Research paper

From my research writing assignment I have learned different things from the actual research collected and through the process of writing. From the information I have collected, I found that several college students procrastinate because they either do not like writing or they feel they write better under pressure or in a time constraint. I found myself procrastinating in my research essay about procrastination because I was not sure how exactly I wanted to write it, which a point was made by a couple of teachers.  Through the actual production of the paper, I became more familiar with research and finding articles. For the first time a used a citation from one article to find a different article I found very useful.  While in the process of writing the essay, I learned more about formal writing. It is important so that the audience, your readers will trust what you as the writer, have to say.  As I was looking through my results I wished I would have asked more and different questions than I had. I could have prevented this by thinking about my topic and where I wanted to take my research earlier. Another thing that could have done is look up articles on the topic I was interested in and then find the specific question I was looking for. There were several opening within the different articles about waiting until the last minute with writing, also known as procrastination. I wish I would have posted my survey earlier or worked to get more responses to have better results. Only 18 college students out of millions is nothing to show what is actually going on with college students. Also, I really only received information from freshman when I wanted to receive information from all levels. I was hoping to be able to see a difference between different years of college. I was able to see a difference between professors and students though.  Lastly, in the assignment it more important than just stating the facts and the obvious. I was forced to think beneath just the results and make a conclusion.

 

 

Word Count: 351

Winsor

The article “Joining the Engineering Community: How Do Novices Learn to Write Like Engineers?” written by Dorothy Winsor, who is retired from Iowa State University, conducted a study and research on how new employees learn the practices of writing within their job. The first study Winsor conducted was of college students who alternated working a full-time job along with college classes, making them the ideal group of young people to collect data from.  They answered questions about where they learned to do the writing they do at work. The results show that the best learning came from interactions and feedback from co-workers and supervisors. Most of the time students use a combination of using models, advice from co-workers, and editing from supervisors. The models they used is more for format and style of the report in which they are making and some use it to know what exactly they are expected to be writing in the report. For others, co-workers did the same for the people who used the models.  Co-workers gave the students ideas and what to emphasize with their reports. It was really important for several students that their supervisors reviewed their reports because they helped them with tone and other things so that it would be politically correct.  They also gave them advice on things that would go for every report, not just a specific one.  Winsor came to a conclusion that this kind of writing cannot be learned from just a textbook.  While the textbook shows the reins of the reporting, the workplace is the only place to learn and become good at writing the reports. Winsor worries what the students mean when they say they use models.  In a study done by Warren Werner, it showed that many students use the model to copy, and in the process of copying they use the detail needed for the report, meaning they learned nothing from it. This is an important article because it shows that going to college only does so much. To really become good at your profession, you need job experience to take it to the next level.  It is important for students and employers to realize that the novices will not be perfect right away and it takes experience to learn the ropes.

Word Count: 379

Peterson

In the article, “Past Experiences and Future Attitudes in Literacy” written by Ericka Peterson while she was in her first year at Utah Valley State College, Ericka uses a research conducted by Evans along with a similar research she conducts herself. Their research has to do with reading and writing including the literacy of students. Evans found his information from middle-class college students through various questionnaires and interviews about their literacy from in the past. To make the research different, Peterson took eight literacy reflections from students and she found their feelings and attitudes toward writing.  It was noticeable that good and bad experiences determine the way students look at writing. Peterson could see that students vividly remembered their bad experiences and could talk about them like it happened the other day, not years ago. She wanted to find a pattern between each literacy reflection.  She then interviewed several people of various ages so that she could get different viewpoints on writing from different stages of life. She believes, even when you are out of school, your literacy past still affects your life. In each Literacy Reflection and interview, Peterson saw that each person mentioned an experience with a teacher. The experiences were either, positive or negative but changed the way they looked at writing. A pattern Peterson found was that when someone was good at a certain skill and was positively brought to their attention by a teacher or others, it caused a positive reaction.  It gave that person more confidence and encouraged them to keep going. Peterson had an experience like this herself. Throughout high school she was self-conscious about her writing skills and did not want anyone to read her writing because she did not think it was good. She believed her teachers did not actually read her papers and just gave her an A because there was no feedback. It was not until college when her A’s continued and she received positive feedback from her professor that she realized she was a good writer and finally gained confidence. I felt the same way as Peterson in high school, I hated letting others read my writing. Peer edit days were awful.  It was not until senior year, my teacher finally wrote a paragraph on my essay saying it was really good and that she was proud of me.

Word Count: 390

Writing, Technology, and Teens

The article “Writing, Technology, and Teens: Summary of Findings” written by Amanda Lenhart, Aaron Smith, Alexandra Macgill, and Sousan Arafeh is about how technology impacts teens and the way they write.  To find this out they conducted a research, probably a survey, to see what other people thought about these topics. The main idea is that whether or not the informal writing of teens through texting and other communications has an impact on students’ formal writing in school. Sixty percent of teens believe that their technology enriched lives and spending time texting does not make a difference in their writing because they do not consider it writing. Except, thirty-eight percent of teens have admitted that they use texting shortcuts for school work. Several parents believe the ability to write well formally will help their teens in the future. It is an important skill to have for success. Teen want to write more when they get to pick their topic or have one that they are interested in instead of something they are told to do by their teacher. It is more likely for teens to write on their own with no school connection. Also, students write using computers more often than handwriting when it has to be done for school, but when they write for pleasure they write on paper. This article included a lot of data about writing and teens. It also included the open of more than just what teens or the student believes. I think this gives the article reliable and less biased. If the article was just the opinion of teens and what they thought it would be biased because both sides were not shown. The authors wrote the article because it is an important topic with the advancements in technology. Technology is doing great things like allowing soldiers skype with their families and let businesses communicate all around the world. But the question of whether it has a negative effect on students writing is important because students are the future. Since writing is an important skill to have to be successful it is quite important that we do not let technology impede on the skill.

