When analyzing the format of the scholarly article, I was able to formulate a thesis statement into my introductory paragraph. However, it was not until the end when I had entirely finished my paper that I was able to write out the thesis statement and then insert it into the introduction. I think that was a way of me “enhancing my revising and editing strategies” and skills, because when I finished and reread my paper was that I self-assessed my writing, what I wanted to say, and then edit in what I realized was missing. The thing I struggled with most for this portion was the word-count. I ended up being repetitive in my writing in an effort to reach the word count.

When reading the New York Times article “Eating Processed Foods Tied to Shorter Life” by Nicholas Bakalar, it references the scholarly article published on February 11, 2019 in JAMA Internal Medicine titled “Association Between Ultra-processed Food Consumption and Risk of Mortality Among Middle-Aged Adults in France,” by Laure Schnabel, Emmanuelle Kesse-Guyot, Benjamin Alles, et al. In the process of reading different scientific journals and articles, it is important to keep in mind what information is being presented and how efficiently. This can be measured through analyzing the format and wording used by an author(s), to give validity and credibility to their work. In this article, the first characteristic that is noticeable is the format in which the headings for each section are labeled. Schnabel et al does not begin with an abstract as is custom, but instead they have a section labeled “Key Points,” in which there is a concise summary of what question they are asking, what the results were, and what the results mean. In these three “key points”, as it was labeled, the information covered was a brief glimpse of what their introduction, results, and discussion might discuss. Following the “Key Points” there is an “Abstract” heading which further breaks down the subheadings as follows- “Importance”, “Objective”, “Design, Setting, and Participants”, “Exposures”, “Main Outcomes and Measures”, “Results”, and “Conclusions and Relevance”. The information which Schnabel et al presented in the Importance and Objective sections, align with the information which would be expected of an Introduction in the typical style of writing research reports. The Importance section describes the knowledge present beforehand which gave rise to the question being asked- as presented in the objective section. Moving onto the “Design, Setting, and Participants” and “Exposures” subheadings, there is a direct comparison to the information for a “Methods and Materials” description. Schnabel et al go into detail about how they conducted their research, how they chose their subjects, and what the specific diets they used consisted of. Following this section, their “Main Outcomes and Measures” works alongside of their “Results” section to encompass the entirety of what is typically expected of a “Results” heading. They delve into what was observed over the two years they conducted the research, and then it is backed up by all of their numerical data. Lastly, the “Conclusions and Relevance” portion of Schnabel et al’s article embodies the description designated for the “References” heading. Here they discuss why their findings were important and mentioned the need for possible future studies to reinforce what they found. More than just analyzing the format in which Schnabel et al set up their research report, there can also be an analysis of the vocabulary and voice used. Throughout the entire report, there was a consistency of the passive voice to give the spotlight to their research and findings. Instead of saying “we chose…” there were numerous phrases in the form of “participants were selected…”, to make the topics of the research the subjects of the sentence. When writing for the sciences, a commonality might be to use hedging verb phrases to show that, no matter how much work is done or what results are observed, there will or should always be a level of caution and uncertainty to one’s research- as to not claim one’s research as the basic facts. This is seen through different phrases, like “appears to be,” which is used by Schnabel et al in their “Conclusions and Relevance” section. Overall, in this article, Schnabel et al were able to stay true to the information expected of a well-written research report. Even though their format was not explicitly an IMRAD labeling method, their information was presented in an IMRAD way, for a more wholistic delivery of knowledge.

References

Bakalar, N. Feb. 12, 2019. Eating Processed Foods Tied to Shorter Life. New York Times[Internet]. [cited 2019 February 13]; Available from:

Penrose, A. 2010. Writing in the Sciences: Exploring Conventions of Scientific Discourse. 3ed. Chapter 4. Pearson [Print]. [cited 2019 February 20].

Schnabel, L., Kesse-Guyot, E., Alles B., et al. Feb. 11, 2019. Association Between Ultraprocessed Food Consumption and Risk of Mortality Among Middle-aged Adults in France. JAMA [Internet]. [cited 2019 February 20]; Available from: < https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/2723626>

I felt that my summary of the entire article was something easy to do, especially since my article was short and straightforward. I fear this might not have been the case if the article was longer and had more complex wording. For the summary assignment, I struggled most with developing a clear cut thesis statement, especially since I was struggling a bit with determining what MY purpose was for writing about the NYT article. This makes me think of the learning objective “formulate and articulate a stance through and in your writing,” because I am not able to formulate and state what my paper will be about from the beginning, sometimes it becomes clear in my conclusion and ending remarks.

Diet is a common topic that is discussed in the world today. With the fast-pace present in the life of today’s consumers, especially in an area like New York City, there has been a rise in processed foods because of its time efficiency. In other words, processed foods seem more appealing because they tend to be easily available for consumption. With this rise in processed foods, the topics of a people’s diets have also become more popular causing a correlation to be made between people’s diets and their overall health. The words obesity and cardiovascular diseases have become commonplace and, in part, they are attributed to the foods people are eating. Nicholas Bakalar has an article which addresses a topic going a step further than most- “Eating Processed Foods Tied to Shorter Life”. This article was published by Bakalar in The New York Times on February 12, 2019. Bakalar speaks of poor diets, especially those high in processed foods, and how they can lead to the highest risk of all: death. In order to reduce confusion on what processed foods might be, Bakalar gives a variety of examples, ranging from breakfast cereals to energy bars, instant noodles to chicken nuggets. In other words, he stated that they are foods “containing numerous ingredients and manufactured using industrial processes” (Bakalar, 2019). Bakalar’s article references a study made in France on over 44,000 people averaging at 58 years old, extending over a course of eight years. Over this time period, there were 602 reported deaths, which Balakar mentions were mostly from cancer and cardiovascular diseases. Bakalar then goes on to say that it is suggested that different aspects of processed foods can be considered contaminants and carcinogens- making it associated with the common causes of death in the study. The purpose of this study is not necessarily one of causation between processed foods and mortality; however, it does establish a correlation, that as processed food consumption increases by 10% risk of death increased by 14%. When looking at Bakalar’s article, it is not evident to see who his audience is, nor whether he is a scientist himself. The article deals with an extremely important topic, and one that is much more complex than the article seems to give off in its brevity. However, it can be imagined that Bakalar’s article is aimed more at the general public than towards learned individuals based on his common language and straightforwardness. Another aspect that hints at his possible general audience is the way he ends his article. Bakalar differentiates between whether death is caused by eating processed foods or if it is simply associated with it. Bakalar does not want to alarm anyone, instead it seems he intends to educate people of a possibility they need to look out for. He does not seem to be screaming out “never eat processed foods ever again” but he does want people to be aware that processed foods in excess are likely to be associated with an early death. It is brought to the attention of the public that this is an area which is being further researched- something to be considered but not yet to be alarmed about.

References
Bakalar, N. Feb. 12, 2019. Eating Processed Foods Tied to Shorter Life. New York Times[Internet]. [cited 2019 February 13]; Available from:

Before entering this class, English 21003, at the start of the semester, I was not sure what to expect. However, after reading the course learning objectives and completing one of our first assignments, I started to get a glimpse of what this course was going to contain. The point of this class was to help us evolve as writers. In retrospect, it seems that this is the objective of most English classes. However, this course was more direct in establishing that from the beginning through a direct call for us to analyze ourselves as writers and realize in what areas we needed to grow in, instead of just being told.

            One of the first assignments we received in this class was to reflect on our strengths and weaknesses as writers, and what were our reading and editing strategies. In this reflection, named “Reflection on Myself as a Writer” on my portfolio, I mention how much I struggle with word count: either writing too much or too little. That problem is something I acknowledge now to be something that could be easily fixed with the proper reading and editing exercises. However, in that first reflection, I also mention that my reading and editing strategies were nonexistent. Those strategies are something that I worked on throughout this class. Before this class, I nearly never reread a paper and if I did, I only fixed minor spelling or grammar mistakes that stood out. However, throughout the class I established an ability to reread papers and to make actual changes in the content I had. This is most notable in my General Audience Assignment. If you look at my draft and my final paper, there is a better flow of the sentences. An example of this is the change in the sentence “Although sepsis is most common in people who are over 65 years old or under 1 year old, people who have weakened immune systems, and people who have any chronic medical conditions- such as diabetes, lung disease, cancer, and kidney disease- anyone who has been in a hospital, especially after undergoing surgery, is at risk (CDC, 2018)” from my draft. I revised it by separating it into two distinct sentences as seen in the final draft: “Sepsis is most common in people who are over 65 years old or under 1 year old. However, people with weakened immune systems, people who have any chronic medical conditions — such as diabetes, lung disease, cancer, or kidney disease— and anyone who has been in a hospital, especially after undergoing surgery, is at risk (CDC, 2018)”. This addresses the class objective for enhancing our reading, drafting, revising, and editing strategies.

