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Strengths and Weaknesses

To accurately determine what my strengths were as an ENGL 301 student, I reviewed feedback from my peers and Dr. Erika Paterson to compile a common set of positive features.

Strengths

• Professional tone
• Clear and detailed writing
• Thoughtful details
• High quality presentation

In determining my weaknesses, I included my own self-assessed failures alongside the feedback from my peers and Dr. Erika Paterson.

Weaknesses

• Often procrastinated with deadlines
• Didn’t take previous feedback into account for several important assessments
• Overuse of imperative verbs
• Occasional errors of expression

Process Reflection

When I was beginning in ENGL 301, I set out with the goal of improving my technical writing. I wrote on the homepage of my blog that:

I expect this course to improve my technical writing the most. I have more experience with other topics, such as professional communication and networking, but less experience with technical writing. As such, I hope to significantly improve the quality of my technical writing by understanding what “good technical writing” is.

At this concluding point in the course, I can confidently say that I have met my goals of better understanding technical writing and improving my abilities as a technical writer.

Skills & Strengths

My strengths as an ENGL 301 student are well suited to professional work. I have a keen eye for details, construct coherent and logical narratives, and deliver work in a high-quality and professional manner.

As I’m sure was intended, creating the web folio was an enjoyable experience. There were two major components to the web folio, the first being website and logistics, and the second being the review and self-editing of all my prior works.

I chose to repurpose my existing ENGL 301 personal blog to stage my web folio. I looked at several other options, including hosting my own site, but familiarity and ease-of-use won out. To convert my site from a blog to a web folio, I added several new pages and changed existing ones.

In reviewing my older works, I was able to make a number of final adjustments and changes. I was satisfied with most of the work that I submitted during this term, but I found it most enjoyable to revisit the work that I wasn’t terribly satisfied with. Following this review, I’m proud to demonstrate each individual piece of work that I produced during my time in ENGL 301.

3:1 Writing Exercises

ENGL 301 unit two began with two exercises about writing in unique scenarios. The first activity, “Writing with You Attitude Memo to Evan Crisp”, was very helpful to do. The guidelines provided in the accompanying document were completely foreign to me before reading through the materials. Reading through my completed response, I’m very satisfied with how the letter reads.

The second writing exercise “Business Letters: Complaint & Bad News Letter” was more familiar to me. I have written a number of emails of this type (on both sides of the exchange), so I was more familiar with the process. Nevertheless, I can tell that my resultant letters were improved by the accompanying readings.

Draft of Formal Report

Following the first two exercises, I delivered the draft of my formal report, “Improving the Quality and Accessibility of Financial Literacy Resources at UBC”. Completing the draft report was time-consuming, but I was comfortable with the layout of the report given the feedback I received about the report’s outline in earlier modules. I don’t feel terrible satisfied with my draft report – certain sections lack depth – but I’m confident that I will be happy with its final state. I have attached a copy of my formal report draft for reference.

Peer Review of Leo Kim’s Formal Report Proposal

I feel that my peer-review of Leo Kim’s formal report proposal was my best peer-review to date. In prior peer-reviews, I felt that my recommendations and criticisms were very obvious surface-level; I wasn’t making any criticisms about the semantics of an argument, or the style with which a narrative was presented. In reviewing Leo Kim’s report draft, my comments were significantly more substantive and personalized that before, and I’m satisfied with the feedback I provided as a result. I hope that my peer-review is useful for his final report.

Enclosed: Ben_Maxfield_First_Draft

Progress with the Report

ENGL 301 unit two began with the creation of a proposal for a formal report. The report would require us to “investigate, analyze, and recommend action on a problem, an inefficiency, or a deficiency in a public setting”. I found that brainstorming was the most difficult part of the process. The ideas that came to me initially were either too large in scale to effectively research or were not related to any particular community.

I have a good handle on the next-steps and roadmap for completing the report. My methodology is well defined, and I understand how each individual piece will complement the cohesive whole. I am looking forward to completing the formal report.

Professional Social Media Network

As an intermission from assignments related to the formal report, I researched some of the best-practices for using LinkedIn. I have had previous experience with professional networking, but the information I compiled was still novel and useful to me.

Peer Review & Process

I completed a peer review of Kelly Kim’s work. Her proposal was well written, and I could tell that she was passionate about the topic of the report. From the review that I wrote and the feedback I received, I learned a great deal about the importance of forming a strong narrative. With so many moving parts in a proposal, it can be easy to lose track of the high-level ideas. Strongly tying all facets of a proposal to the overarching purpose of the report is an extremely effective narrative tool. I have learned that my writing is often very good at constructing and supporting a narrative but struggles more often at the sentence level. This insight from peer-review will be very helpful as I write in the future.

Although my experience with peer-review is limited, feedback from my peers and instructor have allowed me to gain perspective on what makes “good” peer review. I believe in the power of the peer review process, and I am looking forward to improving the quality of my feedback as my peer-review skills improve.

Peer Review of Ben’s Research Proposal for Formal Report

Revised Research Proposal for Formal Report

Choosing a Term & Writing

ENGL 301 unit one was a three-part process – we were first asked to take a relatively technical term and define it in a way that would be intelligible for non-technical readers. I found that a greater distance between the perceived and actual complexity of a concept, assuming the former is larger than the latter, leads to more satisfying explanations. I chose the term “Binary Search Tree” as my relatively technical term.

I learned about different types of definitions as the work began, including sentence, parenthetical, and expanded definitions. I felt very comfortable with the sentence and expanded definitions. In particular, I was pleased with my “Analysis of parts” expanded definition because it nicely detangled the “perceived” and “actual” complexity of my chosen term. Conversely, I wasn’t satisfied with my understanding of the parenthetical definitions at the time of submission.

Reviewing

Following the submission of our own definitions, my group began pairing-up to peer review each other’s definitions. Reviewing Jake Moh’s submission required some careful thought because it was very well assembled, and it would lead me to focus my feedback on broader themes in his writing. I focused on providing feedback in a way that was concise, actionable, and thoughtful. Completing the feedback was very satisfying, in large part because I had enjoyed improving the already-excellent work of a team member.

Concluding Thoughts

I was pleased to find that I had not received a significant amount of feedback from my partner. I had misinterpreted one portion, and produced a few logistical errors, but most of my partner’s feedback was less clerical. After fixing my parenthetical definition, I thought carefully through the provided feedback and applied most of the suggestions to some degree. With these changes in place, I am very pleased with the final state of my definitions. The act of writing, reviewing, and being reviewed, improved my ability in all three areas. Similar to the task of “defining a term at various levels”, I can now see the review process as a similar sort of hierarchy. Review begins at the obvious errors and ends with the semantics, where more knowledge of the subject and the document’s purpose is required for each additional pass. I’m looking forward to applying, and improving, my technical writing skills over the course of the semester.

Peer Review Report on Expanded Definition of “Binary Search Tree”

Revised Definition Assignment – “Binary Search Tree”