While I know that addressing the audience in my writing is important, I did not understand how to make my writing clear for my readers to comprehend my points. However, at the begging of the year, learning how to address jargons, either when reading or writing was extremely useful. Even though explaining jargons is a problem that I have not yet fully addressed, it is one of the problems that I keep in mind when writing. In fact, reading research papers for assignments or to have a model to guide my writings made it possible for me to notice such a problem from a reader point of view and come with methods to address it. Besides, reading research papers and understanding the way researchers communicate their ideas, attempting to engage in an argument helped me practice the linguistic skills of these research papers naturally. I became adapted to the way researchers are expressing their findings and their interpretations of these findings.

When writing papers in this class, I tended to sink into summarizing, either because I did not have the courage to express my own ideas or that summarizing seemed easier than composing a new idea. Despite that I was concerned that I may suggest an idea about a research project that demonstrates my lack of understanding of a specific topic, I encouraged myself to introduce my thoughts. While, in order to minimize my concern, I did my best to take into account the information that I gathered during the researching process and only compose thoughts that I can support with various information and facts.

As a person who is in her first year in college, I read about the online library recourses in most of my classes’ syllabuses. However, I did not know how to use such a resource. I now know how to locate resources that I need as well as use theses recourses to locate citations and learn how to form them. Though I was not accustomed to the restricted citation policies that I encountered in this class, I believe that my citing skills, though had not developed fully because I still do not understand much of the process, had grew from knowing nothing about citing into, at least, knowing the existence of different types of citations, how to locate them and how to include them in my writing. In fact, one of the problems that caused me to revise the Scientist Profile Paper was my lack of understanding of the importance behind incorporating consistent citation method into my writing.  

Though I used to view reading research papers as an impossible task to complete, especially if you are not an expert in the field you are reading in, being exposed to multiple research papers in this class made me understand that it is difficult to understand research papers but not impossible. At first, for me to understand the point behind a research paper, I used to spend most of my time attempting to understand what is being said and what is the purpose behind what I am reading. Now I may struggle when reading a research paper. However, I am confident that I would be able to understand and find the information I need efficiently and faster than before. This, as I noticed, is not a valuable skill for me to read research papers only but also to be able to form outlines and drafts to guide my thoughts when writing a research paper.

I encountered many problems with editing during the semester, but I noticed that reading papers aloud is not enough to locate my spelling and grammars mistakes. Reading aloud while pointing at what I am reading tend to be helpful in that it makes me locate my writing mistakes faster. I realized that when reading without pointing, I tend to read the correct word even though I wrote it in the wrong way. For that reason, I started either printing my work or point at each word in my laptop when editing. Also, having someone to read my work and inform me if my writing is clear and bearable to read helped me develop and practice the skill of reconsidering the audience. Usually, when I edit a whole sentence, I do so when I realize that it’s either not contributing to my point or that it is too vague and difficult for my audience to understand. Unlike how I used to write before I started reading research papers, I learned that it is important to establish each sentence in my paper in a way where it would contribute to the point that I intend to demonstrate through my whole writing.

While doing my individual assignment contributed heavily to my overall progress, communicating my ideas with classmates lifted the heavyweight over me. Each time I would have a conversation in the workshop with my group I would be able to solve a problem that hindered my writing progress. Though when writing the scientists profile, I started with a draft paper that contained all the information I needed to write the final draft, the fact that my first draft was unorganized made it difficult for me to start writing efficiently. However, when writing a review paper and because I was able to communicate my problem and compare my drafting strategy with several classmates, I am now able to form a draft that would not just remind me of the points I want to refer to in my final paper but work as a guide that forms my whole paper.

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