Core Value I. My work demonstrates that I used a variety of social and interactive practices that involve recursive stages of exploration, discovery, conceptualization, and development.

The first week of this class, I was taught that anything I write in Comp II there is always going to be a time to revise and find more and more information on a particular subject. For example, when writing about my research topic on abolishing the Death Penalty, at first I thought I had enough general basic information. After receiving more than helpful feedback from my professor, I learned to continue my research deeper  than I have before on my information on the negative side of the Death Penalty. When doing so, it allowed my work and my revisions become better, but allowed my readers to have a better understanding of the topic.

Core Value II. My work demonstrates that I placed texts into conversation with one another to create meaning by synthesizing ideas from various discourse communities. 

While searching for different information on my research topic, I have come across a number of sources that have supported my position on abolishing the Death Penalty. When I first found five different sources in the Proposal +5 assignment, I thought that was enough to get my point across to readers that capital punishment causes more harm than good. As my research continued, I began finding more reliable sources from Huffington Post, Washington Post, etc, to help create and convey a meaning to readers.

Core Value III. My work demonstrates that I rhetorically analyzed the purpose, audience, and contexts of my own writing and other texts and visual arguments.

In Comp II, when writing a piece you need to be mindful of the audience, know and support the process, realize the time, and what is going on. When doing assignments like Proposal +5 and White paper it helped keep myself organized and well planned out for writing later assignments like, Causal and Definition argument. In other words, it served almost as an outline to supporting my thesis.

Core Value IV: My work demonstrates that I have met the expectations of academic writing by locating, evaluating, and incorporating illustrations and evidence to support my own ideas and interpretations.

At first, when I began doing my research on different information about Death Penalty laws and methods; I was almost stuck because I kept finding different sources that stated the same thing. As other assignments needed to be turned in with more and different information on my topic to support my claim, I dug deeper to explore other views of the death penalty. I eventually found and used direct quotes that supported my thesis. By using different quotes, it helped support my thesis with clear and direct evidence. For example, the casual and rebuttal assignment, I used different quotes from different sources, to claim how people, who work for the state believe the death penalty has too may negative errors. Without researching different aspects of my topic, it wouldn’t have a clear or strong message.

Core Value V. My work demonstrates that I respect my ethical responsibility to represent complex ideas fairly and to the sources of my information with appropriate citation. 

When writing anything that isn’t your own information, it is very important to give credit to whom it came from, the source. In every assignment in this course, it involved some kind of research. At the end of each assignment, I made sure to include a works cited, which gave credit to where the information came from. Although much of my work in my research position was opinion based, web sources have benefitted and strengthen my claim to abolish death penalty.