Why is it Important to do Your Research?

by Danny P. It has become imperative throughout this course that research opportunities are there to help us. I think that the first year of college is a good time for expansion. This expansion includes learning new ways to do things that we’ve been doing since high school. College doesn’t get much easier as you progress, so having assignments that put your abilities to the test can be a big help. Writing a research paper can be hard work, but finding sources and using them correctly will make the process less challenging for the writer. At the first-year college level, many students should already know some of the basics on writing a research paper. My first assignment of this type was back in eighth grade and it served as a good introduction. The assignment was a simple 3-5 page paper that required students broaden their horizons in terms of finding good sources. Throughout high school there were so few instances where I had to do research papers, but I feel that a vast majority of my peers are also in the same boat as me. This is the kind of assignment that is best fit for the end of the semester because it can be used as a building block to see if we (the students) are ready to move on to a higher level English course in the fall semester. The whole semester has prepared the class for this assignment that many of us have been curious about from day one. Learning how to correctly write our reading responses and cite the reader have been good examples of writing and citing sources on a smaller scale. The short 3-5 page essays have also been a nice preparation for this assignment because it’s taught the class to compile a wealth of information into limited text. These types of assignments have been put in front of us on multiple occasions this semester with the intention of leading us in this direction. The research paper will help the instructor to see whether or not we learned these skills over the past few months.