Week Five Summary

During Week Five we talked during class about a literature review and the definition for it. Literature Review   discusses available information in a specific subject area,  can be just a summary of the sources like the genre analysis we just did for class. A literature review can be just a  summary of the sources, but it usually has an organizational pattern and combines both summary and synthesis. In addition the e-book mentioned that literature review keep professionals current in their field.

Depending on the situation, the literature review may evaluate the sources and advise the reader on the most pertinent or relevant data and like mentioned earlier, can keep professionals up to date with their topic.For what I understand by reading the e-book is that the main focus of an academic research paper is to develop a new argument, and a research paper will contain a literature review as one of its parts.

In the other hand, on a research paper, we use the literature as a foundation and as support for a new ideas that we can contribute and add to the paper. The focus of a literature review, however, is to give an idea, summarize and synthesize the arguments and ideas of others without adding new contributions.

For what I understand by the e-book reading, research questions are part of the literature review and are required  and should be answered in different ways  without drawing conclusions or bias. The questions should be focus on a topic that is interesting to us.Research questions are important for witting a literature review because research questions help writers focus their research by providing a path through the research and writing process.

Summary of: "More Than Just Error Correction"

This week reading assignment was “More Than Just Error Correction” which is about several studies performed among students and teachers to find out if the students benefited from the teachers comments on their papers. Several persons contributed to the study two of them that cough my attention was Hayes and Flower’s  who  find out what they called sub processes: one was  reading to detect error and to evaluate and the second sub process was editing to make changes. I found that very interesting because until now, I didn’t see it like that while making corrections to my paper or revising someone else paper, I was under the impression that it was the same thing. That process is going to help me so much now that I’m writing my draft, I will use that method and look for errors only and put marks where I thing needs to be corrected, then reread a second time and make all the corrections.

Another person that contributed to the study was  Sommers who also made comments similar to Hayes and Flower’s , he talked about  editing which is used  to correct errors and inaccuracies, and also mentioned rewriting, which involves transformation, addition, or deletion. One more fact that caught my attention was when the authors Debra Myhill and Susan Jones mentioned that “students believed they benefited more as learners when the teacher underlined errors, rather than when the teacher wrote in the correction”. I agree with the statement because in my case, I would like to see my error so I can learn from it and not just see the correction.  Overall, this reading assignment contains useful information that is going to help me on my writing process and I would definitely recommend other students to read before they start to write a major assignment. 

Responding to a Student Writing

After reading “Responding to Student Writing” I realized that many other students are in the same position as I’m after writing a draft for an essay due  for class. I have been afraid that , to begin with, my paper is that the instructor had asked me to do and hoping that he or she can understand what I’m trying to say when reading my paper.  I understand that as an instructor they need to make comments en every single paper that us, the students give them, but how do we know if they have been fair,  and grade all the drafts the same way or  we are lucky if our paper is one of the first ones graded because the last papers get the most comments, just saying.

I do agree with Mrs. Sommeners when she mentioned that when we receive comments in our draft and is asking to do this or that and to elaborate or expand more on certain topic, after reading all these comments then the focus of the paper changes; then as a student that want to have a good grade go and try to follow step by step in what the instructor want us to do instead of being our paper with our ideas, then now is going to be with the ideas of what the instructor want the paper to be.

My Interest on Immigration

Week Two

                  Vs                                                   

I Choose two Genres to compare

Genre 1: Video from The New York Times: Obama Remarks on      Immigration Reform 

 click here for video

Genre 2: Article from The New York Times: Now We’re Talking

click here for Article

I chose these two genres because Immigration is a topic that I’m interested in because we live in the border town of El Paso. El Paso serves as an entrance point for immigrants to come into the United States, so the issue of immigration affects the city I live in directly. 

Both genres contain information on how immigrants in the United States will be affected and with many living here I found them both important. The video explains more in detail about the immigration reform that president Obama is planning to perform in the near future. He gives several detailed points on how he wants to implement his plan in his speech that was given in front of a national audience. 

The newspaper article also has a detailed information on how senators from both major political parties have come together to assist in the immigration reform. The article was printed in The New York Times which is a nationally read source of information. The article was written prior to the speech and it explained a brief history on the issue and its controversies, raised a lot of questions, and contained different opinions and view points.