Welcome to my blog!
This page is composed of all the self-reflections that I wrote upon finishing a unit.
Indeed, reflection is oftentimes a much-needed stage to reflect on the learning process. Although they were one of the assignments, the contemplation helped me understand my mistakes and push my writing limit a little further in the next project.
I am happy to share with you my learning experience in this course. If you would like to know, please continue to read my reflection blogs below!
ENGL 301 has finally come to an end with all projects and peer reviews done. Reviewing back on the learning process, it was a fruitful journey to realize my strengths and weaknesses in my writing ability.
One of my strengths is having the determination to write about a specific topic. Oftentimes I had a lot of ideas in my mind at the beginning of an assignment. I could do a thorough brainstorm by comparing different ideas and decide on which one to write about very quickly. Another strength of mine is providing thorough feedback for my peers. Like the application package, while I have learnt a lot from my peer’s professional writing skills, I have given a lot of feedback on her resume. Being a reader, I could see things that the writer could not see herself, such as clarity and conciseness. The process of giving peer reviews is beneficial as we are helping each other to build long-lasting writing strategies in our careers.
My areas of improvement include writing for clarity and reorganizing sentence structure for a clearer message and a reduced word count. English is my second language, and I have been getting used to conversational English that I have with my friends and family. Therefore, writing professionally requires more practice for me to express in a clear and concise way. With this ability improved, I believe it could strengthen the relationship with my coworkers for more effective communication.
With these skills and strengths I acquired in this course, I could build a professional career with customers and coworkers through technical writing. Learning these writing skills as a student helps me to be more careful in my written communication skills and equips me to be an experienced professional both in my knowledge and manner.
The process of creating a web folio is fun, I enjoyed exploring around as though this was not an assignment from the ENGL 301 course.
I created another web page to combine all the work that I have written in this course. The process of visiting back the team forum and check back all my work has been fulfilling as I could feel how much I have worked on and learnt from this course. I read all my assignments again not only to check if there were any writing mistakes but also to see if I have improved my writing ability. Of course, this technique takes years to develop, but at least my skills are getting more professional and appropriate to handle technical works.
When I was creating the Best Works page, I decided to write a short introduction for each assignment. I wrote without using the first- and second-person pronouns to make the website more professional. This is one of the biggest takeaways from this course as I learn how to write in a business setting.
Creating this blog has been fascinating and interesting. I played around the colours and different themes to make sure I have a professional yet appealing outlook on the blog. The practices of creating my own technical writing blog and posting assignments on Dr. Paterson’s blog help me familiarize myself with the UBC Blog back-end system. Therefore, it was less of a hassle compared to the first time, and more of an interesting journey to play around the system.
In this unit, I learnt about the YOU-attitude, drafted my formal report and gave a peer review to my teammate, Mandy Su, for her formal report draft. My report topic was about the education of software in an e-commerce company. Unit 3 felt longer than it was, but it was also more rewarding looking back at what I have done.
The process of researching
Since I am currently doing an internship in one of the e-commerce companies in Hong Kong, I had a chance to know more about the flow of how things work in this business which is technology driven. The research process was quite hectic. I had to do a survey for the normal colleagues and also interview with three different managers.
E-commerce industry is one of the leading directions that the world is going towards. Covid-19 has disrupted a lot of businesses in the world, but not our company. Number of orders kept increasing, returning customers were bringing more revenue to our company which made most of our staff very busy dealing with the “new normal”. Therefore, I was not able to interview with the managers at the original time. I had to reschedule a few times in order to interview with them, usually the interview took place during lunch time or in the evening after I was off duty.
The process of asking colleagues completing the survey was very easy. Most of the staff members were very friendly. I tried to find people from different departments to complete the survey. They completed very quickly and was very respectful to me even though I have not met them before. It made the process of collecting data way easier.
The process of organizing and writing my formal report
After extracting the information, I had to organize my data and present them with graphics. I used Google Form for the survey, so most of the graphics had been drawn by the system. For the interview questions, I also had to organize them by grouping similar response and present them in the report.
The process of writing my formal report was long. I always had to think how many references I have to give, and how to address the issue better. Also, I took a long time debating whether I should present the data in the data section or in the appendix. Since I need data to support my argument and propose a solution but showing them all is not feasible in the data section as the report would be too detailed. At last, I decided to put most of the graphics in the data section, as well as some of the interview questions that speak to the graphics. For the others, I will put them in the Appendix as a reference.
