D#13, HW#1, Reflective Cover Letter

To Professor Roddrigo and My fellow classmates:
If I am correct I believe this course is designed for college freshmen; so a lot of the information we were being taught was review for me (now a college junior). However, it was not the type of review that was boring and unnecessary. It was well needed review that ended up being very helpful and will be very beneficial for future writing projects. All of the assignments and writing projects for this course helped to accomplish certain course outcomes. The course was designed so that we would achieve the course outcomes almost without knowing we were accomplishing them.
The first course outcome is to “write for specific rhetorical contexts, including circumstance, purpose, topic, audience and writer, as well as the writing’s ethical, political, and cultural implications”. After doing several exercises in this course and completing WP#1 I feel like I have a stronger grasp on Outcome #1. Being able to define what our purpose is, who our audience is, and what our topic is etc. is extremely beneficial for writing any kind of paper. This class made me focus on exactly what topic I wanted to address in my research paper and specifically who I wanted to direct my paper too. Taking the separate steps to think about and label these different things ultimately lead to a better paper. It also made the entire writing process a lot easier.
The second outcome is to “organize writing to support a central idea through unity, coherence and logical development appropriate to a specific writing context”. I think that WP#1 was the most helpful in accomplishing this outcome. Writing a research proposal and labeling all the features of our research papers helped greatly in organizing our papers to support our thesis. Also during the course we had to make outlines and cluster diagrams for our research paper. These exercises helped me even more to organize my paper and get my ideas out in an easy to read format. Although the Toulmin Model was very confusing for me, after I spent a decent amount of time on it I began to understand it and it ended up helping me greatly. The Toulmin outline helped me to determine what the main points of my argument were and what pieces of evidence I had to support them. I also learned to incorporate objections and rebuttals in my paper. I never really thought about them before. I feel that that whole assignment helped make my final paper stronger.
The third outcome is to “use appropriate conventions in writing, including consistent voice, tone, diction, grammar, and mechanics”. I believe that the various grammar assignments assisted a lot in achieving this outcome. A lot of the grammar assignments were review of things that we all should have learned prior to this class, but I found that a lot of the things we were reading about were things that I personally had forgotten. I think that after completing these assignments I can now properly use semicolons, various transitions, use various forms of sentence structure, among other things. The following paragraph is a paragraph I revised based on what I learned about compound sentences, “The issue I am researching for this project is abstinence-only sex education in the United States. This is such an important issue because in the U.S. the teenage pregnancy rate is rising and there is a rapid spread of sexually transmitted diseases sweeping the youth. The health and safety of the nation’s teens are at risk. This subject is surrounded by controversy because sex is risqué, sex is forbidden, sex is uncomfortable to talk about. Most Americans may not want to discuss the issue of sex, but they for certain have an opinion about it. These opinions differ greatly from person to person. Sex is a very individual thing and when people try to influence others’ choices controversy arises. Some people do not think anyone should have sex until marriage and that is why they believe teaching abstinence-only education is the only way. Others believe people should not have sex until marriage, but should still be given information about contraceptives and safe-sex in case they do decide to engage in sexual activities. The spectrum of opinion on this matter is wide”.
The fourth outcome is to “find, evaluate, select, and synthesize both online and print sources that examine a topic from multiple perspectives”. This outcome was achieved all throughout the course by the completion of annotated bibliographies. I searched for and found several cites that covered all different perspectives of my topic. When looking at these sources I had to determine which of them were useful and reliable and which ones were not. Deadline #4 contained assignments that helped me look into the credibility of my sources. There were several exercises and checklists that I found very useful. I will definitely re-use these checklists to examine further sources. WP#2 was also a tool to help achieve this outcome because I had to justify and explain why each source would be good for my paper.
The fifth outcome is to “integrate sources through summarizing, paraphrasing, and quotation from sources to develop and support one's own ideas”. I think in some part the annotations that I had to complete throughout the course helped with achieving this outcome. I was supposed to write notes about why the source would be good for my paper. Chapter 5: Rhetorically Reading Sources also helped me achieve this goal. There were several exercises that taught me how to summarize and paraphrase sources in order to incorporate them into my paper. The first paragraph is a summary of an article I found and the second paragraph is a paraphrase of that same article:
“In this article Heather Boonstra emphasizes the need for change in sex education programs in America. Statistics show that the teen pregnancy rates and STD spread rates are increasing. Becuase of this action needs to be taken to educate teenagers not only about abstinence, but also about "safe-sex" as well.”
“Research has illustrated that programs that promote abstinence, but also include information about contraceptives can be very effective in preventing teen pregnancies. Abstinence-only sex education programs have not shown results of preventing teen pregnancy; on the contrary they may actually be increasing the likelihood of teen pregnancy and STD spread because of the lack of information given about having sex and using contraceptives.”
Working on the rough draft and final draft for my research paper also made me learn how to integrate the information I got from my sources properly. I knew I could not just type word for word what I found in my sources and this is where I learned to incorporate the information differently.
The sixth outcome is to “identify, select, and use an appropriate documentation style to maintain academic integrity”. This course outcome I think is by far one of the most important and vital to a research paper. Without the proper citation and documentation of sources my paper would have been garbage. It would have been non-reliable and not credible. Properly citing the sources I used made my paper strong. Constantly doing annotated bibliographies in the homework helped me learn how to cite sources. I also looked on the Owl Purdue website for reference on how to do citations properly. WP#2 and WP#3 both demonstrate how I have learned to do APA style citations properly.
The seventh outcome is to “use feedback obtained through peer review, instructor comments, and/or other sources to revise writing”. I’m not sure how to explain how I mastered this outcome, but I definitely appreciated the peer reviews and comments I got on all of my writing projects. The reviews helped me to catch flaws that I did not see before, and they also gave me new ideas to branch off in. For WP#3 I completely forgot to mention that some people believe that sex should not be taught at all in school and in a peer review Kelesia mentioned it and I added it to my paper. I was greatly appreciative for that insight because it is something I completely over looked.
The eighth outcome is to “assess one's own writing strengths and identify strategies for improvement through instructor conference, portfolio review, written evaluation, and/or other methods”. I believe this outcome is being accomplished by this cover letter and by all of the reflective assignments completed throughout this course.
The final outcome is to “generate, format, and edit writing using appropriate technologies”. I know that throughout this course I have definitely not mastered these new technologies, but I have learned to use them. I have demonstrated this by turning all my papers in to turnitin.com and also keeping my blog updated on blogger.com
The outcomes that I feel I have a good handle on are 1, 2, and 3. After all of the exercises I feel I can efficiently determine what I want my topic to be, what audience I intend my paper for, what the purpose is etc. I think that I demonstrated that upon completion of WP#1. Because I feel I am able to do that well I feel like I can also compose a paper to support a central idea.
I still think I need to work on outcomes 4, 5, & 6. These outcomes all deal with using proper sources and citing them properly. I feel like I need more work on these areas because they are so crucial to writing a good paper. It seems that as much as I looked up proper APA citations I found different answers for each different place I looked. I also think it will be beneficial to keep working on how to evaluate a source to see how credible it is. This will help me in the future to use good sources and not fall into the trap of using weak/non-reliable sources.