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Juan Miguel Martinez
ENGL 1302; 223
Mr. Powers
10th March 2024
Reflection Essay 2
Before writing this research analysis essay, I had a pretty vague idea on what a research
analysis essay was. I originally thought that a research analysis essay was typically just gathering
information from several sources and placing them all together kind of like an annotated
bibliography. But now after completing this research analysis, I realized it not only is gathering
information, but also organizing that data, information, and facts, and organizing them so that
they all smoothly transition from one sub-topic to the next. It’s a lot of planning and
organization, a lot more than a regular annotated bibliography, but that is what also made it
exciting for me and helped me learn something new.
I learned how to identify what data or information I should use from certain texts.
Deciding which quotes you want to use is important to the process of writing an informative
essay like an annotated bibliography or a research analysis. So having the skill to identify which
texts you should use, and what quotes you should use within that text, is a very important and
useful skill to have. Before this I already had that skill well built, but writing the annotated
bibliography helped me improve that skill even further. Improving this skill now will also help
me in future papers, essays, and assignments, by being able to tell which quotes and articles are
worth my time researching and which ones are not.
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Writing research analysis essays help with my research by further improving the skill I
mentioned earlier; the skill of being able to identify good quotes and articles. Everything that I
have researched, both during the research analysis essay and the annotated bibliographies, will
eventually help me further into the future by further improving the skill I mentioned. The more
refined that skill is, the better the articles I find will be, and the better the papers I write will be.
Peer review helped me a lot with my analysis essay. David Peña, one of my classmates
and good friend, has helped me out a lot both inside and outside of the classroom. His writing
and English intellect is unlike any other student I have met and rightfully so as he has been
writing short poems ever since I met him in my high school. He has helped me identify many
things wrong within my first draft of the research analysis essay. He has given me many
suggestions to improve this research analysis, for example, he suggested I attempt to introduce
the two different stances that are present between video games and violence. He also suggested
that I merge the introductory paragraph with the first paragraph of the body, so that they would
strengthen each other. He has also helped me notice some other small mess ups and mistakes
scattered around the body and conclusion paragraphs. My other fellow classmate, Gabe Guzman,
was also one of my peer reviewers for my research analysis. In the second draft he read, he
basically gave me the greenlight to submit this draft as the final draft for the analysis research
essay with some minor tweaking in some sentences. Overall peer reviewing has helped me a lot
by helping me identify mistakes I would otherwise miss or overlook as I usually speed through
with my typing and rarely identify small mistakes that other slow readers would hardly miss.
The most challenging part of writing this research analysis essay was definitely the
planning that had to go into it. I am not the best when it comes to short term planning, so this
task of planning out a route for the sub-topic I would write about was sort of challenging for me.
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I sort of wrote as I went without a full proof plan set in mind to write this research analysis essay.
But on the contrary, the easiest thing for this essay was actually the writing phase of this essay.
When it comes to writing, I work best writing as I go without a full proof plan, and I sort of
come up with the plan as I write. I see if what I wrote works with the text, and if it doesn’t, I
delete what I wrote, and attempt again with some other phrase or sentence. So in a sense, I write
as I think, and plan as I write, that way, I spend little extra time thinking about what I will write
next. Obviously, I still have to think about what should come next, but that is another easy thing
for me to do, which is thinking as I write.
