Extra Credit

Molly McKenna

Mr. Paudel

English 102

22 April 2015

Research Paper Review

            The first step of this process was finding a topic. I found my topic through small group discussion in class. After deciding to write about prison reformation, my next step was to compile research sources. I found sources from a variation of sources including media, scholarly, and blogs. I also found sources with differing viewpoints and from differing perspectives. This enabled me to understand the issue of prison reformation from many different angles.

            Now it was time to decide what specific aspects of the research I found would be beneficial to the point argument I wanted to discuss in my paper. After this, I created an outline containing a thesis, the main points of my paper, and sources that would contribute or contradict that point. After creating this outline, I used it to write my a skeleton of my paper. After writing the skeleton, I went back and added in transitions, topic sentences, and concluding sentences. At this point, my paper was complete. After going through for rereading and revision, I was finished.

            If I could redo my paper, I would want to talk more about why it is important to educate prisoners while they are in prison. There are so many reasons that this is beneficial, and during my research, I found this part the most interesting. However, I really liked that I was able to find so many different sources from differing perspectives because I think it really added wholeness to my paper.