Caballero 1

Erik Caballero
Prof. Martinez
ENGL1302
6 May 2024
Final Portfolio Reflection Essay
In the course, I learned much about academic research, proper borrowing, and ways to

produce good scholarly work. Many activists and help from the professor and assignments

helped me understand the research process and how to do everything effectively and correctly.

Class assignments and help from my professor helped me understand the research process and all

the steps needed to do adequate research, as well as make sure to ask the right questions and

collect the correct information. Learning how to review journals and other scholarly work for

information that is valid with my paper helped a lot, all thanks to my professor and class

assignments like the spreadsheets we would do to gather information and put it in the

spreadsheet to see all the information clearly and organized. Reviewing journals will help me in

any academic paper or find general information; it will be valuable. I have also gained much

knowledge about Proper citation and referencing since some assignments taught me the good and

the bad; learning this skill will be helpful in any part of my academic career, especially when

writing a paper. Not being biased is also one of the main things I learned to do since I want to get

everybody’s opinion on my paper, regardless of whether I agree with it or not. Critical thinking

and analysis were also other things I learned during this course because of the discussions in

class and with my peers and some of the assignments where we had to gather different opinions

on one matter. Critical thinking and analysis are skills I can use in any part of my life, especially

when writing papers. Overall, all the skills learned and practiced in this course will help me
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beyond this course itself, and I will be able to use these skills in any work I will have later and

even in life situations.

I learned a lot about the writing process in this course and gained new skills to

communicate and express strange ideas quickly and effectively. This was all thanks to

assignments I have done in class, and now I have an excellent approach to writing any academic

paper. Organization and understanding are some of the things I learned about writing in this

course through assignments with spreadsheets since I was able to lay out information and come

up with a clear thesis statement since that was one of the assignments in the class and outlines as

well as just overall organizing ideas correctly. Arguing with evidence was also one of the things I

learned in this course from assignments that required me to break down their information, make

arguments against the information they presented, and be able to support my opinion.

Understanding an argument and creating your argument is very helpful both in schoolwork and

other life scenarios, so learning this during the lectures will help me out in any scenario.

Revising and editing are also things I learned in the writing process, and doing peer review

assignments in class has helped me a lot. Seeing my mistakes and assisting others to fix them

helped me realize how vital revising and editing are in the writing process to correct any errors.

With revising and editing, I was able to make sure the paper was clear and high-quality. Revising

and editing are essential for having a good proper and ensuring you submit the highest quality of

work you can. Citation and referencing are also crucial parts that I learned how to perfect over

time in my course with the help of my professor. The activities we had in class that were meant

to practice citing and referencing came in handy when it came to doing it in my essays. By

learning how to cite sources in my paper correctly, I will be able to put more information into my

essay without being at risk of plagiarism. Learning this in class and knowing how to cite things,
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in general, is crucial to writing since you can add things to your paper without plagiarizing.

Knowing who your audience is also one of the things I learned while in class since different

audiences require different forms of writing an essay, and I got to practice this in assignments

and my first drafts. I learned a lot in this course, and it helped me strengthen my understanding

of the writing process. I could practice the skills I previously learned in my English course, like

thinking of arguments and breaking down information. Since taking this course taught me so

much, I have felt more confident writing papers in my academic career.

One of the things I changed in my final draft because of feedback from the professor was

the complete layout since I did it wrong the first time, which caused me to get a bad grade.

Another thing I changed was the information I had in my paper since I needed to reduce

everything and put in some new information. But it was a good learning experience, so I know

what to do now and can correct my paper correctly. I fixed my writing to make my paper idea

more straightforward. One of the things I focused on while writing my essay was adding

evidence, like quotes, to support my argument and connect it to my central argument. I was able

to learn this from feedback from my peers and my professor and in-class assignments. I learned

how important it is to show evidence and explain why it is crucial to the paper. I paid more

attention to the flow of my paper thanks to feedback from my professor and my peers to make

sure it flowed correctly, and if it did not, they could give me their opinion of what I should do to

change it and have it flow better. The flow of a paper is crucial to having the best paper possible.

I learned how important the flow of a paper was in the class since the professor recommended

that my peers and I go back and read the paper to make sure it flows and makes sense when

reading it. In the end, all of these things I learned about revising allowed me to put feedback into

my paper that my professor and peers gave me to ensure I made the best paper I could.
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The most challenging aspect of revising the research genre assignment one last time was

figuring out what feedback I should put in my paper and what I should keep, like how I put it.

