Week 7: Whew! Literature Review First Draft Done

Five minutes before writing this blog post, I just finished writing the first draft of my Historical Conversations Project (HCP) on dolphin communication research. It took a while for me to finish the paper. I have never written a literary review paper before, and I am so thankful for the little assignments that I had to complete the past five weeks. Three assignments sharpened and built upon my reading, analyzing, and writing skills: Carl Safina's Beyond Words, library modules, and Close Reading assignment on Connect.

1. Carl Safina's Beyond Words: The chapter that sparked my interest and gave me direction towards my research topic was "Killer Wails." After reading about behaviors and interactions of different types of killer whales (i.e. resident, transient), I became fascinated by cetaceans in general and became hyperaware of in my everyday life. On Twitter, I came across an article about a bottlenose dolphin adopting a whale calf in the South Pacific Ocean near French Polynesia. It was the first known case of interspecies adoption in the wild.This led me to wonder how cetaceans communicate. I narrowed down my topic to dolphin vocal acoustic communication later on in the research process.

2. Library Modules: The library modules were time consuming, but in the end, they proved to be one of the most helpful assignments in the past five weeks. Prior to this course, I wrote a mini research paper in high school and was aware of only Google Scholar. It was helpful but limited. This library course opened my eyes to several more databases, some of which could only be access through UCI. Throughout my research process, I found my sources through Academic Search Complete, Web of Science, BIOSIS, and Gale Virtual Reference Library. Not only did the library modules introduce me to an almost endless collection of documents, it taught me how to research. Using asterisks and "and/or," I was able better my search results.

3. Close Reading on Connect: This assignment presented me with a literary review article by Alison Jolly and instructed me to research on the author, annotate different sections of the paper, and summarize the contents at the end. These steps guided me throughout researching and annotating articles that pertain to my own research topic, especially for the Big 3. It also taught me that the abstract should be one of the first things I read because then I would get a sense if the article would be helpful in my own paper. This has saved me a lot of time during my research process. I used to skip the abstract and read the sections in order, starting with the introduction. Highlighting titles, subtitles, and important sections was an immense help during my research process as well. The color coding pieced together a mental outline of each article I found, and it was tremendously convenient when I began writing my essay. When I needed to quote or paraphrase an experiment in my body paragraphs, I simply knew the location of the specific texts because the important sections were already annotated.

One of my Big 3 annotations on McGraw Hill Connect.

Before and after writing the paper, I made sure to read over the HCP Minimum Requirements, so I am confident my essay met the objectives. The objectives that I believe I met in an effective way is source integration and citation, historical dimensions, and thesis. For my thesis, in the last paragraph of my introduction, I clearly state the purpose of my paper and how it relates to ongoing crisis in the world. The first part of my thesis is to review previous published articles by scientists focusing on an aspect of dolphin communication. The second part is to bridge readers of the science behind dolphin communication to the adverse affects of manmade sonar on dolphin hearing and survival. Because this project requires historical framework, I included background for the first dolphin communication research in my introduction and the coinage of the term "signature whistles" in my body paragraphs for whistles. Lastly, I cited the author and page numbers to their articles every time I introduce or paraphrase their work. Most of my citations occur in the body paragraphs.

Although I think I met the requirements, there are still some objectives that I can strengthen and add to such as sources, works cited page, and multimodal elements. My annotated bibliography is complete, but the annotations could have been written better. The annotations are very robotic-like. The formula I used was background on author + summary of article. I can revise to change up the order of the content as well as be more specific in my summaries. For my multimodal elements, I attached two images: one of the frequency wave of a signature whistle and one of three scatterplots. I can add more graphs and images to better explain the researches I mention in my essay. To add variety, I can find add a video or audio clip of a real life dolphin whistle and click. Finally, I can strengthen my essay by finding more sources that are not necessarily scholarly articles.

All in all, I am relieved that my first draft is complete, and I am excited to peer review and receive feedback for my essay next week.