- This topic has 2 replies, 2 voices, and was last updated Apr 13, 2019, 1:22 pm by
.
-
Posts
-
Terence McMenamin
Review on Research Paper
My topic was chosen due to a rise I noticed in advocacy and media attention on Prisoner’s Civil Rights and the violations of their liberties, as well as personal experience from my own life. My reasoning behind targeting educated, informed political and high-power social figures was in hopes of my informative ideas reaching an “upper-echelon” of society capable of enacting TRUE visible change, efficiently AND swiftly.
My drafting began with self-directed research and personal interest into the topic. As I began my paper I simply switched to academic sources, searching databases and academia sites for citable and more informative history. The factual evidence found led to more discovery of prominent cases as well as laws enacted in the past that mainly supported my beliefs. I noticed while reading the academic writings similar to my subject field, that the tone was generally very stern, extremely formal and almost militaristic. Personally however chose to take a more appealing tone towards the reader although maintaining formal, professional vocabulary in order to come across confident to my likely higher educated and experienced audience.
I believe the peer reviews were more helpful than I initially believed they would be. I have a shy attitude especially with my work and tend to hide the art or work I create because of my fear of judgement. The peer reviews no only showed me the power of positive reinforcement, but they made me feel not alone in my writing. I think any work of literature or even a research paper like this can be very daunting but while examining it casually in an educational setting with others in the EXACT same situation as yourself makes tasks seem manageable and for me it really helped me avoid the stress of being left behind the class.
My personal interview with the Equal Justice Initiative attorney Allison Ganem provided so much insight into my research. The first hand accounts of a hands-on lawyer interacting with re-entered convicts showed me true vision of what life is like for the formerly incarcerated. Her sharing of the EJI’s standings on prison systems and their privatization was beyond supportive of humane adjustments inside prisons focused on a holistic growth of inmates for real world effectivity.
This is a great start. You’ve defined your audience and the way that audience influences the writing for the reflection. And, the commentary on the peer review process was interesting. You could expand on your discussion of drafting and include some examples from your own work. For example, I noticed that there was substantial shift in tone from first to final draft especially in the opening of the essay. Why did you do that and can you give examples of the tone shift? In addition, you could add a bit about synthesis in the research essay. This is something you do well; how do you do it?
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
