Blog due 3/19

The two discipline related articles I explored from Duke University and the University of Northern Carolina helped me understand what our next writing project will be about. This next writing piece will be very beneficial in learning more about our current majors and the problems that relate to our field of study. I think it’s a good assignment that will familiarize us with the current and past issues in our field before entering the workplace to prepare us with quality information to present to future employers. Not only that, but we will also gain very important and useful skills in our writing which will be used more often in higher education.

I learned some interesting information about the format of this paper. This paper will be a research paper in a form of a scholarly journal that should be taken a bit more seriously than previous papers since it will perhaps be read by a lot more educated people. Good and reliable information should be included in this paper that may incorporate past findings in the area of study, while building on old knowledge and perhaps finding new explanations to an issue. The paper must be written with strong first and last sentences in paragraphs that tell what the finding was in just one sentence rather than having the reader read the entire report to find an answer. This is especially necessary in important sections to minimize the amount of reading for other scholars or professors researching the same topic.

I also found the abstract section of the report to be very useful and different to what I have done in the past. Although it may be hard for the writer to briefly summarize everything found and talked about in the report, it is very convenient for readers to have before committing to the entire paper and coming to find that it does not have the information they were looking for. This form of writing also highly encourages students to write short and basic sentences that get to the point without worrying about having very high vocabulary. I agree with what the website says about people not wanting to read a lot due that they are lazy or busy. It may be that more educated people read these scholarly reports and thus do not have time in their busy school and work schedules to read journals that will not be relevant to their study.

I liked the methods and results sections interesting. It seems like this paper will be based on the scientific method, meaning that we will not only research the issue and cite references, but will also conduct a study to test our hypothesis. This form of writing will differ highly compared to other writing pieces since it will include tables, figures and footnotes to express my findings.

I was interested in writing a report on the field of Education, but could not find it on Duke’s list of guides. Therefore, I plan on possibly writing one in the field of Psychology.