Hello everyone! My name is Jacob Yu and I am ethnically Chinese, although I was born and raised in California. As a result, this has largely shaped the way I have spoken and wrote within all of my writing.

Since my childhood, I remember being taught how to write grammatically correct English in my education. It wasn't until middle school that I began to hear people use terminology that I hadn't encountered before in daily conversation. They started swearing and joking around with each other in ways that I hadn't heard before. I think this encounter with other modalities of English so late into my education shows how I was sheltered during my young school years and constantly used the 'standard American English' that Sánchez-Martín refers to throughout the article.

Although I do not speak another language other than English proficiently, I loved how Sánchez-Martín emphasized that "those who consider themselves 'monolingual' speakers of English also have a diverse language inventory"(272). For example, around my friends, I definitely use sociolects and idiolects that my parents would not understand. They are completely oblivious to acronyms like LOL and BTW that we usually use, which I find really funny. It really illustrates the idea that we have different vocabularies within the English language that are so foreign to supposedly native speakers.

Later in the paper, Sánchez-Mártin shows us some works by Vershawn Ashanti Young that show us the language that we often write off as 'crude' and 'ugly' just because it is not normal. However, this language is completely valid and should not be rejected just on the basis of its looks. Writing is meant to convey a message, and the way it is written can be a large factor in its impact on the reader.

After the questions that Sánchez-Martín gave us at the end of "Beyond Language Difference in Writing: Investigating Complex and Equitable Language Practices", I had to think for a little bit about how I could equitably approach language. My hope is that I can be more conscious of my bias for my type of English, and be aware that different English is not bad English. After all, if we all wrote in the same way, it would be very boring to read! I think the way we write is often unique to us, and we shouldn't have to change it for other people. However, it's also eye-opening to push your boundaries sometimes and just experiment with language you've never used before. I think we could all learn from our friends, family, and peers how to incorporate different cultural words and phrases within our writing.

Whenever I think of research, I think of a field where only the hardest working people survive, driven by the creation of innovative solutions. It is definitely a difficult discipline to pursue due to the sheer amount of people that want to contribute. Therefore, we have to ask ourselves the question: why should anyone care what we write about?

During my high school career, I composed a few research papers for my classes. I quickly found that they were mediocre, but nothing stellar. After reading a few of my peers' papers, I wondered what was lacking in my presentation of the research. I thought for a while, but wasn't able to pinpoint what I could specifically improve upon. I had done extensive research and had attempted to compose it in a coherent way to my readers. How could I improve?

Looking back, the answer to that question didn't lie in the research conducted. Rather, it stemmed from the fundamental question I was asking. A book called "The Craft of Research" highlights this perfectly by saying that "if a writer asks no specific question worth asking, he can offer no specific answer worth supporting" (Booth et al. 41). You will almost always find research to support a broad question. However, Booth says that finding the perfect question that the research generally cares about is very hard. There is a spectrum between asking a question that is too specific, irrelevant, or too broad that it's impossible to answer it in one paper. I enjoyed Booth's three-step process on page 46 to make a research question significant: name your topic, add an indirect question, and ask why your topic matters to other readers. It makes the question formulating process concrete and easy to understand. My hope is that I can incorporate his techniques in my UWP research paper and answer important questions to interest my readers.

Although I did enjoy the Booth's book about research, I did have some questions. On page 42 of "The Craft of Research," he states that we should ask speculative questions. Yet on page 44, he says we should avoid questions that have merely speculative answers. Don't speculative questions inherently have speculative answers? My feeling is that a lot of research papers have many speculative questions in their conclusion, and often spark curiosity for other researchers in the field. Shouldn't we keep these speculative questions so that primary research can be conducted on them?

Overall, I think Booth did a great job highlighting how to form a topic, question, and claim that's worth something to the reader. Forming a topic has always been a struggle for me, but I hope that the methods highlighted in the book will help me construct a question that will make people care what I write about.

Throughout my high school career, I never considered writing as an area where I would excel. I always thought that biology or math would be the only subjects I'd work hard at and ultimately find a career in. However, writing is an integral part of these subjects (as most other ones), as we often have to compose research papers or write to receive grant money. The importance of this subject has led me to adopt a growth mindset within the field and change my outlook on how I edit any paper.

At my high school, grades were the main stressor of the student population. As a result, I often received many offers from my friends to edit their paper in exchange for them editing mine. It was sort of embedded into our code; if you didn't edit their paper, it felt like a sort of betrayal. Consequently, I got a decent amount of experience editing, but didn't really think how I could improve that editing process.

