As described by Stuart Green and April Lidinsky (2012) in the first chapter of From Inquiry to Academic Writing, academic writing is “the careful expression of an idea or perspective based on reasoning and the insights garnered from a close examination of the arguments others have made on the issue” (pg. 2). During the beginning of the semester, these words seemed foreign and made little to no sense. Now, after a semester of continual essays, homework, and discussions intended to improve my writing abilities I finally understand what academic writing is. Academic writing is the process of gathering and understanding information from reliable sources to bolster and support one’s argument. Understanding the learning objective, to demonstrate …show more content…
To ensure that information be easily found when looking back at articles, I developed a precise system for annotating by placing questions in the right margin, content information in the left, underlined important quotes, and boxed interesting words. This refined system made it possible to evaluate both articles, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr (2008) and “The Deep Space of Digital Reading” by La Farge (2006), and develop a strong understanding of the author's purpose. To create comparisons between the two, I developed a synthesis that provided the authors views on the modern form of reading. Then, I constructed an inquiry question based on the information presented in the two articles. Next, to gather primary research information I developed seven research questions to give students who attend Laurel High School (see Appendix B). To arrive at my conclusion, I had to compare the information presented in the secondary sources and the results found in my primary research (see Appendix C). This strenuous process of developing an empirical research paper demonstrated all the skills required to be an academic writer and accomplish the learning goal. I gathered information through the creation of research questions, evaluated and analyzed articles with the precise method of annotating, and developed a synthesis between the primary and secondary sources to arrive at a