Email Memorandum
To: Dr. Paterson, Instructor of ENGL 301, University of British Columbia
From: Darius Zhang, Student of ENGL 301<zhangzhengqiao2018@gmail.com>
Date: September 20, 2020
Subject: Letter of Application
As requested in lesson 1:2, I have posted my Letter of Application on my blog. Please find my Letter of Application attached below.
The Letter of Application includes:
- A summary of my academic background
- A description of my strengths and weaknesses
- My learning philosophy and my contact information
Please let me know if there’s more information required.
Encl. Letter of Application
301 Darius Zhang Application Letter
Application Letter
3013 University Blvd
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2
Sep 20th, 2021
University of British Columbia,
2329 West Mall
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4
Subject: Application Letter
Dear ENGL 301 classmate,
Please consider my application for your professional writing team in ENGL 301 for this semester. I am a 4th-year Interdisciplinary Studies student, and I study Business, Asian and Chinese courses, and I will graduate next year.
In the Interdisciplinary Studies program, students can choose courses from three disciplines. I believe during my years of studying Business courses, I have experience in writing business reports and business proposals, which would make me helpful in providing useful suggestions in the latter half of the course. Before becoming a member of UBC, I was an SFU student majoring in Economics, in order to transfer to UBC, I used all of my time studying, which is why I have no job experience. Nevertheless, I believe my dedication to school work would make me a good candidate.
My learning philosophy is that learning is not about remembering but about building new knowledge based on old knowledge. I hope we can build new knowledge together in this course! If you are interested in forming a team with me, please contact me at: zhangzhengqiao2018@gmail.com@gmail.com. Thank you for your consideration. I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Darius Zhang.
Email Message to My Writing Team Members
1.
From Darius Zhang <zhangzhengqiao2018@gmail.com>
To: Catherine Yu <catherineyu5466@gmail.com>
Subject: Team Building
Date: Sep20, 2021
Dear Catherine,
I have reviewed your application letter, and I believe you are an excellent candidate for a professional writing team.
I am impressed by your working rich experience, and I believe these experiences must have made you become a great team member. If I may ask, can you please join me for the writing team this semester? Attached is my application letter. Looking forward to your reply.
Best, Darius.
301 Darius Zhang Application Letter
2.
From: Darius Zhang <zhangzhengqiao2018@gmail.com>
To: Yang Liu <younglll2015@gmail.com>
Subject: Team Building
Date: Sep20, 2021
Dear YangLiu,
I have reviewed your application letter, and I believe you are an excellent candidate for a professional writing team.
Your research experience and your dedication to writing courses impress me, and your learning philosophy further made me believe that we would make a great team. If I may ask, can you please join me for the writing team this semester? Attached is my application letter. Looking forward to your reply. Best, Darius.
301 Darius Zhang Application Letter
3.
From: Darius Zhang <zhangzhengqiao2018@gmail.com>
To: Jenny Li < jiayijennyli@yahoo.ca>
Subject: Team Building
Hi Jenny,
Thank you for replying! I have forwarded my Facebook ID to Catherine. After reviewing your Application Letter, I believe we can form a great team together.
I think it is great that we take this opportunity to learn business writing when we do not have any job experience yet. We can all study collaboratively and improve. Thank you for accepting my invitation. Looking forward to working with you.
Best,
Darius.
301 Darius Zhang Application Letter
Definition Assignment
For the assignment, the term I chose is a term that I learned in my Chinese course: “Dao” (or Tao) “Dao” is a very abstracted term, but it is very important in Chinese culture. Students who major in Chinese will encounter this term some point in their learning. Thus, only by understanding this term, students can understand the essence of Chinese culture.
What is “Dao”?
“Dao” can be interpreted as the “meaning of someone’s life”, or it could be interpreted as “kindness in someone’s heart”, or it could be interpreted as moralism. In Merriam Webster’s dictionary, “Dao” is defined as “ the unconditional and unknowable source and guiding principle of all reality as connived by Taoist” or “the process of nature by which all things change and which is to be followed for a life of harmony” (Merriam-Webster)
How did it develop?
The concept of “Dao” was developed by Taoist. Taoist is a Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu (c.500 BCE), who introduced Taosim. According to Emily Mark: “Taosim emphasizes doing what is natural and going with the follow in accordance with the Tao, a cosmic force which follows through all things and binds and releases them” (Mark, 2016). However, this statement by Mark is only one of the beliefs people have for Taosim. When I read Lao Tzu’s book, and combined his followers writings, I think Taoism is not about not doing anything and let things be. Rather, it is about accepting all the things (good and bad) along the way. As long as the person is still chasing his or her “Dao”, then his or her behaviour should be directed by the “Dao”, rather than the good things or the bad things that comes in the way.
