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