When it comes to college you have many decisions to make, what school do I go to, what do I want to study, how am I going to pay for it. After those decisions are made you would think that good I don’t have too many more tough decisions to make, and then research papers. You think that this shouldn’t be too bad you know the information fairly well just need supporting facts. You throw a few searches into Google and each time Wikipedia is the first response back. You think to yourself, they came up first the information looks right and it is accurate to your knowledge so I will use it and site it no problem. Well this brings to my first discussion of pros and cons of using Wikipedia as a citation for college papers.
Wikipedia was launched on 15 January 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, the site was designed to complement Nupedia, an online encyclopedia designed to be edited by experts (this information was sited from Wikipedia due to the lack of information available on Nupedia). This sounds like it would be a good source then if it is complementing information from a site that is edited only by experts, unfortunately if you tried to go to Nupedia.com you will be meet by a slow connection or a timeout. I was able to get to the site once and was not meet with limited information, so Wikipedia took over and began to grow. I will tell you there are good things about Wikipedia, it is a great site to get an understanding of information, some instructors may advise their students to read entries for scientific concepts on Wikipedia as a way to begin understanding those concepts (Harvard College Writing Program, 2014). After some of my research most sites do encourage Wikipedia as a starting point but to be careful due to the fac...
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...ferent writing modes from thesis statements, resumes, to flyers and many more. It is almost a one stop shop for all your writing needs. This center also has your resources for research, citations and plagiarism.
As you can see there are many things available for you to look at and use to allow you to be able to succeed at Kaplan University. I am very thankful for the writing center because I am not an avid reader or writer I tend to find quick articles on how something works then going in for the hands on. Since I have started school I have started to read more but not as much as I would like and I know it will help me in my writing but it is a work in progress. The webinars are also going to very useful to my education. They help get the open discussion verse reading something that someone says it should be, allowing different points of views and explanations.
Discovering Dave was about a slave in the 1800s with an unbelievable gift. The story tells about a Dave Drake a slave who used he’s skill as a craftsman to create beautiful pots. Dave was a great craftsman he created many pots and poetry during his time. This documentary tells Dave’s story how he left his mark on history.
Sean Kamperman the author of “The Wikipedia Game: Boring, Pointless, or Neither” believes that wikipedia can be helpful with educational learning purposes. Wikipedia is known for plagiarism and fake information. People make Wikipedia have a bad reputation in schools especially in english classes. Wikipedia can be a source of entertainment and self improvement for some people. Some people might just research stuff on Wikipedia to find interesting articles. In “Wikihunt” many Wikipedia users have “discovered” a game of their own, this involves creativity so it brings out the creative qualities of people. Wikipedia is a educational game and it's also free it's convenient for people. The game “Wikihunt” involves two people in separate computers
The Wikipedia Collective. (2010, February 22). Mark Morris. Retrieved February 28, 2010, from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Morris
Other than learning how to argue (my boyfriend loves my new ability) I learned how to source my research using MLA format. This new skill is tremendously important in college because most professors, if not all, require their papers to be submitted using MLA format. Throughout my upcoming years at Valencia and then The University of Central Florida I will find writing papers significantly easier because sourcing will be practically second nature. In class we were taught how to use the in-text reference throughout our papers, build our own citation and how to set up our work cited page. Although in high school we used the MLA format for papers, prior to taking this class I hadn’t noticed how many small details go into the actual citation, the authors name is last name then first name, the commas must be in the proper place, page numbers etc. In some classes you “learn” how to do things however it is only stored in short term memory because you don’t consider it an important attribute or useful for future classes. Personally, I made sure I knew how to do MLA, every aspect of it, I reviewed the rules, did my assignments, and then reviewed my assignments in order to store this new skill in long term memory. By doing this I have successfully transferred the information to long term memory and made it into a skill.
In the heart-rending novel, A Child Called “It” author Dave Pelzer tells the horrendous abuse his own mother made him suffer through at the young ages of four to twelve years old. This story is officially considered non-fiction, an autobiography and a memoir. Before being rescued in 1973, Pelzer lived in Daly City, California with his parents, Stephen Joseph and Catherine Roerva, and his brothers; Richard, Robert, Steven, and Kenneth. In the younger years of his life, his mother was a caring, loving woman who treated him as a real person, and absolutely adored her family, until one day Pelzer remembers she suddenly became monstrous towards only one family member, which was, himself. She would find any reason to punish Dave and not her other children. Although Pelzer’s mother,
As Wikipedia has become more and more popular with students, some professors have become increasingly concerned about the online, reader-produced encyclopedia. While plenty of professors have complained about the lack of accuracy or completeness of entries, and some have discouraged or tried to bar students from using it.
