Week 2 Homework Discussion Board

Welcome to the discussion board forum for Week 2 in our ENGL1301 class!
There are written activities you will need to complete for your initial post by Thursday
night this week. You’ll return to this discussion location and offer at least two written
follow-up posts to the contributions of others in the class by Sunday night this week.
Read chapters 5, 6, and 7 in our course textbook by Lunsford. Then, by Thursday night,
complete the activities listed below. Make sure each answer to each of the activities is
150+ words in content length.

Activity 1: Complete the Reflect activity on page 60.

Activity 2: Respond to these questions: What are the demands of writing in college (what
does it entail)? What is the basic process of communicating with readers? How do you
get readers to take you seriously?

By Sunday night, return to this forum and offer at least two follow-ups to contributions of
other students in the class. For example, let the students know if you agree or disagree
with points made by the students and describe why. Let the students know if the they
pointed out something you had not considered in the activity, and how that influenced
your thinking on the activity. Give specific examples from each student’s post to inform
your follow-up feedback. Ensure your follow-up posts are significant, substantial, and
add to the overall learning goals of the course and the discussion activities. Make sure
each follow-up post is 150+ words in content length.

Activity 1: My experience with academic conventions, specifically with citations and sources, is a
bit complicated. Prior to university, most of my essays did not require citations. During my first
semester at TAMIU, I was assigned to write an essay in history class which required searching
for articles and papers. For this specific history class, I was advised to not often cite from .org
websites as they aren't academic. Finding reliable information and sources was a bit tedious for
me since I didn't want to spread misleading or false information. Though a bit more hard work,
this advice did end up helping me get a good score on my essay. It's always important to cite all
your sources. Plagiarism is something that can land anyone in serious trouble, even if it wasn't
on purpose. Running essays through a plagiarism scanner and making sure you didn't write
something word for word from your sources can save you from trouble. I learned most of these
writing conventions through my AP English classes in 11th grade. In that class, we delved deep
into citation styles as well as writing devices. All the information about writing styles and
techniques has shaped me into a better writer and communicator.

Activity 2: Writing in college is definitely more demanding, challenging, and specific. There is so
much planning and preparation for essays that it can be daunting and overwhelming at times.
What I do is break up everything into pieces in order to make it more simple for me to do
efficiently. For example: I dedicate a certain amount of time for certain paragraphs that I have to
work on. Alongside this, college writing can be demanding since it's often that you are doing
other projects, assignments, or essays so it can be easy to mix work up or to get overwhelmed.

Communicating with readers tends to come easy for me. I often try to envision my writing from
an outsider's perspective. I try to write in a way that is simple and easy to understand, and I try
to break down any concepts that might be foreign to those who know little about the subject that
I'm writing about.

Trying to get a point across can be difficult and blurred when you don't have proper sources to
back you up, which can lead to people not taking your work seriously. It's important to do
research on the websites and articles that you are sourcing from, as some may not be credible
sources. There is a really good point in the textbook about not sourcing from social media.
Sourcing from social media sites is not credible since there is no concrete way to prove that a
post is legitimate, and often times you may not know who made the post.