SLO 7: Information Literacy

I have not taken any linguistics courses to adequately analyze SLO 4, so I chose to discuss SLO 7, information literacy, instead.

Throughout my time at TAMUCC, I have written numerous works across different genres. Each academic work--whether it was a 1-2 page essay written in class, a 7-page research paper composed over the extent of an entire semester, a literary journalism piece, or a self-evaluative cover letter--required apt analysis of available print and online informative sources to effectively implement and cite the synthesized information within an academic document. When locating information, I consulted the TAMUCC library databases, perused instructor-provided resources, crafted specific interview questions for interviewees, and read and assessed scholarly manuscripts. I assessed and analyzed information by referencing primarily scholarly and peer-reviewed material (except when the situation required primary observations), evaluating the scholar's and/or student's education in relation to the specified field and the field's relevance to similar fields, ensuring source timeliness, checking for biased viewpoints and searching for counterarguments, and using only the most relevant information pertaining to my topic. When citing, I followed MLA and APA style manual guidelines and instructor-provided citation examples to correctly cite all sources using: in-text citations, annotated bibliographies, slideshow references, and reference pages.

SLO 7 & "Researching Readers"

In "Researching Readers," a qualitative research report for for ENG 3323, I completed multi-media research. This included assessing instructor-posted scholarly articles on Blackboard to determine relevance, author credibility, and the information's overall usefulness to the assignment's context. The articles' authors were experts in young adult literature, and provided insight that was explanatory, knowledgeable, comprehensive, and timely. Additionally, in locating and assessing information, our class completed a virtual website interview with collegiate high school students. The students possessed higher than average knowledge of current young adult literature--their input  was also valuable because I was focusing on making claims about young adults as a reading population. So, it was essential to interview young adult readers to reliably determine which claims I could reasonably make. When incorporating this primary source information into my qualitative research report, I focused on responses that related to my topic and discerned between multi-faceted, comprehensive student responses and those that were too vague to be useful in this context. Additionally, I completed observations at the 2019 Teen Bookfest by the Bay, adding more primary source information to my report.

After locating, collecting, and analyzing useful information, I then synthesized said information. This process included looking at all information and seeing how it could interconnect to support my main focuses in "Researching Readers." To do this, I wove in students' interview responses with information from scholarly articles and my own Teen Bookfest observations to promote my points.

Lastly, I cited multiple source types correctly in-text using the APA citation style. I had to learn how to cite interviews and personal observations correctly. I also created a references page using APA formatting where I correctly applied the features of an APA-style bibliography.

SLO 7 & "Matrimony, 'Passing,' and Anti-Patriarchal Representation in Clotel: Enslaved Females' Elevation to Equality"

When writing  "Matrimony, 'Passing,' and Anti-Patriarchal Representation in Clotel: Enslaved Females' Elevation to Equality,"  I did some in-depth scholarly research and implemented close-read text evidence from Clotel and information from peer-reviewed articles.

Initially, I became interested in this topic when reading William Wells Brown's Clotel and recognizing that Brown's choice to write about enslaved females as a social commentary that heightened their perceived power and status. So, I consulted the text itself, close-reading passages for supplementary meaning, and consulted with my instructor to locate scholarly articles relating almost explicitly to my topic. My instructor suggested a certain book as one of my sources. I skimmed the printed book according to relevant chapter titles and chose a few apt passages from which to pull information; these passages offered counter-arguments and supplementary viewpoints to research further in my discussion of Clotel. The passages also included historical insight which I used when evaluating Clotel and its language and content presentation. Similarly, I employed close-reading strategies to glean as much supportive evidence as possible. Additionally, I looked for another scholarly work discussing the information I'd found thus far and used this to round out my evidence, ensure I addressed counter-arguments, and supplement primary source information with secondary source commentary and research.

"Enslaved Females' Elevation to Equality" used MLA citation style. I hadn't worked with MLA since the Spring 2018 semester and consulted Purdue OWL to correctly cite sources in-text and format a bibliography. MLA style necessitates different: paper headings, parenthetical citation information, subheading section titles, page numbers, and bibliography style from MLA. All MLA-style conventions are viewable in the document linked below as well.