Month: December 2017

One of the main issues I had this term was writing for the audience. It seemed like a sample task, but often when I began writing I found it difficult. I would often realize at the end of completing an assignment that I hadn’t appealed to the audience I was writing for. This was a particular challenge for the formal report. For my report, I had issues explaining how the issue I was writing my report on was relevant to the reader, and instead often focused on how it was relevant to UBC students (which was not the intended audience). Another challenge was learning to write with YOU attitude. This was again related to writing for the intended reader,  so overall this seemed to be the largest challenge for me in this course.

In terms of what went smoothly this term, I found writing the peer reviews and reflection blogs rather straightforward. For the peer reviews, I found it easy to identify what was done well in my writing partner’s work, and what could be improved upon. For the reflection blogs, I didn’t find it challenging to reflect upon my previous work, and discuss what went well and what did not. This kind of reflective or analytical writing was much easier for me than writing letters or reports that required us to use YOU attitude and write for some professional audience.

I believe the wide range of courses I’ve taken and me building my critical thinking skills has set me up well for graduate school and future research. Over the course of my degree, I have learned a wide range of subjects, and this has allowed me to apply concepts I learned in one course to what I’m learning in a different course. This will be important to research, since you will often have to apply concepts across different disciplines in order to overcome obstacles. As well, I’m a hardworking student who is persistent and willing to overcome struggles that will definitely be encountered when doing research. Persistence and ambition are often just as important as having a firm grasp of the material being researched when it comes to overcoming challenges.

Overall, the reflective blogs written this term have been extremely useful for me reflecting on my work over the course of the term, and I believe they were invaluable to my learning this term. They allowed me to reflect upon what I was doing well, and what I could improve upon.

One concept that was enforced further by completing the web folio was learning to write for your intended audience. For my web folio, I had to make it focus on academics, and it was important throughout that I made sure that whatever I was writing would be important for my audience (in my case, a graduate school). For example, in my home page, I provided a link to one of my research interests (Numerical Linear Algebra). Making sure that research interests are clear is invaluable for a student who wants to move onto grad school after a Bachelor’s degree. As well, finding a supervisor in a specific area is key, so this is another reason that it’s very important to make it clear exactly what you want to research. As well, the hyperlink to my LinkedIn profile outlines my research interests more carefully, and also provides a list of relevant upper year classes I have taken. Again, this is for the purpose of meeting the needs of my intended audience.

Another important idea I learned from designing my web folio is how to structure websites and webpages in such a way that readers won’t struggle to navigate the website. For example, I ensured that each of my individual webpages were easy to access, by making sure that they were easily visible in a menu on the main page of my website. Another way I designed my website to appeal to the reader was in my “BEST WORK” section. On this page, I made sure each assignment title was clearly bolded, so that each of my pieces of writing were clearly separated.

Another important lesson I learned from completing the web folio was how to go back and revise work I had completed in the past (not necessarily recently). This required me to reread the work, and try to determine exactly what ideas I was trying to get across when I first wrote it. For my reflection blog in unit 2, I decided to go back and edit it. This proved to be challenging, since remembering my exact thought process when I was writing it wasn’t easy. Ensuring that even if I made edits to the work, that the writing would still flow well, was particularly difficult.

Overall, completing the web folio required me to use many skills, many of which were not just writing-oriented skills. It allowed me to bring together all of my best work from ENGL 301 this term, and everything I learned in the course up until this point.