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Sofia Ailyn Navarro

ENGL 1302-215

Ana Mendoza

14 March 2024

Reflection Essay 2

After completing my first two essays for my English 1302 class, I was given another 2

essays. These essays are all connected. My first essays were about creating and reflecting on my

creation of an annotated bibliography that I was supposed to write in preparation for my future

essay assignments. The second pair of essays are about 8 of the 10 articles I chose to write my

annotated bibliography on. My overall topic was child abuse. I understand the sensitivity of

subjects like these, but I also understand that there should be more talk about abuse in general. In

my work so far, I have described the importance of knowing what child abuse is, identifying it,

how common it is and preventing it. I have learned some new things about my essay writing,

such as what writing assignments like these require, as well as the importance of writing a

literary review.

In my work Types of Child Abuse, Impact, Prevalence and Prevention, I use 8 out of the

10 articles I used in my annotated bibliography. I use articles such as Psychological abuse:

Impact on children and even Parent Education in Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Programs in

order to provide factual statements made by professionals instead of articles on sketchy websites.

In chapter 22 of the book Everyone’s an Author, a quote reads “we know that social media sites

are where fake news and misinformation spread most quickly. So be sure to evaluate every

source” (499). Through these words, you can understand that the importance of academic

research is to make yourself a credible author. In other words, you don’t want to be known as an
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author that people can’t trust. Academic research is needed in every writing assignment. I am

currently working on a research paper for my biology 2102 lab, and I need to do academic

research to find credible sources, such as the Mayo Clinic.

As I mentioned above, I was tasked to write an annotated bibliography that included 10

articles on the topic I was to write about. After finishing it, I was to write a literary review

containing 8 of the 10 articles I had written about. Admittedly, I didn’t do so great in the

annotated bibliography, though most of it was due to it being a late submission, part of it was

because I did not do it correctly. I was stating too much of the articles, and there was a large

percentage of plagiarism, even though it was not my intention. From that, I made sure to at least

try not to repeat the same mistakes again. This time, I summed articles up in different ways and

cited the article whenever I would bring up a quote so as to not get penalized for the high

percentage of plagiarism again. I think I did way better this time. The annotated bibliography

also helped me by already providing all the articles I needed. I just needed to choose which of

the 8 I would use for my literary review.

Writing my literary review felt like a breeze, even though I ended up turning it in a day

late (that was only because I had family things). I think it was a lot easier for me to do because I

already had my 8 chosen articles and I just had to expand on my 3 subtopics. There were 3 body

paragraphs in total, with each containing around 250+ words. Writing this literary review will

help me in my research by providing a well-written text on my entire topic and its subtopics. It

will make gathering information easier since I already will have it all in one place. The creation

of a literary review will also help me be more prepared for long assignments like this. An

example of how it can help could be for my lab research paper. I can gather some articles I think
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are good to use and I can sum everything up in a literary review. After that, I would just need to

look over the information I have and format everything how my lab professor wants it.

My professor was a big help in my writing. She showed me ways I could change certain

things in the first draft of my literary review. Although I do not remember a lot of it, I remember

certain things. One thing she told me was that I did well this time and it was better than my

annotated bibliography. She also told me that I should change the wording of some sentences,

which I did. I don’t remember it specifically, but I changed the wording of a sentence that she

helped me with. I think it was a sentence in my first body paragraph that mentioned the

definition of abuse. She told me how to change it and why. I remember her telling me not to

worry too much about grammar, so I focused more on how I word things instead of my

punctuation. Ms. Mendoza explained everything very well and helped me feel confident in my

writing by encouraging me.

Peer review with my classmate and friend, Amy, helped me. We are both in the same

grade and even in the same area of study. I think I can even say that she is one of my closest

friends. Since we are so close, we aren’t shy about telling each other how and where to improve

in our writing. She told me that I should try to be a bit more organized in my first paragraphs as

well as how I should explain more about the effects of child abuse. This peer review was

conducted before I had more written, so I had already fixed it by the time I turned my final draft

in. It really helped me because peer reviews are conducted by my classmates who are also just

trying to succeed in this course or they can be someone I know, so it made it less awkward than it

would be if I had to speak with someone who does not have the same assignment.

The toughest part of writing this literary review was probably organizing my subtopics. I

didn’t intend to have articles on 4 different subtopics. I was stressed about how I would format it
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all. Turns out, I didn't even need to stress. I decided to merge 2 of them since it was just one

out-of-place article. I still wanted to include the article in my work because I feel like it is very

important to know the prevalence of child abuse. The odd one out was the article titled

Preventing Child Sexual Abuse, What Parents Know?. I thought this article was still relevant

because it could show just how little child abuse is spoken. For example, the article states that

only around 12% of parents knew that abusers can be family members or even close friends. The

least challenging was getting all the information and putting it all together.

All in all, I learned quite a bit in this writing assignment. I learned things like how to

better my writing, not to focus so much on grammar, as well as the importance of creating works

like these. I also learned that feedback is one of the most important things as an author, however,

it is not as important as having credibility. I will continue to listen to feedback and try to fix any

mistakes I make for my future assignments. With this essay done, I feel a little more confident in

my assignments as well as my writing in general.

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Work(s) Cited:

Bakarman, M. A., & Eljaaly, Z. O. (2017). Preventing Child Sexual Abuse, What Parents

Know?. Annals of King Edward Medical University, 23(3). https://doi.org/10.21649

/akemu.v23i3.2010

Lunsford, Andrea. et al. “Everyone’s an Author.” 4th ed. W. W. Norton & Company 2023.

Navarro, Sofia. “Types of Child Abuse, Impact, Prevalence and Prevention.” 28 February 2024.

ENGL 1302, Texas A&M International University, Literary Review