- Document their work using appropriate conventions (MLA).
- Control sentence-level error (grammar, punctuation, and spelling).
During my revision process for my Big Data essay, I worked on trying to eliminate empty words in order to create more active words. I found myself repetitively starting sentences with “the,” “there is,” and “there was.” I, also, wanted to make sure I include a variety of sentence structures such as simple sentences, compound sentences or compound-complex sentences. Another sentence-level error I focused on was commas. The in-class practice and the Little Seagull book were helpful. I made sure I included commas between compound sentences along with other applications. Commas were deleted if they were unnecessary and used incorrectly.
For MLA style, I learned how to include proper in-text citations when integrating sources. For instance, in my paper, “The Overpowering Benefits of Big Data on Healthcare,” I wrote, “Glioma, a common and aggressive malignant brain tumor in humans, affects nonneural glial cells in the central nervous system (Niu et al 2).” When there are more than three authors for a source, I learned to include “et al” instead of listing all the authors’ last names. Also, I verified which sources had fixed pages numbers and made sure they are included in the in-text citations.
