Finding credible
sources is essential to writing a good paper. There are several important
factors that one must consider when using another person’s work as a primary
source. This process is confusing to begin with, but when considering all the
information that is now available online, this process gets harder and harder.
But it is the most important part of a research paper so credible and reliable
primary resources must be filtered out of the universe of cosmic internet
debris. There are several guidelines to use when finding good resourses that
have been discussed and some of these guidelines will be applied to this
article: http://www.pewhispanic.org/2012/04/04/iv-language-use-among-latinos/ This is an article from the PEW Research
center that discusses how Latino people identify themselves through language
and the importance of the Spanish language, and what happens to the language as
generations
One way to determine if an article is credible
is to use a source that has been deemed as credible. As discussed in the
lecture given by Dr Díaz, the Pew Research center is a good source. He even used
an article from Pew as an example of a credible source, so most articles found
at this site will likely be credible. This article has easy to identify
authors, which are a good indication that the source is credible. It also has a
date, which adds to the likelihood of credibility. Dr Díaz informed that those
are two important details.
Finding a website that ends in “.edu” is a
good way to find a credible source. This article is a “.org” which can be
credible, but a .edu is almost always an excellent source. But the fact that
this site has a history of being reliable is its best attribute.
This particular article is an informative
article. It is a survey given to Spanish speaking immigrants that tracks 3
generations of the family in order to learn what happens to the Spanish
language in the United States as generations pass. It also asks the person to
place value on the importance of English. There are strengths and weaknesses to
this survey as some questions are good, and some are not as good.
One strength of this article is that it
provides a plethora of statistics that could be used to support a thesis.
Statistics can be great, especially from a research institution with a reliable
history. One of the great questions asks
Spanish speakers if learning English is important to the success of future
generations. Another good question asked was how important is it for future
generations to retain the Spanish language. (It was interesting to see such a
high number concerning this statistic based on past American immigrants and
their desire to lose their mother tongue.
One weakness of this article is the
vagueness of some of the data. An example is that one of the potential
responses to the survey were “very well/pretty well” in reference to reading
and speaking in Spanish. Those are hardly scientific responses. These are
people rating themselves. What does that mean? No degree of understanding is
really known. The numbers may be used, but they may not really say
anything. Another question asked in what
language television was watched. It is
very vague as that really does give a picture of ability to speak or
understand. It seems to assume that there was always a choice between the
Spanish or English when turning on the television. But even though those are
not useful questions, there are some that are.
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