a lot of people’s

facebook status talking about how facebook is so addicting especially when it’s time to do work for our

school courses. And even right now, I am back and forth on this reflective thought paper and

facebook/twitter. It really can be addicting. I’m interested in finding out the answer to the question

because it seems so hard for me to decide on my own and many people may have different outlooks. I

know that the articles we read in class have partially opposing thoughts about the entire social

networking thing. In some ways I do agree with Williams, because he says that literacy is changing in

modern society, which is true but I do notice some negative things that I don’t agree with. Roozen

believes that literacy activities that we don that may not necessarily be related to school can actually

help us academically, I believe that is true to a certain extent, as long as it doesn’t go to the pint of

spelling practices that take place on social networks. Bugeja had a lot of negative things to say in his

article but I noticed that majority of them were true, such as the thing about putting inappropriate

things on facebook that can be seen my school administrators or businesses.

I’d like to learn more on this question because I have mixed thoughts on this and other people’s

opinions may be able to point me towards the right direction better than my own thoughts.