Attached above is my final project for my Spanish 210w course. For this final project, we needed to write a research paper on something that could be related to a Spanish speaking country and of course the paper needed to be written in Spanish. I chose to write about bioplastics around the world, but I also spoke about a company in Mexico that makes bioplastics. I wrote this paper over the course of a few months. Over this time period, I needed to do a lot of research on bioplastics in Mexico, United States and many other countries. Some of the resources I found were in Spanish and some were in English. In the paper, I discuss what bioplastics are, how they compare to the plastics we use every day, the effects of bioplastics, and I give my supported opinion on whether or not bioplastics are a realistic option to start using now. I believe that this helps me to fulfill levels 3 and 4 of Information Literacy and levels 2 and 3 of Information Synthesis. Information Literacy Level 3: “Develops ability to evaluate and incorporate selected information into knowledge base,” and Level 4:”Demonstrates ability to reflect upon how student used information effectively and ethically to accomplish a specific research goal.” Information Synthesis Level 2: “Develops ability to evaluate and synthesize diverse perspectives on a given topic,” and Level 3: “Exhibits ability to draw upon multiple sources to present a coherent and integrated thesis statement or hypothesis.” For this research paper, I needed to find helpful ways to find my resources. In order to find good resources, I used a couple of different methods. I started by talking to a librarian about where to look for resources. I also asked my Spanish professor for some ideas of articles that she has read about bioplastics. Finally, I used the online library to find many scholarly works in both English and Spanish. I picked certain sources based on how well they would benefit the purpose of my project. It is important when reading research papers to look at the abstract or introduction part to see the overall purpose of the paper and find out if it is useful for you. (Info Literacy, level 3). Doing this research project has helped me to see what resources are credible and also which sources will actually be useful for me. This experience allowed me to access credible and ethical information on the library database and find the sources that helped enhance my project. (Info Literacy, level 4). In my paper, it was important that I look at multiple views on bioplastics because at the conclusion of my paper, I discuss whether or not bioplastics would be a good option to replace plastics right now. I read multiple research articles with different ideas on whether it was a good option to switch to bioplastics now and read about ideas on both sides of the argument (Info Synthesis, level 2). While doing the research for this project, it was important to find an opinion for my conclusion. Reading all the different opinions supported by research helped me to come to the conclusion that bioplastics are not a realistic option to replace plastics right now but may be a good option after more research is done on them (Info Synthesis, level 3). I will continue to do research in the future for many of my classes, but I still need to learn how to find resources that are not just books/articles.