Jenny Zhu
6016 Larch Street
Vancouver, BC V6M 4E4
September 11, 2019
ENGL 301: Technical Writing
University of British Columbia
2329 West Mall
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z3
Dear Class:
I am writing to you in the interest of applying to be a part of your ENGL 301 writing team, as per the course website. As a member of your team, I aim to foster a productive learning community and also hope to gain, through feedback and teamwork, relevant skills for my future profession in Education.
I am a fourth year Biology student who has garnered competencies for technical writing through a wide range of courses. The scope of my work includes developing proposals, composing emails to professional scientists, and writing scientific papers to accurately and concisely convey technical ideas in an organized manner. A key aspect that distinguishes me as a writer is experience gained from my wealth of Co-ops and involvement in on-campus clubs. During my term as Co-president of the UBC Red Cross club, I liaised with dozens of local organizations, wrote reference letters, and communicated effectively with students in the goal of persuading them to volunteer for a good cause. In my current position at an engineering outreach organization, I develop STEM-related activity scripts for high school students and teachers that focus on explaining big concepts in simple terms. Throughout, I have become adept at writing for different audiences and expressing ideas clearly.
I thrive in environments that are as encouraging as they are critical. Encouragement helps create nurturing spaces where ideas may be expressed freely. At the same time constructive feedback is very important in the process of improvement. Above all, reliability is at the heart of effective teamwork. If accepted as your teammate I will be respectful of your opinions and reply in a timely manner to all assignments and questions. I will gladly apply and draw on my successes and failures from my professional and academic experiences to help us all learn. I aim to offer you my utmost observational and reflective skills, paying special attention to precision of speech. Given that, I think I can strengthen my own writing by using a more varied vocabulary and achieving better coherence between topics.
I look forward to meeting many of you and sharing our different backgrounds to converge on the common skill of technical writing. You can connect with me at jennyszhu@alumni.ubc.ca.
Sincerely,
Jenny Zhu
Application Letter in Word document: