Unit 5 Reflection Blog

Dear Mr. Mccquig,

This semester in my English 214 class, I have worked on a semester long research paper on the topic of standardized testing. This project was broken up into four parts; an introduction to the topic, a visual analysis, a research portion, and an interview.  This project reminded me of the debate topic assignment that we did in you class. Because of your assignment, I already had a good idea on how to research information and form an opinion from this research. However, I have also learned a lot from this assignment. I have learned that standardized tests are not only hurting students, which I assumed, but also the schools. I was questioning whether or not these standardized tests was affecting the schools and after researching it for a while I found out that it does. The research process was long. I found multiple sources backing up my claim which was the use of standardized test scores will hurt schools ability to sustain in the future. One thing that stood out for me during this assignment was the interview section. This was something I have never done before. In all of the research papers I've ever done, I have only used information from secondary sources and never from a primary source. I though this was very interesting an unique. Hearing someones opinion on my topic changed my perspective and opened my eyes more to the standardized testing. Overall I think I have learned a lot from this class and have became a much better writer

From,
Mariel Mantia