When I edited people's papers, I often focused on smaller errors such as grammar mistakes or sentence structure. However, after reading Jillian Grauman's paper article called "What's That Supposed To Mean? Using Feedback On Your Writing," I realized I needed to focus on the larger structure of people's essays. Rather than focusing on minuscule details, it's much more important to ensure that a persons message gets across accurately.

I believe that learning to edit better is so important because if I practice this skill repeatedly, it will make it easier for me to decipher my peers' feedback. I really enjoyed in Grauman's paper how she grouped writing comments into three categories: judging, coaching, and reaction comments. I personally get a little discouraged when I see some judging or coaching comments, but I think I have to learn to take it in a positive way and fix the mistakes that people point out. If I never received critical feedback, then my writing would be much worse than it is right now.

I also found Grauman's five-step process on how to actually use our feedback insightful. However, I really resonated with the last two steps: ask follow-up questions and act on my own goals. Whenever I get critical advice, I always forget that it's just a suggestion and not a mandate. So, I think that I will likely take critical advice from my peers, but not if I don't think it fits with my writing. Also, sometimes people leave comments that are too vague that I want to ask about. I usually don't follow up with people because I don't want to bother them, but I think that I will try to be more proactive in seeking clarification.

Overall, I think that editing is an area that I would like to improve on, and there were many tips in this article that I will try to incorporate. Categorizing writing into sections like types of comments makes it easier to assess how each edit plays into the shape of the essay. Hopefully, this advice will help me formulate an amazing paper in the near future.

For the average college student, essays are a nightmare that they don't want to face. Especially when they have to do extensive research to compose their paper, they are often tempted to just pick the first source that pops up on google and cite it right away. However, I'm here to tell you: not so fast! Do you really want to write a great research paper? Or maybe you're not so intrinsically motivated and just want to get the A? We're here to help.

After that alluring introduction, I bet you're wondering what tips and tricks to use to find good resources. In Ellen Carillo and Alice Horning's article titled "Effectively and Efficiently Reading the Credibility of Online Sources," they outline various methods to identify credible sources of information. They highlight the umbrella term for all of these methods, called lateral reading. Ultimately, it means assessing the credibility of a source utilizing information outside of the source itself.

One of the first steps I was surprised about in the article was when they told us to look up the article and organization before actually reading the article. Essentially, we have to do the equivalent of Instagram stalking a person except for an organization instead. Figuring out certain things like who the author is associated with, what other companies the organization supports, and figuring out whether the author has a degree are all important information to detect credibility. I have usually fact-checked by using my own senses to see if the information makes sense, but there are multiple times when that has let me down. I am definitely going to experiment with this method, although I hope that I do not go into a rabbit hole.

After we do that, I found that their tips for recognizing bias within an article were also helpful. Rather than reading the article, then consulting research that they may have referenced, we should approach it in the opposite way. When we read the research first, we develop our own opinion about it and then can assess the article's bias since we have already interpreted the research for ourselves. I've never thought about secondary sources this way, so I'm eager to try this out!

I hope these tips were as fresh and exciting for you as they were for me, as I will definitely be implementing these techniques throughout my research finding. Have fun writing!

One of the major rules of writing a secondary research paper is giving credit where it is due. After all, I would be mad if someone wrote a successful article using my research without mentioning me at all. Of course, that's where citations come into play in our writing. However, often we find people being nitpicky about the smallest things like if we included the page number in our citation or if we alphabetized our works cited correctly. Although we definitely can't please everyone, we can try by taking some basic steps.

An essential part of writing is figuring out how to create a nice flow between sentences and paragraphs. We might think specifically of transition words or phrases, but these principles apply to quotations too. In Kyle Stedman's chapter called "Annoying Ways People Use Sources" in his book Writing Spaces: Readings on Writings, he talks about how we need to introduce the quote to our readers to ensure that they are not caught off guard. Stedman suggests numerous ways to ease our readers into quotes, including "signaling that a quote is about to come, stating who the quote came from, and showing how your readers should interpret it" (245). You don't need anything too fancy to introduce your quote, just a basic format that informs your reader of the upcoming information. If you need an example of how to incorporate this practice, just look at my quotation above!

Although creating a flow in your writing is important, we must also make sure to avoid mixing up our words with other people's. I believe that a lot of people make this mistake in paraphrasing because it seems clear to the writer where the paraphrasing starts, but not the reader. Stedman refers to this term as 'patchwriting,' and gives us some tricks on how to draw a clear line between our writing and the paraphrasing. He advises us to incorporate certain words or phrases that indicate where the information came from, such as 'I think that' or the author's name (253). I have struggled with this particular issue a lot, so I am definitely going to practice using these phrases in my writing more often.

