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Reflective Mini Essay Assignment

The primary purpose of an annotated bibliography is to provide a summary of the most significant concerns, debates, and studies about a specific subject area, find possible differences in the interpretations and theoretical views offered on that subject, as well as criticisms of the more prevalent viewpoints, and find the links between all of the different sources of information. This reflective mini-essay paper will discuss two skills mentioned in the paper 3 instructions, explain how learning or improving on these skills will help to strengthen my college writing skills and post a question that I hope will be answered as we work our way through the unit 3. Also, this paper will discuss if I have ever completed an annotated bibliography for a high school writing course and state the importance of completing an annotated bibliography as a step in the writing process. Lastly, the paper will address different aspects of these assignments that I feel will be more challenging as we work our way through the writing process.

Some of the skills students must practice are synthesizing sources and avoiding plagiarism. Synthesizing sources means combining different sources to form a cohesive whole. By learning and improving my skills in synthesizing sources, I will be able to strengthen my college writing skills since I will be able to combine various sources, look for areas where these sources agree or differ then draw a broader conclusion about the topic I am writing about based on what the sources say. Also, this skill will help to improve my writing skills by helping me provide a visual representation of critical points that highlights where the ideas of different authors overlap. Besides, through improving on synthesizing resources, I will be able to improve my writing skills by integrating and tracking various resources, thus making better conclusions about a subject. Also, I will be able to demonstrate an understanding of information and knowledge, as well as my ability to link concepts and develop an argument. In addition, learning and improving how to avoid plagiarism will strengthen my writing skills by helping me do my work, establish my voice, and do my research carefully to avoid copy-pasting other people’s work. How does plagiarism affect academic writing?

In the past, I gained the experience of completing an annotated bibliography while in high school through the high school writing course. In high school, I learned that an annotated bibliography is a list of references on a specific subject followed by a summary or analysis of each listed work. In addition, I realized that the standard length of an annotation is always a single paragraph, but the instructor might require more. What seems essential or significant about completing an annotated bibliography as a step in the writing process for paper 3 is that writing an annotated bibliography might assist you in gaining a better understanding of different points of view surrounding your subject matter. By reading and reacting to a range of sources on a subject, you will start to realize what the problems are and what others disagree about, and you will then be able to build your perspective on the matter. In addition, by completing an annotated bibliography, you make an effort to investigate the topic more critically so that you may gather information for your annotation, which helps you to have a greater understanding of the topic and sources, thus being able to create your thesis.

As we work through the writing process, I feel that several aspects of this assignment will be challenging. First, I believe that finding and responding to reliable sources will be the most challenging aspect since when it comes to the information that can be obtained on the internet, there is no quality assurance, and anybody may publish anything they want. In addition, I believe that avoiding plagiarism will be another aspect that will provide a challenge because when we paraphrase certain materials, we may end up altering the meaning of what they were initially intended to convey. In addition, even if we prevent plagiarism by crediting our sources, the passages we surround in quotation marks always seem to be plagiarized when we check for plagiarism using Turnitin.