#9 Sept. 27th, 2018
Write a 10-row reflection on your experience while writing your IRR...What could you have done better? If you have the chance, what would you do differently? What are the areas in which you feel stronger? In which ones you feel weak, and why?
Lidia Sarmiento: In my opinion, writing an IRR was very challenging. I underestimated the amount of knowledge we needed to have about out topics, and the perspectives that we needed to cover. I think my main issue was the amount of information I had about my topic and lense. Since our topic was based in Mexican statistics, there was a limited amount of information I could use regarding my ethical lense. I had to branch out to many sources to have a complete IRR, that matches the word count and the requirements. I invested a huge portion of my time to make this IRR work. Nevertheless, I do believe that I ended with an IRR that I am proud of. I feel confident about the organization and order of my report, and grammar and vocabulary I believe that it was strong enough. The area that I feel weak in is perspectives. I believe that I covered some perspectives but they are not identified clearly, or they are mixed during the IRR.
ReplyDeleteLorena: While I was writing my IRR, I found it difficult that every single statement had to have a credible source to go with it. The IRR is not like any other essays that I have written since this one has to have a lot of evidence to make your claim. I would change my sequence of looking for sources and evidence to making my claims first and then look for the backup information about them. The areas that I felt that were strong were that I had a clear idea and good understanding of where I wanted my IRR to go, but my weak skills were using evidence on my claims.
ReplyDeleteWriting my IRR wasn’t that easy as I thought. In order to write the IRR we needed to have a lot of knowledge on our topics and lenses, that meant that we needed to read too much information in order to get pieces of evidence for the arguments we encounter. First of all, for me it was so difficult to find reliable sources of my topic, death penalty in California. California’s state information was so narrow that we needed to look carefully at websites. There was a limited amount of websites in which we were able to look in order to gather some information. If I had the chance to change something it may be the research question due to the fact that it was talking about California’s state, which was so specific. In the other hand, I do believe my IRR had a clear organization while placing the context.
ReplyDeleteHow would you change your RQ?
DeleteValeria Morales:
ReplyDeleteWriting my IRR was a rollercoaster of emotions. Since I new my topic relatively well, from previous research and assignments, I thought it would be a little bit easier to write about it. But it wasn't. It was definitely a challenge because of the lens that I got. I had to look into legal documents of the Mexican government and it was difficult to find some of them online. Apart from that, a big challenge was also translating everything to english. But by far the most difficult thing to do were the citations. I invested a lot of time doing my IRR and considering my resources and experience I am proud with what I made. Still there are things I would change if I got the chance to do it again. Starting with my planning, I could have done a better outline so that all of my ideas were clear from the beginning. I feel that my strong areas were the structure of my IRR and my reasoning of each argument. But my weak area is condensing the information and getting more perspectives.
Meliisa: Writing my IRR was really difficult. First, we needed to choose a topic. My team was really confident with the topic of impunity but I have no idea of what that was. On the other hand, I wanted to give it a try. When we started researching on the scholar sources that Ms. Martha Laura provide, I got even more confused. The information was really hard to understand. I got really stress. On the second week, I started finding new sources that made me understand the topic better. I got the lense of historical and political. This made my work more complicated since I don´t really like those topics. The outline helps me organize my ideas. After that, I started writing and the ideas began to organize themselves and everything flowed as I wanted. As I continue writing I started opening my mind and getting new ideas. When I finish I was proud of my work. I think writing essays is one of the worst things I do and I think I did a good job anyways.
ReplyDeleteFor me, writing my individual research report was very challenging. Death penalty is such a huge topic that I wanted to cover completely, but I couldn't because of the word limit. At first, I didn’t knew what to writ, or how to begin. I researched for days in order to understand the topic completely. After researching, there were so many ideas in my mind that I didn't knew how to put it in words. I didn't knew how to express my thoughts and how to get together all of the information to build arguments and present my ideas. It was hard to find information on the specific state of California. I can say I am proud of how my IRR turned out to be. I gave a lot of effort to my essay after spending days trying to correct it and reading it over and over again. For next time, I am certain that I will try to find a topic where I can find more information but still, with a topic that is not so broad.
ReplyDeleteTopics are always broad....just narrow your RQ
DeleteI really enjoyed this activity because it helps us students to be more narrow to enhance a more advanced writing technique. I think that I could have done better many things, but the things that I will like to change the most will be the structure of my paragraphs and perhaps attacking more the issue instead of just informing the audience about a certain topic. I think I missed some persuasive skills to make my writing more convincing. For the next time, I will try to be more concise, because I think I added to much information that doesn't necessarily fit under the requirements of my lense. Although, on the areas the I feel stronger will be the understanding of the topic that is reflected through my essay. Even though I have several areas of improvement, I liked the activity. I now feel more prepared for futures IRR's.
ReplyDeleteRemember that you don't need to have an argument for your IRR, so it is not necessary to persuade the audience.
DeleteAlejandro Morales:
ReplyDeleteWriting my IRR was a big challenge for me, and the reason for this lies on the fact that I do not write this kind of samples constantly. Something I could've done better is do the in-text citations from the beginning. First I finished my draft and didn't include any in-text citation, I needed to add them when I was correcting my draft. The areas in which I feel stronger is on submitting my sample in the correct format always and explain the definition of a quote. I am good in continuing a quote with an analysis of it. I also feel weak in other areas like in introducing my topic and concluding it. I struggle to continue my introduction in a smooth and logical way, as well as to close my sample, but after making corrections I could improve this part. It was difficult, but the peer review helped me a lot in correcting my IRR, and I believe I also help my classmates when I checked their IRR.
Juno
ReplyDeleteI felt that writing my IRR was a big challenge. There were many perspectives to consider while writing my IRR. Moreover, there are many things to consider while writing an IRR, such as in-text citations, evidence, and formats. Luckily, I had prior knowledge about the topic that helped me make write my IRR. Basing my IRR with the rubric from the College Board helped me write my IRR. Knowing exactly what was expected from me helped me know what I could write and what I should not write. I had a lot of information, but with the rubric, I could narrow the sources of information and include only the important details. When I was checking my classmates, my knowledge on the rubric helped me know how to improve the work of my teammates and tell them what were their strengths and weaknesses.
GReat!
DeleteJulian Gonzalez:
ReplyDeleteFor me the Individual Research Report was a new writing experience. It was somewhat different to any other essay or work I had ever written. I had to go in depth in the APA format, and I also had to use EBSCO, which I am not yet used to. Overall, I feel like my IRR was well written. It could obviously be improved, and will be towards the end of the year, but for being the first one I think it was good enough. I believe that I could have included more perspectives and further analyse the information I presented using the sources. This would have made my IRR much better, but I was out of words and didn't realise it when I was writing. I feel like my IRR is strong in the evidence, and general information about my economic lens, the information I used is indeed relevant and gets to the point. I feel weak in my argument, since it could also be improved and most likely will be the end of the week.