Wikipedia Head Start Essay

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Wikipedia: A Head Start for Academic Research Writing Right when you enter your first day of English class, your instructor already assigns you and your classmates a writing project to start on. This project requires research and you are stuck on where and how to begin. After class, you ask your friend John for help on how to begin research, but find out he is confused as well. Don’t worry. Where there is a negative there is always a positive. You may already know that there are many online sources where you can go to do research, but for starters, a good place to go to is Wikipedia. Wikipedia is a widely used website. Its articles are written by great writers and also by anyone who has excellent knowledge about a certain topic. Like other …show more content…

Purdy said that authors go over what has been written on Wikipedia articles. They erase information that are unnecessary and add new information that should be included and are appropriate. Therefore, Wikipedia articles are still safe to use and read. Although some would say that Wikipedia is not a reliable source to cite, Purdy claims that it still has better ways it could be used, especially, as a place for students to begin their academic research writing. In my experience, using Wikipedia was easy to use and helpful for exploring and developing new …show more content…

Purdy highlights that Wikipedia is a great place for getting ideas, and I agree with him. Wikipedia provides articles with good enough information which is where students can start expanding their thoughts and ideas. For example, when searching up the word basketball, Wikipedia provided a good amount of information on how the game was played. There was new information that extended my view about the game. With my knowledge of the sport compared to the article, it had accurate information that connected to my understanding but with more and advanced

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