Peer Review Process
The peer review process was very rewarding, I enjoyed reading Mandy’s report. She had a really great flow of showing the current problem first, then the preference of her interviewee in three different dimensions, then propose three different solutions for each problem. I would like to do the same in my report as the flow would support my argument stronger.
In this peer review process, I have also applied the YOU-attitude. I felt great writing in this way because not only could I apply what I have learnt at the beginning of this unit to the real life, but also the respect that I imagine my reader had when I was reading. I think the YOU-attitude is my biggest getaway from this unit and would affect how I give feedback to others in the future.
The assignments that I accomplished in Unit 2 include LinkedIn Profile set up and Formal Report Proposal Outline.
Generally speaking, the assignments are not difficult to finish, but the process requires detailed planning and logical thinking. I enjoyed doing both projects.
LinkedIn Profile Setup
The LinkedIn Profile setup was very interesting. Before completing this assignment, I have set up a LinkedIn Profile already, but I never realized that LinkedIn had far more functional purposes than I could have expected while doing the research on how to best use this professional social media. One of the most impressive tips is to like, comment and share some insights to your connection to let them know that I am actively trying to connect with my network. This will also increase the likelihood of my profile getting higher exposure to potential employers.
The LinkedIn peer review assignment was also very beneficial to me. My partner gave me helpful suggestions from an audience’s perspective so she could tell which part was confusing. For example, she mentioned that I had to clarify about my degree description after transferring my degree and improve on the tone to strengthen the professional manner.
Formal Report Proposal
The Formal Report Proposal requires a longer process to brainstorm. The flexibility of doing a research topic with my choice of interest is a motivation to do a long-term study. The process of deciding a topic was quick. It is happening at my workplace where I am having my placement, and that is what I am interested in. I received an email from Dr. Paterson. She showed her concern to me that my research topic was a great one but might be out of time for academic investigation.
After the peer review process, I have learnt that my writing skills is not professional enough for workplace yet. I looked at my partner’s profile and realized she had better description for education on LinkedIn: she transferred her major like I did and highlighted some courses as well as her active involvement at school. This provided me a direction and helped improve my overall LinkedIn outlook.
The peer review process impacted me to think more from the target audience’s perspective. For example, reading my LinkedIn from a student’s perspective is different from that of an employer actively looking for a new colleague. Sometimes I overlooked the importance of highlighting my experience from a professional manner and wrote from my own descriptive perspective. This assignment reminded me to always define my target audience clear.
Original Writing
The technical term that I chose for this assignment is Purchasing Power Parity. I chose the target audience to be non-technical because explaining the economic concept is similar to explaining to readers with little or no professional background in the related field. Also, I could practice how to polish my technical writing skills to make my work understandable and appealing to the readers.
The textbook was a useful source for me to study how to explain the technical term in a parenthetical, a sentence and an expanded format. Furthermore, I found that the expanded format was the most interesting part to me because it allowed me to further understand the concept of this term that I did not realize before. The expanded definition also allowed more space for me to illustrate the meaning of the technical term, which makes the audience easier to grasp the main point.
Review Process
The review process was very useful. While reviewing my partner, Sydney’s definition of her technical term, Hydrocephalus, I could self-examine whether I have done the same thing that I found useful in her assignment, as well as whether I have made the same mistakes I found in her explanation.
For example, I found that she is really skilled at using technical terms that are common in her professional field. While suggesting her to either change the target audience to a skilled and more technical group, I have also examined again whether I used highly technical words in my assignment as well.
All in all, I enjoyed reading her definition because not only had I become more familiar with the impact of Hydrocephalus on a young child’s cerebral development, but also I gained a lot of insights from reading Sydney’s work, both in a good way and to-be-improved way.
Editing Process
Sydney has given me a very detailed peer review report about my strength and weaknesses in this assignment. I have read through her report and my work again. I realized that there were some parts there were ambiguous in the reader’s perspective. For example, I did not state clearly what is “Big Mac Index” in my parenthetical definition; I performed the same mistake as Sydney that I used technical terms in my work and did not realize that my non-technical readers would not understand the meaning of the term. Before handing in my assignment, I read through my work again to make sure there are no undefined highly technical terms.
Sydney’s suggestions are more about the technique of my writing, such as grammatical mistakes and citations. While making the amendments according to her comments, I would read more journals and opinions on the news in my related field in order to learn the writing approach of explaining highly technical concepts, as well as to learn how to write with the right tone and grammar.
Revised definition document: My Revised Technical Definition – Purchasing Power Parity
My review to Sydney: My Peer Review Link for Sydney
Peer review from Sydney: Peer Review Link from Sydney