 

Word count: 360

Texting and Writing

In the article “Texting and Writing” written by Michaela Cullington, she points out the positives and negatives of Texting. In 2008, only twenty-five percent of high school students were writing at a “proficient” level.  Jaquline Ream blames the writing levels of high school students on texting. She believes that because of texting this teenage generation has grown up with a lack of communication skills. Both Ream and students believe texting has a negative relationship with student abilities with spelling. Instead they are using abbreviations created while texting. For example, teenagers are using gr8 instead of great.  They are also not capitalizing when a letter should be, as well as having a lack of punctuation. Others point out that texting lacks emotion besides when the sideways smiley faces are used. On the other hand, some believe that texting lets teenagers to be creative.  They are able to practice writing by doing something they enjoy. Texting can be the jumpstart to get students to enjoy writing again.  Teenagers’ ability to express their thoughts in as few as words and as concise as possible is something that will help with their writing. David Warlick believes teenagers have developed a new language for the hi-tech world. Teens have the ability to understand one another by using abbreviations, numbers, and symbols. Michaela conducted her own research about how texting impacts writing. She interviewed and got the opinion of seven high school and college students, asking them several questions about their personal experiences.  She also asked for some teachers opinions to see if they see this problem in their students writing. The research determined that texting does not impact their writing in a negative way because students know that textspeak is not meant to be used in formal writing. Many students do not use abbreviations in their text messages and some find it easier to spell everything out.  This article shows the pros and cons on the impact of texting on writing. Michaela researched the topic as well as conducting her own research by asking both students and teachers. She asked both because it is important to get the opinion from both sides.

Word count: 357

D. Baron

In the article, From Pencils to Pixels: The Stages of Literacy Technology by Dennis Baron, goes through the stages of technology and the ways it effected and changed writing. There are several stages of Literacy Technologies starting with writing itself. Plato was against it, worried it would weaken our memories. Writing first dates back to 3500 BCE. It is said that no more than ten percent of the ancient Greek and Romans were literate back then. Inscriptions that looked like pictures were used to communicate in the written form instead of letters. But more recently there was a big change when the pencil came out. Everything was no longer in just ink, although still to today, signatures and other more important documents are preferred to be written with pen instead of pencil. Also, typewriters transformed to computers making it different being able to delete what you have written on a computer. Some writers refused to conform to technology, sticking with their typewriters through the years. The written language takes on a whole new meaning over the spoken language. When things are in writing it takes it to the next level making a conversation into a letter. Writing is different than spoken because when something is says there are expressions shown with the tone of the speaker, their facial expressions and the stress of their voice. Writing was an amazing thing but it also came with some not so good things as well such as fraud. When the telephone was first invented, many thought it was an impractical way of communication, but now it is used in the day to day life and we do not know what to do without it.  The ways people live have changed significantly because of the changes in technology with writing and the language. When computers came out with a spell-check, teachers did not want to let their students know about it out of fear that they would forget how to spell. Now everyone uses it and people can still spell even though some rely on spell check.  The point of this article was to let his audience, students of all ages learning about writing, the way that technology has changed writing and the way we write today. It gives students a perspective of where writing comes from and a new appreciation for it.   

Comparing Writing Processes

My writing process differs from my partner in just a few ways, but in many ways they are similar.  My writing process is different because I usually do not take the time to brainstorm ideas unlike Sarah. I go right into the outline if I even make one. Sarah takes the time to brainstorm ideas and then take those ideas to form a good outline of her ideas to make different paragraphs that flow and go together well. Also, Sarah writes better with pen and paper and then types it looking for grammar and spelling errors while I like to write by typing on the computer and waiting for the little squiggly line to appear underneath within seconds. For me it is more of a preference than anything, I do not see a difference in my writing whether it is typed or written first. Pretty much everything else is very similar for both of us.  I believe it is this way because we both absolutely hate writing.  When it comes to writing we both have to be in the mood. If we are not in the right mood, nothing will get done.  This is part of the reason why we procrastinate and wait until the last minute to write and finish the paper.  I know sometimes right when the work is assigned, I will start but then put it off until two nights before it is due.  Sarah only spends an hour on editing her paper which at times can be more than I do because I wait until the last minute to where I hardly have enough time to read over my paper before I turn it in. During the editing process, Sarah looks to change words and find better fits to help be more descriptive and have different word choice. I hardly ever go back through and look for that unless the teacher specifically states to look for that when editing.  I think every ones writing process has similarities and differences depending on how much they enjoy writing as well as their abilities with writing.