The main aspects of learning English are integration and differentiation. Their essence is that related speech and language skills are formed by practicing any speech activity or part of the language. Nowadays, people actively travel, communicate, and get the information they need without intermediaries. This requires the ability to make declarations and questionnaires, possess business correspondence skills, and learn the skills of drafting resumes, essays, speeches, and reports. It shows the importance of expressing one’s opinions, thoughts, and ideas using the features of style and rules of writing. These skills are also fundamental when writing research projects and descriptions. A well-composed study can attract a potential reader’s attention and gain the scientific community’s approval. This is what the English 102 course was dedicated to. During this course, students had the opportunity to practice their research writing skills, analyze relevant resources, and craft competent arguments.
One of the most valuable lessons in this course for me was a lecture on the concepts of intellectual property and how to handle it properly. My personal goal was to learn how to bring intellectual property into a project without breaking the rules, and the course helped me do that. Intellectual property for project creation is a significant asset and one of the main elements that require careful and detailed design. However, unfortunately, many people are incredibly dismissive of it. This is mainly because not everyone understands what exclusive rights are, the results of intellectual activity, and the main risks of working with them. Working with intellectual property in the projects is a lot about the choice and proper citation of sources. For example, for my first project, I needed information that I could find in the publications of other authors. Thanks to the course, I could adequately use information from other researchers for my project without violating intellectual property rules.
The second goal of the course was also to teach students how to work with sources, which was also very important and helpful to me. As part of this course, I created a second project that focused on pre-hospital cardiopulmonary resuscitation. This topic is very interesting to me, but it is also quite complex and requires extensive research. The research I did for this work had to be relevant, and I needed to have truthful sources. After all, when it comes to medical topics, one can find much misleading information on the internet and sometimes even in books. Thanks to the course, I learned how to distinguish and select relevant sources that have been verified by the scientific community and present reliable facts. I also acknowledged how to determine the quality of a resource and its relevance to the research topic. This is very important because often, what at first glance looks pretty relevant ends up being superfluous.
A third goal of the course worth mentioning was to learn how to write quality arguments, theses, and evidence for research or reporting projects. This goal aligns with my personal objective, as it was vital for me to learn how to structure a project correctly. I was able to practice these skills by completing the assignment “DD12HW2: Persuasion, Claims, and Evidence.” While working on it, I described the arguments and evidence for the study and justified their relevance. Through this work, I was able to understand better the pattern of making and ordering statements. In addition, it was easier for me to do this with the knowledge of finding quality resources from the previous module. This course gave me a comprehensive understanding of working on a project and drafting qualitative arguments for research. This is valuable because it is appropriately structured evidence that can convince the average reader and qualified professionals of the correctness of what is written.
In addition to the above, one of my main goals for this course was to learn how to write feedback and make value judgments through reflection. This was also a topic in the class, so I gained the necessary knowledge on this topic. To practice these skills, I completed a “Meeting #1” assignment in which I could itemize my impressions of the meeting with the instructor. These skills are fundamental to me for several reasons. First, the ability to compose a reflection generates the ability to structure the experience of a certain action. This is necessary to process the information qualitatively and isolate useful insights for their subsequent application.
Secondly, writing a reflection helps analyze the experience and decide whether it needs to be repeated or reinforced. In the review that I wrote as part of the assignment, I answered questions about whether the information was clear and indicated my further actions for development in the course. Another piece that can be considered in the context of achieving my reflection goal is the work “Peer review.” In it, I evaluated my attitude towards peer reviews before and after the studied material and actualized the acquired knowledge. Thanks to this, I analyzed and structured my experiences and decided on further actions for investigating this topic.
To summarize, I learned a lot of new and valuable information this semester, which improved my English literacy level. Thanks to the knowledge I gained in the course, I understood better writing project components such as theses, proofs, and justifications. During the course, I also noticeably improved my finding and verifying sources used in my paper. In addition, I learned how to work with intellectual property and how to use it legally in my projects. I will apply all of this knowledge when composing various papers on topics that interest me. At the moment, I am very interested in new medical developments and practices, so new skills will help me to present quality and useful projects in the future.
It should also be remembered that all the knowledge I have gained on the course will help me be more successful in my further studies at the college. Indeed, competent writing and the ability to create a project plan and think through arguments will be helpful to me in my work with various class projects. Thanks to this course, I will be able to conduct relevant research much more easily and efficiently while spending much less time on it. In the future, I plan to continue to grow in my study of the topics listed in my goals above. For this purpose, I will study the relevant literature and listen to specialized courses. Thanks to this, I will actively develop my knowledge of building a research paper and improving my literacy in general.