Brainstorm of Research Topic

Therapist/ Client confidentiality: How far can it go?

I understand that it is important to keep information between therapists and clients private but what happens when your client kills someone and you are the only one that knows? how much power should that really have over the law?

Joanna Mackay's "Organ Sales Will Save Lives"

The thesis that Joanna makes in her article is that "Lives should not be wasted; they should be saved." From her thesis you can easily tell what side she is on when it comes to organ donating. In order to support her thesis she uses a plentiful amount of facts that are there to show people the amount of deaths that are caused because there are just not enough donors. She uses emotional appeal and ethical appeal with her facts because she wants to grab people and make her audience rethink why they should also be for organ donating. A fact that she uses in her article is stating that "about 350,000 Americans suffer from end stage renal disease...kidney disorder so advanced...no miracle drug...only dialysis and kidney transplantation as only possible treatments." This is not only a great fact she uses but also like I said uses a little bit of emotional and ethical appeal to grab the audiences' attention to how easy it would be to save others lives'. The way she organizes this argumentative article is by providing sufficient background information of the issues and then going on to providing the reason as to why you should be a donor. In all argumentative pieces we are supposed to have a counter argument in the case that someone will argue their point. It is supposed to there to make your argument better.

Reflection on First Major Assisgnment

In this first assignment I learned that an info report is not the same as writing a normal essay. It's genre and set up is just different. Also, I learned the different forms of writing that are important in the Psychology field and what to expect if I were to actually be in this field in the future.When writing this, I already had the idea that Research writing was a big thing in Psychology and when I went through websites and asked experts in the field, my assumptions were right. Though I did learn that they can also write literature reviews which I did not really expect. At the beginning of this assignment I did not know how to write an info report even though we did read about it in class. The thing is, is that I have never written an info report in any English class so I did not have a feel or practice for it. I am not sure I can say I overcame this challenge because I still do not feel comfortable writing an info report. It was a little difficult for me to really grasp the concept of its form of writing. Though I am sure that in the future there will be opportunities to practice more writing them. Also it was difficult to set up an interview with a professor here at the university because many of them did not want to go through with the interview. It was weird to me that they did not want to do the interview because I did not feel like it was topic that would make them uncomfortable. So I had to then ask family members that have studied psychology and have gone through graduate school. Writing this report I learned that I really need to further myself as a writer. I am used to writing your typical argumentative papers and rhetorical essays so my forms of writing do not really vary. I am not really sure if I could find any strengths when writing this paper because I felt a little confused through the process but typically I feel like I am a strong writer. My downfall was just not being sure how to write this paper in a successful manner.

Info Report (First draft)

Psychology Writing

No matter what career path you choose, writing will always be important. Now, there are some that writing will not be the main thing you have to do all the time but having down the basics is pretty crucial. Writing does not come with only one form but with a variety of forms. Depending on the field you choose in the future determines not only the amount of writing you will do but also the type of writing required.

 In psychology writing, research papers are not the only type of writing you are required to do. In order to better understand the writing that is required in psychology I decided to interview my cousin Natalie who is a psychology grad student. She explained to me that in psychology there are many different types of writing, for example: reports, lab reports, reviews, and literature reviews. The purpose of each is to help enhance your ability to accurately summarize important information, be able to look at different sources and determine between each the validity of them, and also to be able to present your own findings in a research essay. Now, the importance of these various types of writing are crucial to the psychology field because they consist the building blocks to being successful in this field.  

Revision is crucial in every essay you ever write. When it comes to psychology writing there is much revision that is done according to my one my aunts that is a former grad student in psychology. In the field of psychology, experimenting is quite important because without it we would not know all that we know today about humans. Do you think you do one experiment and you’re done? No. In many cases you have to do continuous studies on that one subject in order to be accurate. This is not only with labs but also with reports and reviews. In each you must make sure that what you are writing about is accurate and that you all your statements are valid and can be backed up with your research. Collaboration is something that is also important in this subject field. When trying to do different studies it can be easy to believe that your hypothesis alone is right but it can easily cloud the actual facts. It is important to discuss with others in order to be able to get the most accurate information.

According to an article in Purdue Owl: Writing in Psychology, we are explained the principles that are key to writing in this field. The following of them are: using plain language, conciseness and clarity of language, evidence-based reasoning, and APA format. Each of these are the keys to successful writing. From this article we are also told the purpose of writing in this field, which are “describing, explaining, and understanding concepts of from a standpoint of empirical investigation.” These keys are special to writing in psychology because they are what makes up each lab, review, report, etc., written.  Also, we learn that the audience is not always a straightforward thing. Many times when you are doing a writing assignment in psychology the audience will be your instructor and at times it could also be your peers. The audience is semi based on the type of writing you are doing and what specifically you are writing/talking about.

So the basic building blocks of psychology are to describe, explain, and understand. Without these key words you could struggle writing in this field. As discussed in this report I feel like it is safe to say that when you are writing in psychology you must make sure that you are factual and accurate. There is no entertainment writing involved, just factual informational reports and essays. It is your choice alone if you can see yourself writing like this in the future. Writing is pretty important in this field and knowing that is key to deciding on it as a future career.