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Carolina Ortegon

Oscar E. Martinez II

ENGL 1302-217

09 March 2024

Understanding the Business Industry: A Reflection Essay

In this second writing assignment, the thing that I learned about academic research is that

to fully understand something I need to deeply analyze the information that I’m being presented.

For example, when I first chose the articles that I used in my essay, I remember that I only

scanned the texts and selected the ones that looked similar and had a similar idea overall. Then, I

had to sit down for a while and concentrate on reading them to be able to fully grasp what they

were talking about. Also, what I learned about academic research that can be applied in other

courses is the process of first thinking about what I want to write about, then finding reliable

sources that talk about the same topic then starting to write down ideas and draft my essay to

finally have a completed essay and just having to edit and make sure I have few to no grammar

errors.

In the process of writing the annotated bibliography, I learned that it is essential to fully

describe what I’m talking about to properly get my point across. This process of creating

explanations that are rich in detail and evidence to correctly explain my topic was applied to the

process of writing my literature review. For example, thanks to my process of writing the

annotated bibliography, I knew how to easily write my research analysis by already being

familiar with the task of using quotes to support the claims being made and to clearly explain

what they meant. The only thing I noticed was different was the aim of the paper, meaning that
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my annotated bibliography was meant to be a list of my sources having descriptions explaining

how the authors got their point across, and in my literature review I had to find similarities,

problems and make connections between them.

The creation of my literature review essay helped me in my research by educating me on

the topic I will be arguing about in the future. For example, it helped me by making me read the

articles and then use them to create a text full of different perspectives with the same conclusion

in mind which allowed me to be more educated on the topic and be familiar with it to be ready

for the next essay assignment. The creation of this literature review essay helped me in my

writing by learning how to create a synthesis as well as having to edit and rewrite my text until I

had the best draft. For example, when I received feedback that I had to rewrite my phrases to

make them clearer. This literature review essay will help me approach research and writing tasks

in the future by making it easier for me to know how to get to the point where I already know

how to find sources, to know how to read them, and to be able to use them to create a synthesis.

The process of conferencing with my instructor and receiving feedback helped me

improve my literature review essay because it made me realize that the were mistakes that I

couldn’t see as well as helping me to know how to rewrite paragraphs and phrases to make them

clear and understandable. One mistake that I repeatedly made was not being specific and detailed

when making explanations, for example, my instructor told me to change the language that I was

using from “… (Martinez and Alvarez 1). Also…Lee, J.Y., Ha, Y.J., Wei, Y. and Sarala,

R.M….).” to “Lee et. al. align with Martinez et. al. on this stance given how they report that_”,

which essentially makes it shorter and more straightforward. Another example would be when I

rewrite a paragraph that I ended with “Therefore… (Lee et al. 512)”, given that my instructor

told me it would be better to end a paragraph with my own words instead of a quote.
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The process of peer reviewing with a classmate helped me improve my literature review

essay because it confirmed my mistakes. A change that I made based on my peer’s feedback was

improving my topic sentences, for example, I changed “The company’s performance could be

affected positively and negatively by its CEO” To “Additionally, it is important to note the

impact of a CEO on a company can be related to different aspects of personality. Lee et

al…which all could affect the company either positively or negatively”, making this change

allowed me to introduce the topic that was going to be talked about on the whole paragraph and

not just that, I didn’t have to remove information I just replaced it to make it clearer.Also, I

didn’t make more changes based on my peer’s feedback because they were changes that I was

aware of and I had already planned on changing and it helped me to know that I hadn’t made

new mistakes.

The most challenging aspect of this writing assignment was not understanding what I had

to do at first. To be honest, I understood until my last draft, but I think that was because I was

busy with other assignments. The whole process of being confused helped me because it forced

me to ask questions and deeply analyze the assignment prompt and the student examples posted

on Blackboard. The least challenging aspect of this writing assignment was the structure, I didn’t

follow the recommendations I got on how to structure it, I remember it was something like

introducing the topic and then placing quotes together, and then explaining them at the bottom. I

don’t like this method because I think it can get a little messy and the reader can lose track of

what is being talked about. The way I did it was by introducing my topic and then placing one

quote and explaining it and so on, this way I could connect them and make everything smoother,

easy to read and at the same time make sure my connections were in order.