Sometimes we run into people that like to pick out every single little thing we did wrong, especially with quotes and MLA formatting. Although we can't please everyone, hopefully you learned something from this article and impress some of these critics!

Have you ever had to fill out a survey for a class or maybe for your community? I bet you didn't really want to fill out when you realized that there were numerous long-response questions to answer and multiple 'are you satisfied?' types of questions. The truth is that not many people like to fill out surveys, but they are essential for gathering important information about a specific population. That's why one of our main goals in research is to make surveys that don't scare people the first time they look at it.

One of the first things that is important to understand about a survey is that people love to answer the easy questions first. In the article "8 Types of Survey Questions to Get You All the Data You Need" by Nemanja Jovancic, she illustrates some types of these questions. First, we likely will include demographic questions to assess whether the participant should be part of our study group. This is important so that we can quickly divide people into separate groups for our survey. Then, we would likely include closed-ended survey questions that include Likert scale questions and dichotomous questions. Likert scale questions are fairly common, with the user ranking how they feel about a statement. This is usually a good way to get the participant involved because it doesn't require too much thinking and allows them to relate to the survey they are taking. Lastly, you want to include open-ended questions at the end of your survey (sort of like saving them as a surprise for the end). These questions require the most effort to answer (and in my opinion, to make too) because you have to put a lot of thought into the answer. Also, your question can't be too broad so that the user could answer your question with an essay. As a result, the end of the survey is the perfect place for these questions so that the user answers all of the previous easier questions. Then, they can decide if they really want to answer the open-ended questions.

After you have figured out the general layout of your questions, the next step is to figure out how to elegantly present them! The handout called "Writing Good Survey Questions Tips & Advice" by UCSD Student and Research Information provides great insight to make your questions clear and concise. For making your questions, make sure that you avoid asking two questions in one (called 'double-barreled'). Focus on one topic so that your participant does not have conflicting opinions for their answer. I know I definitely ask a lot of these questions whenever I come up with questions in general, so this is something that I always have to keep in mind. Other tips are to not ask leading questions that introduce information that might persuade the user to answer a certain way. This is especially important because we want unbiased responses to gather accurate data. If someone reviewed a survey and found these questions, someone's whole paper could come into question.

Even though making a survey seems like just asking a bunch of questions and you're done, there is so much more to it. After seeing all of this information, it seems like there's a LOT of information to take in. However, you'll probably find that you're doing many things right when producing your survey. A good way to test out your survey on a friend, and see how they view it. Good luck writing!

Has anyone ever given you a bunch of statistics but never explained what they mean? Or how about when you solve a problem in math class and you have no idea how it applies to real life? Sometimes, data is just not that helpful without a thorough explanation. We usually deal with quantitative and qualitative data, both of which play a crucial role in presenting meaningful findings. As a researcher, it is important to interpret the data for your audience so they do not have to painstakingly put a conclusion together themselves.

First, we'll start off with how to organize close-ended questions! These are often easier to summarize than open-ended questions, and can be put into quantitative data to give the user accurate findings about the population. In Melody Denny and Lindsay Clark's chapter "How to Analyze Data in a Primary Research Study," they say "how you ask the question determines the type of data you collect"(Denny & Clark 88). For example, if you ask a yes or no question, you might divide your data into what percentage of the population voted for each answer. However, if you had a checkbox question (where participants can check multiple boxes), it might be easier for the reader to just see how many people voted for each option. We organize a lot of our data in percentages, but presenting it in a different way could actually be easier for the reader to comprehend. I never thought about considering close-ended questions this way, and I think it is a great way to diversify the results section.

We also have open-ended questions too, which tend to be trickier when summarizing. However, in "How to Analyze Data in a Primary Research Study," Denny and Clark offer a simple, yet effective solution. One of the first things they suggest is to not come up with predefined categories when grouping your data. Instead, 'code' your data first using key words and then you can come up with categories. Now what do we mean by 'coding'? The first step to coding your data is to briefly read over your data, and then come up with categories they fall into. By doing this, you won't have to worry about having categories that don't fit your data. The next step is to group your data into these categories. After you do all of that, you can analyze your data even further by summarizing each statement using key words. This really helps us pinpoint the overall emotion of the population surveyed. From this, we can usually form subcategories within the categories we initially formed!

Overall, even though data analysis may sound boring, you will not be disappointed with the results you get. Just remember that when you present your findings, you show them in an ethical, practical manner. You generally only want to draw conclusions about your population only if a majority of your data supports it. After you've done that, you can astonish the world with your results!

Are you one of those people who cannot write for their life? If someone asked you to write a 500-word essay with citations, what would you do? I don't know about you, but I would definitely panic. When I don't feel like writing, it feels like all of the good ideas are avoiding me. However, it turns out a majority of people deal with this writer's block frequently (even many avid writers). As a fellow human being and writer, I hope I can impart some wisdom to you. Just get it done.

