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Memorandum

 

To: Geneviève Bolduc
From: Cody Gagnon
Date: August 7, 2020
Subject: Peer Review of Geneviève Bolduc’s Formal Report Draft

Your formal report draft, Comprehensive Resource Development for the Technical Interview Preparation Club, provides information that clearly and firmly supports your recommendations. Please consider the following suggestions to further improve your formal report.

First Impressions

The proposed solution is a sensible and modest approach to a worthwhile problem. The report includes all core elements of the assignment.

Organization

  • The Introduction has many subheadings that do not appear in the Table of Contents. The Table of Contents is otherwise accurate.
  • Adding page numbers can help readers to navigate long documents.
  • The report makes appropriate use of bulleted lists and white space.

Content

At 19 pages long, the report exceeds the specified page length for this assignment (12 to 15 pages). Pruning less important details could help to focus the report.

Introduction

  • Parts of this section are written as if primary research has yet to be done. For example, in the Scope section, you write, “I plan to pursue five areas of inquiry.”
  • According to the Instructor’s Blog, the Audience section should not appear in your formal report. See the note at the bottom of this blog post: https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl301-98a-2020sa/2020/08/03/more-writing-tips-for-formal-reports-and-peer-reviews/

Data Section

Analysis of Interview Facets

  • The first paragraph in this section is quite long. Keeping paragraphs brief and to the point can help readers to stay focused and engaged.
  • Figure 1 and Figure 2 require two pull pages and may serve to disrupt the flow of the report. These figures might be better placed in the appendix.

Membership Requests

TIP Club General Improvements

  • Considering your audience can help to determine what background information they will find useful. TIP Club members seem likely to be familiar with CPSC 310, so you might consider editing the following sentence, “The reference to CPSC 310 questions is in regard to the UBC CPSC 310 software engineering course.”

Documentation

  • Visualizing 100% using a pie chart takes up considerable space and may not add much value for readers.
  • Adding commentary to quotes collected from survey responses can help readers to interpret and understand their importance. Quotes cannot necessarily speak for themselves.

Experience

  • This section uses the pronoun, “we.” Did you work with someone else on this assignment? If the assignment has multiple authors, the reader may find it helpful to know who was involved in the investigation.

Interview Experience

  • Interpretation of survey data could be useful in this section.

Work Experience

  • Figure 7 may cause readers some confusion without more context. Were survey respondents asked to rate companies on a scale from 0 to 6? What would 0 or 6 on this scale mean?

Conclusion

Summary and Interpretation of Data

  • Maintaining a formal tone can help to persuade your reader. Consider using less casual language in the following sentence: “This project also investigated whether the TIP Club would be into [emphasis added] a shared pool of resources.”

Proposed Solutions and Recommendations

  • The meaning of the word, “leaving,” may be unclear in the following sentence: “I recommend leaving the folder despite the lack of data supporting a want for this because of the limitations.” Carefully choosing unambiguous words can help to avoid misinterpretation.

Limitations

  • This section includes the sentence, “It is also why we chose to model the archive with the Laakman McDowell model,” which implies that the TIP Club has already accepted and implemented your recommendations. If that is not the case, rephrasing this sentence could help to avoid miscommunication.

References

  • Consulting multiple references can help in producing a balanced and thorough report.

Grammar and Technical Errors

Introduction

  • A comma should be placed before and after the word, “LeetCode,” in the following sentence: “These questions are pulled from the popular website LeetCode which showcases problems […].” The word, “which,” introduces a subclause and the word, “LeetCode,” is itself a subclause.

Data Section

  • The word, “is,” should be changed to “are” in the following sentence: “Some of the larger aspects that can be analysed in this context is effective communication and shared values.”
  • The words, “us with,” and the first instance of the word, “to,” should be removed from the following sentence: “These visuals provide us with a concrete path to for a prospective interviewee to follow.”

Conclusion

Summary and Interpretation of Data

  • A word seems to be missing after the word, “most,” in the following sentence: “From this, we could ascertain that the most interview aspects were analytical skills, coding skills, technical knowledge, experience, and culture fit.”

Proposed Solutions and Recommendations

  • “Google Drive” is a proper noun and should be capitalized.
  • The word, “sub-folder,” does not require a hyphen.
  • The article, “a,” should be written “an” in the following sentence: “[…] and other such items one might find under a interviewee’s resume.”

Revisions

To summarize, you may improve your formal report by:

  • Shortening the length of the report to satisfy assignment requirements.
  • Updating the Table of Contents to ensure completeness and accuracy.
  • Adding page numbers.
  • Removing the Audience section from the Introduction.
  • Using the correct tense throughout the report.
  • Placing large, disruptive figures in an appendix.
  • Considering your audience.
  • Removing unhelpful data visualizations.
  • Adding commentary to quotes and interpreting data.
  • Clarifying the use of “we” throughout the report.
  • Providing necessary context for correct interpretation of figures.
  • Maintaining a formal tone.
  • Choosing unambiguous words.
  • Consulting multiple references.
  • Correcting grammar and technical errors.

You have written an interesting and persuasive report. I hope that these suggestions help you to revise your formal report draft. Please let me know if you have any questions or comments regarding the above suggestions.

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