After all, learning citation properly is far more than learning a set of rules, a style, the correct placement of commas and capital letters. Learning citation is first and foremost learning how a discipline creates and disseminates knowledge. It is subtle, takes many years to master, and is the mark of a professional.
I now understand how to format a paper and the importance of an outline. English 111 has helped me see the difference in the quality of papers I wrote in high school compared to the quality paper expected in college. When writing my Argumentative Essay I put much more effort into my outline than I did for any other paper in this class. Writing an outline improved my paper in ways I did not take advantage of on earlier assignments. Before this class I never spent time on an outline and considered outlines a waste of time. I now see how helpful an outline can be and plan to use one for papers going forward. The skill area I most improved on from our midterm project has been citations. I have utilized the “Cite It” link from the James Library for MLA style on both of my final papers for this class. The guide provided through the James Library gave many examples which helped me visually see the difference in what was expected. By using this resource I not only improved on MLA format for our class, but also improved upon the APA format for my Sociology
I use three scholarly articles for my essay in which I cited per MLA guidelines and created a separate Works Cited page that includes all the sources I used. In addition to citing and quoting direct lines I used from the story and articles, I appropriately cited general ideas in my essay that were not a direct quote but came from the story. I not only use two scholarly articles that I analyzed to support my claims throughout the essay, I challenge the main idea in another scholarly article that the death of the narrator’s daughter is what brings the brothers together. Arguing that Sonny’s drug addiction, not the death of Grace, is what brought the brothers back
Throughout this semester I have written several essays and journals using techniques both important and unfamiliar to me. This class helped me use these techniques and steps that are involved in creating and formalizing an essay. The writing process of an essay includes information gathering, creating ideas, and writing it on paper to create a cohesive and organized paper. In complete certainty I can say I lack many of the skills necessary to create such a paper, but during this course I have learned some writing methods which I believe have improved my essays. The essays and journals in this portfolio reveal both my strengths and weaknesses in my writing and how I have both continued to make the same errors and improved in other areas.
Steven Pinker states that “search engines lower our intelligence, encouraging us to skim on the surface of knowledge …” (1). Many students are not reading their assigned books anymore. Sparknotes and other web sites such as Shmoop have provided students with resources which are not useful. Students’ skim through these sites to read books. Most of the websites gives students’ plot summaries which are from another person’s take on that book .This damages the student 's’ chances of actually reading and understanding a book and having their own opinion .The
The short story “The Man Who Was Almost a Man” by Richard Wright, has many important aspects that can be observed. Richard Wright expresses, the importance of knowing one’s identity. Seventeen year old Dave refers to himself as “almost a man”; he thinks that if he buys a gun everyone in town will also see him as a man (Wright 366). In the story, the focus is placed on Dave, the main character, he struggles to discover who he is and his life’s purpose. Dave seeks to find himself through the relationship with his family and racialcultural criticism he faces in his hometown.
writing and improving poor writing skills within a business. The college informed me that it offers
Throughout high school I dealt with MLA format which I never truly understood because it was not emphasized on. Now that I am in college, however, it is a completely different story. I’m not going to say that I struggled immensely with APA format, but it did take some getting used to. Instead of freewriting where formats are thrown out the window for idea creation, I had to stick with set rules on how a paper should look and how information should be organized and presented. After a few papers with the grand finale of the “research supported cause/effect essay,” citing sources and notating references seemed much easier. Being able to use different techniques to cite sources will allow my future papers to flow and allow the reader to not be bored to death. Referencing sources properly will keep my papers from being flagged as plagiarized and authors will get their due credit because I know I would not like my work to be claimed as someone else’s. With all of the writing in the future I will need to do for college and my business writing, Writing 101 has ensured a bright start for all of
Whether you are a student, a researcher, a businessman or a management trainee, your work will keep putting your writing skills to test. Writing is considered unavoidable in any field that you can think of. If you possess this skill up to an appropriate extent, it is extremely beneficial for you. Or if you find yourself weak when it comes to writing reports, essays or term papers, your weakness can be eliminated to a great extent using proper writing tools available for the struggling writers. Not only immature writers bag advantage of such tools but even expert writers and authors are very much attracted to these tools as these tools allow them to enhance their writing skills at any level.