I have never been very good at incorporating other’s texts into my own. I struggle to introduce authors and quotes into my writing. I sometimes paraphrase others work but find it hard to turn someone else’s words into my own. I use summary in my writing at times but feel that I dull down the authors work. We have written 3 essays in English 110 and I feel that I have gotten slightly better at introducing and use quotes to my advantage in my writing. I used quotes in all of my papers. I tried my best at placing quotes where they best fit and added to my writing. In one blog that we wrote during this semester, we pulled quotes from three different articles and wrote a sentence about each quote. This blog helped me to look through writings and find strong quotes. I then wrote a sentence that was in my words that helped me to understand why the quote was important and could be useful in my writing. I know that I have improved the way I introduce quotes into my writing. I used to never introduce the author and I now realize how important it is to give the author credit and write about who they are. Knowing little details about the author of the quote can help to strengthen your argument. I understand how important it is to include quotes in writing. It is important to use quotes because it can strengthen or weaken your argument, and adds an opinion that is not your own into the writing.

In my Significant Writing Project, I felt that I used quotes to better my writing and argue my opinions. For example, in this essay, I used a quote from Julie Beck to help strengthen my argument. I was arguing that people use story to talk about themselves because story is easy to understand and use as a for of communication. I used this quote to help my argument, “When people tell others about themselves, they kind of have to do it in a narrative way—that’s just how humans communicate” (Beck). I felt that in this project I wrote mostly in my own words and really didn’t use sources a lot. I think that when I did use the sources that we had, it made my writing stronger. I can tell that I have improved on integrating others work into my own writing. I feel that this course and my professor helped me to reach my goals of using others works in my own.