In the third unit of the Engl301 Technical Writing course, students are required to organize and analyze the information collected after completing an interview or survey and use it to create the first draft of a formal report. In my project, I first distributed a survey on the Guixi community’s website through the Survey Mondky survey tool, and then organized and analyzed all the primary data collected. Finally, based on the conclusions of the data analysis, I made recommendations to the Chengdu Urban Planning Institute for road planning.
I was less confident in the early stages of preparing the first draft report because most of the data collection was not completed by the deadline. I received far fewer survey responses than I had expected (63,096 people living in the Guixi community, but I included less than 100 total data collected from the forum and from random interviews). I was afraid that the lack of sample size would lead my analysis to deviate too much from the reality. So I left the questionnaire window open for now and went ahead to finish writing the background information and methodology sections of the draft report.
Compared to that, writing the report was actually relatively easy for me. I had already completed the search for information and the construction of the basic content in the second module and created the outline of the report from it. At the same time, however, the sheer volume of information presented new difficulties for me in writing the report. I had to consolidate and compress all the information and put it all together in one report. In response, I revisited the purpose of my report and tried to put myself in the shoes of my target audience. Writing becomes easier when the central idea of the report are clear.
After completing the first part, I was surprised to find that the sample size of the online survey reached nearly 100, and started to organize and analyze the collected data using an Excel sheet. In order to increase the visualization of the distribution and trends of the sample data, I created some charts during the analysis. The combination of graphs and text makes the report more vivid and can reflect the key points of the problem more directly.
In addition, I found that peer review was actually more important than I thought. Although my partner Daniel and I had completely different topics, I also benefited from the process of reviewing his report. By reading his report carefully, I found that the logical structure of his report was very clear and the language was concise and unobtrusive. Compared with him, I need to strengthen this part. But at the same time, I also found some shortcomings in his report. These common mistakes in the report also reminded me where I need to strengthen my precautions in my future writing.
Overall it was an intensive but rewarding unit. I will summarize all the lessons learned and make final revisions to the report in the coming week.