Feedback from my peers and instructor is always helpful when making my paper better, but

sometimes, it may be less useful since it will get in the way of my idea and how I want the paper

to be formatted. Making sure the feedback gets implemented into my paper effectively but is still

formatted the way I wanted and with my ideas is crucial. Another challenging thing was the fact

that I needed to do my whole paper all over again since the first time the format was not correct

and thankfully, I had help from some of my friends whenever I needed to ask questions about the

format or what goes where and stuff like that they were able to show me and help me out my

professor was also helpful in getting to know the proper format since he was able to tell me what

to do and what I don’t need in my paper. The least challenging aspect was getting the

information to do the paper since all the questions I needed to answer in my paragraph for each

source were already written down. I just needed to answer the questions in paragraph form.

To communicate course concepts like academic research and the writing process to a

general audience, I made everything nicely organized and straightforward so that I could

understand what you're reading and what parts of the website are. I added clear definitions of the

work I provided and examples for anything that might need clarification for the reader who has

yet to learn what I am talking about. I provided step-by-step guidance on the website so the

readers could find what they were looking for without getting confused or struggling to find a

specific part of the website. I also learned how to approach each genre or task and made outlines

for each part of the paper so the reader could know precisely what was happening. I also added

some visual aids to make the website look more appealing and not just boring to see and read.

Overall, I said many things to my website to make it more exciting and not so plain, and I also
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added stuff in there to help the reader not get confused but be able to read and understand what I

am talking about and what is going on. One of the ways I did this was by adding headings to

each part of my website and an explanation of the heading. Another way I did this was by adding

visuals so the reader could pay attention to it and be interested.

Some of the most challenging aspects of this course were going through research

constantly and the writing process that I barely knew about initially, even though I did get better

towards the end of the course. Managing time to read and do the whole writing process was also

tricky on the entire course since it wasn’t that difficult, but it was a lot that made it hard; keeping

focus the whole time was also difficult since I could only talk about a particular subject for so

long before I get bored and it gets repetitive so than I would run out of stuff to say that I haven’t

said before. Time management was a difficult thing I dealt with in the entirety of this course, and

I tried to manage my time with other college work and when doing research. I needed to find

what to read, write, and revise work since there were always many things to do, like creating the

first draft, the final draft, the reflection, then the spreadsheet, and knowing what to put on the

spreadsheet. It didn’t help that sometimes I didn’t even know the format and just needed to write

an essay the way I thought was correct since it wasn’t explained correctly in class. Dealing with

difficult essays and how to format them was also a personal struggle since, half the time, I had no

idea how to format something correctly, and I was doing what I thought was right. I also had

difficulty creating a thesis statement that I wasn’t sure was correct, and I wasn’t sure what to put

on it. Maintaining focus was another difficult thing I needed to deal with in this course since

everything kept getting repetitive and boring toward the end. I had already talked about

everything that had to do with my topic and had nothing else to say, so I just needed to keep

dragging the same thing on and on. But after everything and all these challenges the course gave
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me, it also gave me more skills and knowledge about writing essays than before, and it also

taught me patience.

Some of the least challenging aspects of this course were the research process itself since

all I needed to do was do literature reviews, gather information from my peer's reviews on my

paper, and change things about it. Making arguments that are valid from sources was also very

easy for me to do and come up with. Critical thinking was also something I found manageable in

the course. I had to find different things to discuss in several ways to keep my paper long enough

to analyze various pieces of information and break It down into smaller parts. I learned I was

good at effectively communicating difficult ideas through writing. I learned I was good at this

when working on the first draft of research papers, literature reviews, or annotated

bibliographies.

Yes, this course has prepared me to become a part of the academic research community

by giving me the proper skills, knowledge, and tools to be a part of the community. I learned

research skills about how to do literature reviews and what to look for when researching a topic,

especially after writing about a topic. I became a better writer through the assignments of

practicing my writing skills and learning more about how to write an essay correctly. Critical

thinking and tantalizing are other things I learned to do better in this course, and some of the

assignments had me finding different ways to get better at them. Collaborating and teamwork

skills were a big thing I learned in this course since I had peer reviews and group conferences

with my classmates, and we would need to read each other's stuff and give constructive criticism

to one another; all of these things I learned were very helpful. Overall, I learned a lot in this
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course and will keep all these things I learned with me for the rest of my academic career and

professional life.