Hello ENGL 301 Team!
After we finished off Unit One in ENGL 301, we wrote a reflection post on our blog after revising our definition assignment according to a team member’s peer review. In this reflection, I will be linking you to my revised definition and peer review at the bottom and describing my writing and peer review process.
Writing Process
Frankly, I have done similar assignments before in previous courses. However, they were based on different topics. This time, I chose a term relevant to my major (Psychology), so I had a background on the term. Secondly, I have research experience, so I was able to find relevant sources to solidify my definitions and provide a suitable figure. However, the hurdles I faced were mostly accustoming to APA 7th edition. It is a relatively new edition, and I sometimes get confused about whether I should use 6th or 7th. I use Grammarly to guide my writing process since it helps with tone and sticking to formality.
Peer Review
It was enjoyable to look over someone else’s work to gain proofreading experience and learn about other people’s writing styles. I reviewed MacAylee, and I noticed that her term was from law psychology–a course that I completed in the second year of studies at SFU. Therefore, her material was more difficult to understand if we do not know anything about law or criminal psychology. However, I believe she did a great job with detailed explanations. I also found it quite easy to overlook little details when writing or doing assignments, such as missing to provide a visual or citing certain things. It is a common mistake to forget certain formatting or punctuation in the References/Works Cited list, which I saw with my work, the peer review and other teammates’ as well. This process helped me learn where I could also improve in terms of wordiness and clarity.
Takeaway
I will answer the questions: “What did you learn during this process? What did you learn about yourself and your writing in this exercise and in Unit One?” After this exercise and previous assignments, I realized that I make better choices in my writing assignments. I attempt to be concise and clear. However, I noticed that I can still be quite wordy. I also do not realize it when I make mistakes with prepositions such as “for, about, to, on,” et cetera. I overlook it completely until I turn on Grammarly. Therefore, I have to reread my work repeatedly until I find my own grammatical mistakes and fix them immediately. Additionally, I noticed that I have more motivation to write when it is more interactive and team-based. I also like the feedback sheets we receive because there are more chances to improve our writing and grades than just 4 large assignments with huge weights and not a lot of time to improve little by little. After this assignment and unit, I will write better definitions that are less wordy and help non-technical and semi-technical audiences understand a term easily. Lastly, my experience in self-editing and peer-reviewing has expanded and allowed me to also look at my own writing differently.
Here are the links to the revision and the peer review of my assignment:
Just like how flowers bloom into something beautiful, let’s watch how my writing also blooms into something better.
