Informative Essay Reflection
Writing this informative essay was a lot harder than I thought would be. Since I am used to writing a research or argumentative essay more, this assignment became challenging because of the objective stance However I tried to overcome the struggle by utilizing some of the tools learned in lecture and by reading handouts on formatting an informative essay. In addition, brainstorming was another way I was able to come across the trouble when I narrowed down my ideas and eliminated those topics I was for sure not too informed by, or thought I would argue rather than inform. For instance, as much as I wanted to talk about lack of food resources and water in Africa, and/or caffeine addiction, I did not have too much knowledge on the subjects. So I left it out. This is when I was able to negotiate my own goals and keep in mind the audience expectations and interests. Instantly, I changed my topic to “domestic violence and homelessness” because many people do not know that, both of the issues are affected by one another. In addition, I was inspired to write about it because we often ignore homeless people on our commutes without realizing the reasons to why they are there.
Brainstorming, like mentioned before was the easier part of completing this assignment. What helped me outline and gather information was ‘dissecting’ the sample reports, like “Does Texting Affect Writing” in class where I was also able to partially achieve the course learning objective of “developing and engaging in the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes.” If I had not looked at the sample writings prior and collaboratively as a class analyzed it, writing my own piece would be impossible because there still would be confusion. Furthermore the most challenging part was incorporating the right sources into my informative paper. My greatest weakness in writing is grammar and using the correct quotes to back my points, and paraphrasing or summarizing the quotes.I believe using evidence is easier when writing subjectively but either way in this essay I had the opportunity to “strengthen practicing, evaluating, integrating, quoting, paraphrasing, summarizing, synthesizing, analyzing, and citing sources.” Everything was done all at once, for every paragraph. After outlining several times and rewriting the sentences, the process becomes easier but you are always uncertain if what you did is correct.
Besides google, I used the CCNY library database like the Academic Search Complete to strengthen my thesis and topic sentences. Moreover I tried using reliable sources like ACLU, governmental webpages (New York State Domestic Violence Hotlines) and .org websites.
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