Nathan's+Page

In the eleventh grade my class was required to write a research paper for our senior project the following year. In doing so, we were required to cite all of the sources we used during the course of the paper. We were required to have seven sources, three internet sources, three book sources, and an interview with someone in or related with the topic we chose to study. This was the first time in my life that I was required to cite sources from a piece of writing. It was a huge stretch for me as a writer and as a student. I relied a lot on the instruction of my teacher to cite my work. I was constantly changing my work and rewriting sentences so that I would not steal the credit of another author’s work. This caused me to have writer’s block constantly throughout the project. With writer’s block I struggled to complete my assignments on time. Whether it be on accident or on purpose it is hard for writers to avoid plagiarism and credit someone else with the work correctly. I believe that more emphasis should be put on plagiarism and citing sources at earlier years in school so that the student is not behind when he or she is required to write a research paper in high school or college. It is harder to learn something on the run, than it is to learn something little by little over a course of time. While I was writing my research paper I began to question my own work the further I got into the paper. When I started to question my work I began to feel less confident. At times I would not know what to write about, because I felt that if I did it would be considered plagiarizing. I did not want to plagiarize because I knew I could get into trouble if I did. Being required to have a certain number of sources it made it hard for me to make things flow together in the paper. The flow of a paper or article is important for the meaning to be conveyed. It is the teacher’s responsibility to teach their students the correct way to cite and paraphrase. Paraphrasing is a crucial skill I acquired while working on my research paper. It allowed me to put important information into my paper without stealing the work from my source. We had a deadline for each part of the paper (outline, rough draft, and final draft); by paraphrasing it saved me valuable time that I didn’t have to spend citing sources. With the extra time I was able to focus on finding more information to include in my paper. But it seemed the more information I found the more sources there were to cite. Once the teacher showed me how to cite my work the paper became a little easier, but it still posed a huge obstacle for me to overcome in order for me to become a better writer.