Research Writing Blog

I got the idea to research the general topic of social networking sites and employers from older friends who are getting ready to graduate. After hearing them talk about what they’ve heard about the issue and what they were going to do, it sounded like something i actually wanted to learn more about. After looking through several articles and consulting with the teacher and other students, i was able to narrow down my research question to “How can social networking sites on the internet negatively effect college students’ lives after college?”. Once I had my question, there were several assignments that helped me to develop my topic into a 9 page paper. One assignment that i thought was very helpful was the blog Topic development 1-5b , becuase after that i had pretty much narrowed it down to the most important and relevant ideas that i wanted to talk about in my paper. It was important to find at least one example of a scholarly source to incorporate into the paper, and assignment 4-5 Relevant Sources Research Paper really helped with that. I also found the assignment Research Proposal to be very helpful too, because it did even more refining of information and ideas that weren’t quite there yet. I also liked that we were required to include an overview of each of the sources becuase it helped me to remember what each of them were, and it was faster and easier to find them when needed. Lastly, i thought that the Research Outline blog post was helpful in actually writing my paper once i had all my ideas becuase i just followed it like a guide and didn’t get lost or confused. I think my final essay shows a lot about my writing. I think that my best ability as a writer is transitioning paragraphs. I think that in this paper my paragraphs and ideas flow and connect from one to the next, making it easier to follow and understand. I think that it’s important for college students to be aware of the employers use of the internet and social networking sites, and i think i found a lot of good research and came up with good explinations to prove my point. However, I am not against using these sites all together, and i think that i’ve explained that too, especially in my conclusion. I ended up incorporating a lot of sources into my final draft, and i feel i did an ok job with most of them. The one source i did have difficulty with was a big one which the instructor recommended i summarize about half of it, and keep the other half the direct quote. I had a little difficulty with the works cited page, but i think after some help i got it almost right. Overall, i feel that i made all of the necessary changes recommended by the instructor and that i changed and improved my paper a good bit. I also think that i learned a lot of valuable information about research paper and sourcing. I would give my final draft about and 8.5 or a 9, i am pretty happy with how it turned out.

I’m really glad that I chose to take this english 202 class and that we used computers and the internet so much. I’m not very good with technology, and at first I was a little lost, but as the semester went on and I used this technology more and more, I learned so much about it and it became much easier. Before, i had never used a blog, communicated with a group on a wiki, or had to rely so much on electronic sources, but now i can successfully do all of that. All of these skills i learned were very important and will be necessary in the rest of my time in college and in my future profession of being a teacher. I found that posting blogs and being able to comment and recieve comments on my posts were very helpful in constructing my research paper, becuase it was much easier and faster than doing it with a paper and pen. The wiki was also very helpful and convenient when doing our group work becuase you could do it whenever and wherever was convenient for you; you didn’t have to worry about getting your whole group together to complete the assignment. The web site was also very helpful in this course becuase it made it easier to be organized and know what was going on. Especially since tehcnology is on the rise, I would highly recommend this course to other students at IUP. I think other students would find this class very interesting, and it would teach them even more about types of technology that could be really useful to them, and make their lives much easier.

I feel that I have done a lot of work and a lot of revising since my first draft of my paper. The first changes I made to it was paragraph transitions in the draft with transition revisions This was done before i even got my first draft back with comments. Once i recieved my first draft back with comments, i came up with a revision plan. These were the main things that i thought of (at the time) that i wanted to change on my paper. As I made those revisions i started seeing more and more that i thought needed changed. I ended up cutting out a whole paragraph which wasn’t that important and mentioning it within another related paragraph. I also ended up finding more sources during my revision, and incoroprated them into the final draft and works cited list. The main thing after that i did to help myself was to just put the paper away for a day, or a few hours, and then read it again, and i would catch a mistake or two that i skipped over the first time. I also found that the confrence was very helpful, becuase i’d almost completely revised my paper and the instructor was able to point out some things that still needed work. I think the part of my paper that improved the most was my introduction paragraph. I really like my introduction paragraph becuase I think it’s interesting, it states and important fact that is important throughout the whole paper, and i think it clearly states my research question and people would be able to understand it. The best change that i made to it was adding the sentence before the quote, instead of starting with the quote; it fits really well and makes it sound even better and more interesting i think.

When i finally came up with my research question, “How can social networking sites affect the lives of college students after graduation?”, I had a lot of questions, sources, and ideas running through my head. I think the assignment that most helped me with my topic and writing my essay was the Research Proposal assignment. There was a specific example that was given to follow, which helped me organize all of my information in a way that I knew was correct, and would be useful to me, becuase it was given by the instructor. It helped me because i was able to write out my ideas for what i was thinking and wanted to do with the paper, my ideas for what i wanted to say and do in my introduction, and list sources (which i would actually use in my final draft), and write the key points of those sources. Not only did this assignment help me learn more about my topic and find the information that was relevent and i would need to use, but it helped me write my paper becuase i could just look at it and refresh myself of ideas i may have forgotten.