Reflection Paper

For the past six weeks, I have learned much about critically reading, analyzing,
comprehending scholarly texts, and forming logical arguments about them. Weekly, I have
contributed to the class’s scholarly community by writing well-thought and good discussions on a
wide range of topics and responding to the discussions posted by others. In the beginning, I can
honestly say that I was not good at writing discussion posts and even responding in a
professional and scholarly manner. I could not read, understand, or interpret information from
scholarly articles. Using APA was also just a nightmare.
Now, I am confident in my ability to write evaluative essays with cohesive sentences and
paragraphs that summarize and synthesize the main points of a scholarly or non-scholarly source.
I can apply a function writing approach that blends critical research and reading, drafting,
prewriting, revising, and editing. I can also now integrate instructors’ comments on previous
assignments into revised drafts. I can admit that I see myself now as a “complete scholar and
researcher” capable of reading research articles (whether quantitative or qualitative),
understanding the text (from hypothesis to literature review to methodology to results), and
interpreting and applying it to practice. Most importantly, I can integrate study results into my
discussions or other forms of writing, a crucial requirement for nurse professionals (Hofler et al.,
2018).
As a nurse professional hoping to get into research and scholarly writing in the future, I
believe all the skills and competencies acquired throughout this course, from interacting with
research to creating effective paragraphs and strong arguments, can be integral. For example, as
an aspiring scholar, I believe that knowledge of effective and creative writing will ensure that my
writing addresses the themes I will focus on sufficiently, remains informative throughout, and

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observes standard sentence structure with less syntax and grammatical errors. Most importantly,
writing scholarly papers will mean having knowledge about scholarly writing and reading and
understanding literature reviews to determine research gaps, which will form the basis for my
hypothesis and research questions. Knowledge about APA is a prerequisite for any scholarly
writing I undertake (Hatcher & Rocco, 2011).

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References

Hatcher, T. G., & Rocco, T. S. (2011). The handbook of scholarly writing and publishing. John
Wiley & Sons.
Hofler, M., et al. (2018). Writing a discussion section: How to integrate substantive and statical
expertise. BMC Medical Research Methodology, 18(1). doi:10.1186/s12874-018-0490-1