To be honest, I don’ have anything valuable to write on my first blog, so I can just talk about my feeling after class. Now I just have a vague idea about university essay writing, which is, in my opinion, very complicated. In my high school life, even international school, I have no idea about university essay writing, let alone genre, skills of citation, or any things else we have learned in class. At that time, we don’t need to communicate with previous scholars and we don’t need to find the gap of knowledge, which is a possible reason of essay written in high school remains in highs school. However, as we stepped in to a higher level of education, we need to master this skills.
Actually before the ASTU, I know a kind of format of writing, called APA style. It is most common format in psychology essay in USA and it is required in my nowadays psychology essay writing as well. APA has its way to title and cite. I don’t have a specific idea because I didn’t get that far, but I believe APA style will share some similarities with the style we are learning. In senior high school, we just need a clear frame, appropriate support of your views and enough word number. Since there are so many differences, I realize the important of having this class.
Most importantly, we need a unified format of essay to provide knowledge for the further student in standard way, so that they can explore more on the base of our ideas. Then I thought about citation. Undoubtedly, the knowledge of previous scholar should be protected, that is the reason way we need to have citations. Moreover, we do need the list of references to find out the reliability and sources of your evidence. Abstract can give readers a brief introduction of what you are doing immediately. Lastly, communication to the previous scholars and find the gaps of konwledge is the most essential part, because we are standing at giants’ shoulder so that we can explore something new. The gist of research is to find out the insufficiency or the improvable parts so that we can contribute to that, and that is what communication can help with.
Because the lesson have just begun, my opinions may be very superficial. As we are getting deeper, maybe I can come up something with depth. One last thing, in the APA style, I don’t know why we need a entire blank paper just for writing down title and author, is that environmental? haha.
If you are taking psych and you want to know more about APA, here is the link. http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/.