            Throughout the semester, there were many different times that we engaged in the collaborative and social aspects of the writing process. For every assignment there were worksheets for our drafts to be peer reviewed, in an effort to aide us in the process of finalizing our assignments. However, I did not include all of these sheets because I realized that I did not actually consider what was said on them for my final drafts. There was only one sheet I included, which was the worksheet for the general audience assignment. I added this worksheet because the comments made under the question “are moral/economic/political considerations addressed? If not, can you make a suggestion?” forced me to think deeper into what the implications of my topic were and how that could be worked into my paper. The other assignment which utilized the collaborative aspect of writing was the lab report and poster assignment, since we all worked collectively on it and helped each other with our respective parts. This assignment also helped us to work on the “acknowledge your and others’ range of linguistic differences as resources…” objective by allowing us to divide up the workload of the assignment due to our strengths. Bilal was good at explaining the results, Raina was good at giving a step by step recount of what we did, and I’m good at summarizing, so I did the abstract. This sort of shared responsibility allowed for each person to express their abilities. However, we all shared the responsibility of reviewing and editing.

            One course objective that I have always struggled with was establishing and maintaining a stance. This is something that I wrote about in the reflection for my New York Times summary assignment. I struggled with defining what exactly I was aiming to get out of the paper. Therefore, I was not able to accurately state it through a thesis statement. However, I progressively was able to work on this. In my Scholarly Article analysis, I had started to evolve in the area of editing so that aided me in establishing what my stance was. However, in my opinion, the most encompassing and concise thesis statement that I’ve had in my writing this semester was in my Literature Review: “With the analysis of the main factors leading to the misdiagnosis of epilepsy, the implications can be known, and a possible solution can be established.” The thesis statement was strategically placed at the end of my introductory paragraph. Additionally, it explained the purpose of my paper, to review the factors leading to epilepsy in an effort to discover what the implications and possible solutions were. This went in accordance with the flow of my paper as well- my body paragraphs were defining the different factors and the conclusion tied it all together to name the implications and the possible solution.

            In the very first assignment I struggled with finding an appropriate article in the New York Times to write my summary on. This is still a course objective that I struggle with, as seen by a repeated mistake with one of my last assignments- the annotated bibliography. For the annotated bibliography, I chose an article that was a systematic review and not original research. For this reason, I have two different final drafts for my Annotated Bibliography, an original with the systematic review article and a revised one with a different article. While this seemed like an understandable mistake to me once I looked back at it because the article was in the IMRAD format, the title mentioned it was a systematic review and I completely ignored it. This shows that I need to be more cautious in searching for sources when writing papers. This is something that I worked on throughout this semester, but which I can still continue to evolve in because I am not 100% confident yet.

            Throughout the semester, we have had to repeatedly summarize, paraphrase, analyze, and cite different article sources. It has become innate for me to use the CSE name-year form of citing, but at the beginning I had to do the citations while looking directly at the textbook. When summarizing or paraphrasing articles or sections of works, I have noticed that I am tempted to just write after every sentence I read. Therefore, I had to consciously force myself to read the article or section in its entirety before placing it into my own words. Summarizing is something that I don’t do terribly; however, it is something that I need to consciously force myself to do the right way. One thing I noticed does help was what we did for the annotated bibliography and literature review. Making the chart for the different articles and writing the main ideas in such a small box helped me both to efficiently summarize each section of the article and to organize my thoughts for the annotated bibliography. This furthermore helped me for the lit review. Since I already had the paraphrased summaries in my head, I was able to pick and choose which sections fit into my final lit review paper.

            Overall, this was a very successful semester. From the first assignment to the last, my confidence in my writing has grown exponentially. Writing things like the reflections and this self-assessment help with that as well. Being able to sit down and reflect on how you felt about writing a specific assignment helps to analyze your thought process. This in turn allows you to pinpoint areas where you might have gone wrong and fix it up for the next time. I hope in the future to continue to develop the skills I have learned in this class.