Core Value I. My work demonstrates that I used a variety of social and interactive practices that involve recursive stages of exploration, discovery, conceptualization, and development.
It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to write about for my research paper. While in class, I wrote down so many ideas such as writing a paper on how sitting in front of a TV for a long period of time affects teenagers’ brains, or how the killing in Newark, NJ had increased over the years. I thought most about the problems that we face today in the world, and it seems that the most common problem we currently face is police brutality. I noticed that police brutality is a a wide concept, so I decided to focus on one group — African Americans. I found my sources by using the Google Scholar search engine to make sure all of my research was fact-based. I achieved this goal by making sure all my sources came from a reliable website and made sure I properly informed people about the topic I researched.
Core Value II. My work demonstrates that I placed texts into conversation with one another to create meaning by synthesizing ideas from various discourse communities.
I achieved this goal by making sure the evidence proved the point that I discussed in my paper. When finding articles on the web for my research, I made sure they came from a reliable source that others could also review. I gathered many articles before I even started applying them to my paper. I picked what article to use by finding evidence that fit in each paragraph and examples that I could use. I had to narrow my search by actually writing a question inside of the google web page because if I was just to write “police shooting in 2016,” I would get too many results. So, to help get articles more fitting to my topic, I would search for articles by putting “police shooting of African Americans in 2016 statics.”
Core Value III. My work demonstrates that I rhetorically analyzed the purpose, audience, and contexts of my own writing and other texts and visual arguments.
In my research paper, I started off not achieving this goal because I actually didn’t have a purpose for this paper. I knew there were many things that I could talk about, but I just didn’t know which one I should choose to discuss. As I began writing, I started to achieve this goal by creating a thesis, which in other words is an argument for my paper. My purpose for my paper changed from just how law enforcement killings have increased dramatically to how law enforcement killings among African Americans had increased over the years. I decided to chose African American as the group I would discuss because they are the most common group that stays in the media when it comes to this situation.
Core Value IV: My work demonstrates that I have met the expectations of academic writing by locating, evaluating, and incorporating illustrations and evidence to support my own ideas and interpretations.
In order for me to meet this goal, I had to make sure that I had a thesis to help start with writing my paper. With a thesis, I was able to accomplish what evidence I would include in order for it to support my overall thesis of my research paper. While conducting research for my topic, I had to make sure that the evidence was actually useful and insightful for what I wanted to educate my readers about. Based on the research I did, I found many articles that stated facts. At first, I used a article that wasn’t reliable with the statics that were stated in the article, but once I learned how to search for good articles, I found sources good statistics that made sense and would help support my thesis.
Core Value V. My work demonstrates that I respect my ethical responsibility to represent complex ideas fairly and to the sources of my information with appropriate citation.
I didn’t actually achieve this goal because I was focusing on my thesis while writing so I could make sure my point was made. I always thought that the thesis was the most important part of the paper because it was supposed to give the reader an idea of what your paper going to be about. My paper started off as an opinion paper where I was citing information. For the analysis, I was stating my opinion instead of stating why the source was connecting back to the overall question of the paper. I stated my opinion on what I actually thought about with the evidence that was stated in the paper. I changed this view because I realized that a research paper is supposed to inform people on something they may not previously know, but instead I was telling them how I felt about the topic I chose.
Rowan Counterintuitive 