My research topic was finding ways to improve the quality of American education which I had initially thought about this research question prior to the essay because it was a similar topic for my last essay and I wanted to dwell even further into it. I felt that this was an important social issue because I feel like there are a lot of things wrong with the quality of the education system. I didn’t find any trouble finding information for my media sources since most of the groundwork was laid out there for me in my first essay. However, I did have to search for some scholarly articles which were a little tedious because I found a lot of scholarly articles relating to my issue, but I had to dissect which was the most effective for my essay. The problems I encountered when analyzing my text were trying to figure out which quotes I should use because there were a lot of good points in my articles and I had to scrutinize which was the best quote for me to analyze. Most of the negative feedback I had received in my essay was the quotes I used were not effective since my evidence was unclear in how it led up to my analysis and didn’t line up so I had to find a different quote to fit my analysis. Furthermore, I needed to organize the information from sources relating to my research question. The role of my intended audience played an important role since educators were the intended audience for my question and I wanted to write this essay to show them various ways on how they can improve the educational quality. This process has influenced my writing because it has helped me increase my researching abilities which can be utilized in the future. Also, it showed me that quotes are very important in writing an essay because it leads up to a good analysis. A bad quote can be detrimental to my essay because it can make my analysis look unclear so I need to be more careful in choosing my quotes. In order to be an effective writer, I must present valuable research information about my topic and choose effective quotes regarding my issue.

My topic is about depression for college students in the United States. When I was creating my research question, I faced some troubles, and my topic was vague. At first, I was thinking about a lot of things, and I came up with a lot of ideas when I was trying to figure out my research question. My mind was vague, and I did not know what I am going to write about. However, I took some time to figure it out by writing all my ideas on a piece of paper and connect them all into a single one, which has helped me a lot. Especially with the technique of what professor Shamecca provided, she has helped me a lot by giving feedback and some pieces of advice to me to make my research question more focused.

After that, I also get troubled searching for data to support my research paper because most of the results that came out might talk about something else that doesn’t relate to my particular query, especially for the scholarly sources that didn’t always come out what I was trying to look for, which took me a lot of time to find it out and look for the ones that really support my paper. It took me even more time while I analyzed the text because some of my resources came from long papers, which
I had to spend a lot of time reading it and seeking out some pieces of evidence to support my argument. Professor Shamecca, however, has also offered a lot of help by offering some suitable ways to find out whether the paper links to our topic by asking us to read the abstract, introduction, and conclusion first, which has really helped a lot to minimize our time.

My intended audience was to help college students and educators from higher education institutions to help students overcome the problem of depression by offering some guidance to reduce their difficulty and alleviate the risk factor of anxiety.

I think the experience of initially having some challenges and difficulties when writing our research paper has helped me a lot with my writing skills because it has taught me to look for appropriate resources when planning to look for information that supports my subject, but it has also helped me a lot to organize my paper in a better way.

When creating my research question, I had a variety of ideas I wanted to address. My topic was on foster homes and the relation between the conditions and the outcomes it had on their kids. However, it was difficult to word the perfect research question but with the feedback I received, I was provided with a better refined version of the original research question I had created.

As for the research itself, I wanted to find sources that discussed the behavioral impact foster homes had on foster kids, in addition to, the conditions they were placed under and their experiences. Despite that, there is a significant amount of information that discussed the mental state of these kids but as for the harsh conditions and assault they underwent, there weren’t many articles on it. Most sources only discussed the effect their biological parents had and the responsibilities they were given. To solve this issue, I had to conduct many hours of research. I also had to take into consideration how I worded the information I was trying to look up. Once I gathered my sources, the main issue that came with analyzing the text was figuring out which pieces of information were necessary enough to include in my essay. Especially scholarly sources, which provided pages and pages of information, it was hard to concentrate on which part of the text would be important to use in the research essay. The way I approached this obstacle, is by picking out pieces of text while I read and adding it onto a separate page, so that when I began to write my essay I would look back at the quotes I gathered and decide which would be useful.

My intended audience were social workers, the Department of Child Protective Services or Human Services. The structure of my essay served as a timeline, it began with the conditions kids faced, to the impact it had on their behavior, to the outcome once they aged out of the system. The purpose of this is to address to these individuals the influence these foster home conditions have in order to spark change.

When writing, it’s important to have an understanding on what you want to discuss and why. I think a problem I have is that I rush my writing in order to finish rather than to get my message out and that is something I need to work on if I want to be an effective writer.