You are on page 1of 3

Ozumba 1

Ngozi Ozumba
Professor Collins
ENGL 1302
06 May 2016
The Infinite Process of Learning
I had taken ENGL 1301 at another college and thought I knew quite a bit about
communicating through academic writing. How wrong I was. On the first day of ENGL 1302, a
diagnostic exercise was administered by the professor to gauge what prior knowledge the
students brought to the course. This exercise consisted of sentence felonies, a concept that could
mistakenly be considered as basic. Although this material cannot be fully discussed in this
reflective essay because it was not for a grade and was not returned, I can candidly report that
from that moment on, I realized that there was no such thing as basic in my new course. ENGL
1302 can be likened to opening a can of worms in my academic writing. It will definitely take
much more than 500 to 800 words to do justice to the level of inadequacy in my knowledge of
communicating through academic writing. Feedback on Drafts and finished essays,
Ratiocination, and the CRAAP Test in the Causal and Proposal Arguments ameliorated my
deficiencies in editing, research and documentation.
The feedback written on my drafts and completed work proved beneficial and enhanced
my writing immeasurably. During this class, I began to appreciate the indispensable feature of
both peer review by my course mates and expert review by the instructor. This lends credence to
the fact that two good heads are better than one. I identified and analyzed causal arguments in the
video, Know For Sure, for the second essay assignment. The video aims to educate the general
public about syphilis. Evaluation of the partial draft by a fellow student revealed lapses in

Ozumba 2
framing in the first body paragraph where it reads, Scientific research confirms that syphilis is
caused by the bacterium Treponema Pallidum, with an infected partner. I did not specify the
scientific research. I also failed to cite the video in the third body paragraph where the essay
reads, The doctor emphasizes that even without treatment, a syphilitic sore could go away,
however the causative germs remain in the body. Review of the completed rough draft by the
teacher culminated in feedback advising that I should reword the items which were flagged for
originality. The corrections were noted and rectified, and this boosted my essay.
Ratiocination, introduced by the teacher during the causal argument analysis facilitated
the efficient editing of my writing. This tool was utilized for the first time in the completed rough
draft of the second essay assignment. It is a multistep process which involves eight steps but in
consideration of the required word count, I will discuss the first three steps. The first step entails
cutting the number of Be verbs notably am, was, is, by changing to livelier verbs, combining
and re-arranging sentences. The application of this step drastically reduced the total number of
such verbs from an initial count of forty three as depicted in the uppermost left corner of the
draft. The second step involved using one color of highlighter to draw a box around the first
word of every sentence in the paper, and then making a list of these words in the margin as
shown. This was followed by changing any observed identical patterns and words by changing
nouns to pronouns or vice versa, as well as by combining and rearranging sentences. In the third
step of Ratiocination, I evaluated the sentence lengths by using one color to highlight every other
sentence, and then a different color to highlight the other sentences. The lengths were
subsequently varied. Ratiocination had a therapeutic effect in that it improved my academic
writing through relaxing exercises that resulted in effectual editing.

Ozumba 3
The CRAAP Test helped with the evaluation of sources while working on the Proposal
Argument which required a minimum of six sources. This assignment on preventing teen
pregnancy was challenging in diverse ways. Although I had researched in my previous writings, I
had never proffered a solution to a problem. The test uses various criteria to assess the research
sources for an essay. These include Currency which checks the timeliness of the information;
Relevance which examines the importance of the information; Authority which considers the
source of the information; Accuracy which analyzes the reliability, truthfulness, and correctness
of the content; and Purpose which determines the reason the information exists. Taking these
parameters into consideration enabled me choose top-ranking sources for the essay.
Giving due credit to an excellent professor who equipped me with fascinating and resultoriented tools that have boosted my academic writing in all aspects, I can confidently remark that
a firm foundation has been laid for a lifetime of effective scholarly writing. If I were to do this
again, I would strictly adhere to stipulated deadlines as well as allow a free flow of my thoughts
on paper, followed by eventual organization

You might also like