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Elisea Melendez
8061 Ponderosa Ranch St.
Las Vegas, NV 89113
(702) 428-1765
February 18, 2015
Writing Specialist
Paige Hall
Writing Center
1021 Paradise Hills Drive
Henderson, Nevada 89002
Dear Paige Hall:
I am writing to inform you of the different writing statuses of students at NSC. I would also like
to inform you about what some of the professors in the science department require students to
know for their classes. I conducted an interview to help provide this information. I also looked
over some of the students papers here at NSC. I will point out some of the problems students are
struggling with the most in their academic writing. After you view these problems I hope you
will work with professors to enforce good grammar, punctuation, and spelling and also provide
templates to use for the specific formats and help students with what they need to get an A on
their paper. Thank you for your time, your hard work, and dedication to NSC.
Writing is just one of those things you need to know for the real world. Whether you want to
be a nurse, a doctor, a teacher, a lawyer, a veterinarian, or even a construction worker. It would
be very embarrassing for someone who has had somewhat of a college education walk into an
interview and hand the person who is conducting the interview your resume and have the whole
thing misspelled and also have the grammar completely off. That would be pretty embarrassing
in my eyes. It is also important to have good spelling and grammar in the nursing field. Just
imagine what would happen if a nurse or a doctor misspelled something on the patients chart.
This could result in death. In my interview with my biology professor who is also a family doctor
confirms how important this is. She also stated that this is the number one reason she is so strict
with all of her writing assignments. Students come to NSC to learn and make a better future for
them. This is why it is very important to address the problems and help them.
Many of the incoming freshmen that start out here at NSC are not very familiar with what format
is appropriate for their college level classes. Many high school teachers teach
MLA but while I was asking different students around campus they stated that they were not
even taught the proper way to do MLA. With this being said APA was a foreign language to
them. This is just one of the many things that I found. I am hoping to inform you and help you
see what students are struggling with.
I did an interview with on of the science professors here at NSC. She teaches Biology 223 and
Biology 224. She mentioned in her interview that in her 5 years of teaching here at NSC,

grammar and the way students word things in their papers has been one of the biggest problems
in her classes. She states that, When someone is talking, they tend to use slang, but when it
comes to writing a paper for my class they should sound professional. She also mentions how
important it is to have good grammar when you are in the medical field. As I stated earlier she
said that if a nurse were to make a simple mistake it could cause someone to lose his or her life.
She mentions that this is why she is strict about grammar on her end of the semester essays. She
also mentions that the majority of her students are nursing students and that nursing is what NSC
is known for, so grammar is big deal. She also said that it is not only in nursing were grammar is
important. She states that in all majors grammar needs to be accurate.
While completing my research, I also looked at three different papers from different classes here
at NSC. Two of them were mine and one of them was from a student who attends this school
also. I found that her grammar was what she needed the most work on. I also found this in both
of my papers as well. One of my papers was from my Biology 189 class. In this paper, the
professor was very picky about the grammar. After having the interview with my Biology 223
professor, I now understand why science professors are pickier on grammar rather then
punctuation. While reading through my sociology paper, she did not mark any of my
grammatical errors. This was strange to me. Rather then paying attention to those errors, she was
more concerned about the punctuation. For the students paper that I read, she stated it was from
her English class. In this paper, everything was corrected. The professor corrected even the
littlest mistakes. For example, she forgot to put an s at the end of students and the professor
wrote a comment to be sure that she would correct it. This is a good thing that English professors
or picky on this so that in the students next paper they can really work on it. When it comes to
any paper grammar, spelling, and punctuation should never be taking lightly.
Punctuation was not too much of a big deal in the students paper. When it came to my papers,
this was probably one of the things that stood out to me most. Punctuation is one of those things
that I think I will always have trouble with. The professor I interviewed mentioned that
punctuation was not one of the things that she was very picky about. For the students English
paper, the professor did make sure to correct all of the mistakes but in my Biology and Sociology
papers the professors were not too concerned about it. When it comes to punctuation, it is not as
important in science classes as it is in an English class. I feel that students should still make sure
that there punctuation is not incorrect. So even if the students tries to be careless about this
aspect in their papers just try to remind them that it is important to show the professor that you
know what you are doing. Just because they do not correct it in the paper does not mean that they
do not notice it.
When it comes to students finding scholarly articles, this tends to be very difficult for them. The
problem with this is many professors require you to use these. When it was my first semester
here at NSC, my Biology 189 professors did not require scholarly article so I was not as
concerned about it. When I started my English class, this is when it got extremely difficult for
me. I think that no matter if a professor requires them or not, you should really encourage
students to use them in their papers. Also remind them that if a professor goes to check your
sources it is important to use scholarly because you have more accurate information.

Last I would like to talk about the format of their papers. When it comes to completing a paper,
format has to be one of the most confusing things for me to complete. While reading the different
papers, they each had a totally different format to them. When I am writing a paper, I spend most
of the time worrying about if I am formatting it correctly. While doing my interview, she
mentioned how each department here at NSC should come to an agreement to use APA as the
main format. I agree with her 100%. Students tend to get extremely confused about this.
Unfortunately I understand that you guys cannot change a professors mind on whether they
would like to use APA or not. I just believe that Nevada State should provide templates and a
little bit more information about the different formats. I think that it is great that you guys are
here for students to come to when they are having trouble completing their papers.
Many students here at NSC have a lot to learn about writing, but with your help you can help
them accomplish that A on every important paper. Student are here to learn, so lets teach them
and try to make things a little bit less stressful for them. Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,

Elisea Melendez

Reflection
Creating this letter was very difficult. Having to figure out some of the mistakes and
trying to figure out what was the bigger problems was probably the toughest things out of these
papers. I believe that if I had done more research this paper would have sounded a little bit
smoother. Over all I believe that a proved some pretty good points and I believe that during this
revision I was able to really get into the paper. I enjoyed learning how to write an APA style
letter and I believe that I will be able to accomplish this again.