It's always better to have something than done than nothing. This is the concept that Anne Lamott teaches us in her article "Shitty First Drafts," and it is pretty sound advice. Rather than obsessing over the tiny details and getting nothing done, she describes how we should just vomit words onto a page instead to get ideas flowing. When we do this, Lamott mentions that we may get an idea where "there was no way to get to this without first getting through the first five and a half pages" (Lamott 1). I know I have ideas that I just created in the spur of the moment, but actually turned out to be really great! Sometimes thinking too much about how to make something perfect blocks ideas that we just spontaneously think of.

After going through multiple drafts, you likely have a paper you are satisfied with. However, will your teacher be? That's one of the biggest questions to ask, and "Incorporating Sources Into Research Writing" by Germanna Community College's Academic Center For Excellence shows us how we can do that by utilizing our sources correctly. They teach us to use each of our sources for a specific purpose within our essay. If you cannot explain what point your source is trying to support, it's likely not a good source. They also go over the numerous ways we can incorporate sources into our essays, which include "summarizing, paraphrasing, and quoting" (Germanna 5). Usually, we use summarizing or paraphrasing over excessive quoting in our essays because we want to provide context for the content. One thing I thought was interesting was that we usually use more paraphrasing of "statistics, general claims, and outcomes of studies" (Germanna 8). This makes sense though, as scientific papers usually just want specific data from other research to support their new research.

Writing can be one of the most painful processes sometimes. However, sometimes you just have to tough it out and carry on. In the future, you can refine it and make it perfect. I hope this post today motivated you to go get something done, even if it's not your essay!

Hello everyone, in today's blog post, we will be talking about organization in an essay! In the chapter "Revising Your Organization and Argument," they talk about how to perfectly revise your paper. First, you want to start from the big picture by focusing on organization rather than sentence by sentence, then get down to the small details. I think this is a great way to start, and is something I could definitely improve on too. I tend to focus on smaller details rather than larger ones, which might make it difficult for the reader if all of my sections aren't organized. One of the strategies they talk about is to "circle key terms in the main point in your introduction and conclusion" and "circle those same terms in the body of your report" (Booth et. al 207). This allows us to find where our writing strays from the main idea, and where we might want to revise to ensure we stay on track. I also enjoyed the end of the chapter where they talked about how we should sometimes take a break from writing an essay. After that, we can come back to it, skim it, and summarize it. The important part here is to compare your summary to that of another person to see if the details you want in your essay are accurately represented. If the reader doesn't have the same key details, then you might need to do some editing. I hope you all enjoyed the blog post today and have a happy thanksgiving!

So you've finally finished your essay. Congratulations, but there's still some work to be done. You might ask what you could possibly do to make your essay even more perfect. After all, you did just work countless hours on this masterpiece. The last part of writing is reflecting on your work and seeing what made it so good (or what you could even improve upon still). Now it's very easy to make up your feelings during this activity, but Sandra L. Giles in her work "Reflective Writing and The Revision Process: What Were You Thinking?" advises us otherwise.

Giles started out as a non-believer in the reflection process, but learned to find the merits within it by truly focusing on what her intentions were and making a conscious effort to analyze parts of her writing. By doing this, she developed control of "a feature that distinguishes stronger from weaker writers and active from passive learners" (Giles 193). I know that sometimes I don't dig deep enough during my reflections, which can be problematic if you actually want to improve. One of my biggest problems would be that I usually identify things on the surface, such as grammar issues rather than looking at my writing in the bigger picture (organization, paragraph structure, etc.). However, even though these are still some of the first things I recognize when I am writing, I make a conscious effort to focus on parts that matter more.

The reflection process can also be utilized outside of just writing, and to improve on subjects in everyday life. Plus, the process is beneficial so that you can improve on your own without too much help from others. The example Giles gives is when she was painting her house and did a horrible job. However, upon reflection, she identified what she did wrong and focused on those aspects. These reflections also help other people help us because we can express our concerns within them. When we know what we want to talk about, that makes it easier for teachers to guide us. The alternative would be the teacher skipping over your true concerns and just talking about what they think you want to talk about.

Over these past weeks, I have truly enjoyed working on this research article project because it taught me a lot how to write professionally and academically. Even though some parts were frustrating sometimes, like finding credible sources for our annotated bibliography, it all became worth it in the end because of the finished product. Even if you have to go through a bit of pain, it'll all be worth it in the end (most of the time :D). I hope you all enjoyed reading my blog posts and I'll see you later!