Reflection In English

English has always been something that I have always struggled with. Fortunately, my courses have always been taught by amazing instructors and peers that have given me helpful constructive criticism. My experience with struggles and mistakes has always been a source for growth. The development and improvement of my writing skills has always been one of my goals. I worried that my writing skills would hit a wall and not improve by the end of the course. In the end, I was wrong, as the many projects that were done proved to be very useful. Through the many opportunities to show my writing skills in English, it became easier to learn more about my flaws as a writer and to notice the areas of my writing that have improved. Of course, this still …show more content…
It was one of the few times in which it was necessary for me to do intensive research on a subject. Along with this research, it was necessary to consider the credibility and the purpose of the authors. The project 2 assignment was my very first introduction to database resources like EBSCOhost, which was a resource that I heavily relied on for project 3. It took practice to get used to looking up articles using a combination of synonyms and key words to create search strings. The exercise and examples done in class were very helpful in understanding the process. When first starting to look for articles, I came across the issue of not being able to find what I wanted. Originally my searches would include “physician-assisted death” or “aid-in-dying.” The problem was that a lot of the articles were focused on the debate of the legality of physician-assisted death rather than my topics of finances, restrictions set in place, and the medications used. It became necessary for me to experiment with my search terms to find the right balance between specificity and results. My research strings then developed into being “(Physician-assisted death OR aid-in-dying) AND (regulations OR laws) AND California,” for example. By looking up these research strings on EBSCOhost allowed me to expand my research and get more results, that related to my …show more content…
The comments made on the draft of my annotative bibliography for project 3 had a common theme of not being specific enough. Comments on my draft included “which states?”, “what aspects?”, and “audience?”. These comments also helped reinforce the important things necessary to look at when trying to find sources. It stressed the importance of audiences and being specific in my writing. The comments got me into the habit of looking more in depth into the background of the authors. To verify the credibility of the author it was necessary to look at the author’s background, yet it was something that in the past I would not have done. Considering the credibility of an author is something simple and essential that is necessary when ever making an argument. A whole argument can be destroyed when it becomes apparent that the sources chosen were from not credible