Example
An abstract term such as “Dao” can be understood with examples. No one will know their “Dao”in the beginning, people will know their after they going through dramatic changes in their lives. For example, when one pursues money, and finds that money become useless when the people that he/she loves passed away, then he/she realizes what’s more important. As figure 1 indicate, nothing should be overly pursued, when one breaks the balance, either this person will become madness or this person will understand what to give up and what to pursue.
Figure 1. Nouah’s Ark. https://www.nouahsark.com/img/religions/what_is_taoism_01.php
Mark, E. (2016). Taoism. https://www.worldhistory.org/Taoism/
Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Tao. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved Sept30, 2021, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Tao
Unit 1 Reflection
In the first unit of the ENGL 301 course, we were tasked to set up our blog, writing bios, emails, a memo, a definition assignment and peer review. In reflecting on the process of completing this unit, I came to realize the purpose of each of the assignment.
Writing emails to protential team members is not just inivitations to form a team, it also tasked me to write in a professional manner. The style of the emails is more business-like than academic. Compared to emails, the writing style of the memo is more neat, and the content is more concise. I think this is because different business writings have their own purpose, and our writing style should stick to that purpose.
Writing the definition assignment and the peer review is a new experience for me. The definition assignment tasked me to write three different definitions: parenthetical definion, sentence definition, and an expanded definition of a technical term. The purpose of this assignment is to explain the term in a way that is non-insular. The term I chosen is from my Chinese major–“Dao”. I really like this term because I recently start to realize what this term mean. I read a novel about revenge, and this story was based in the Tang dynasty. The main character (a princess) wanted to revenge and kill the new King, because the new King murdered her entire family and then took the power from the old king’s hands. On her way to revenge, she start to realize that the although the new king murdered her family, he is indeed a wise king for her people. By realizing this, she finds her “Dao”, which is to protect the country and her citizens, she knows that she needs to let her hate go. This story impressed me and which is why I had a whole new perspective on “Dao” and chose to write it. The peer review that my team member Jenny Li wrote me makes me realize that there’s a huge gap between “knowing something” and “explaining something”, especially when it comes a philosphical term like “Dao”. I learned that I can’t explain in a way that would make everyone understand what I mean, even though I provided a standard definition for the term. The appraoch I took in the revision process is to induce resonance, using simple examples to make my audience understand.
Please see the attached for the revised definition assignment : 301 Revised Definition DZ
To summarize my experience of unit 1, the part I like the most is writing the definition assignment and the peer review. I find the joy in reading my peers’ assignment and learn from their writing style. When writing peer review for Jenny, I also came to know my own weaknesses and parts I can improve in my own writing. Collaberation really makes the whole learning process much faster and better.
Unit 3 Reflection
I enjoyed Unit 3’s assignments very much, especially the business letter & complaint letter. I also had a lot of fun reading instructions about “You Attitude assignment”. I think the theme of this unit is to study the “business tone”. When we communicate with others in the workplace, it is important for us to consider our audience. If we want to maintain a business or professional relationship with our audience, then we should adopt an appropriate tone, even when we are complaining something that they did.
First, in the “You Attitude Assignment”, we were writing at a position that offer help/recommendations for others. When we are recommending others what they can do or cannot do, we shouldn’t make our audience feel like we are instructing them what they should or should not do. Eliminating the pronoun “you” can help us achieve this aim. Reflecting on this matter, I do agree that the difference between ” You should say this..” & “It is recommend that adding xxxx…” is large, the latter does sound more polite and less condescending. This intrigued me because I think there’s more tricks in emlinating the pronoun “you”. I learned in one of my English class that, if we delete the pronoun, then our tone will be imperative. For example “Close the door!” , “Be Quiet”. Now after a second thought, even we add a pronoun to these kind of phrases, our tone is still imperative : “Close the door, you!” In my perspective, the tone is not so much about whether we use the pronoun or not, but how we phrase our message. For example, if our context has determined that we are in a position offers help/recommendation, then eliminating the pronoun means we want our message to be less personal.
Second, in the “Business Letter & Complaint Letter” assignment, I learned that when discussing personal issues, the pronoun “you” or “I” should be used occasionally. The trick here is to figure out whether you want the audience to focus on you, or them. I tried to balance between the use of “I” and “Your company” in this assignment, because I think if I focused too much on what happened to me, I will get my audience defensive, as I am writing a complaint letter. In responding to complaints, I tried to build goodwill by using gift card and apologies. I think people are more willing to let the issue go if they get some true benefits. Otherwise, customers can always sue a store that are mean to them, and with the use of social media, customers can also let other people resist to buy stuff in that store.
Third, in drafting the final report assignment, I am kind of frustrated to see how I only got 13 responses (now 20) from the survey. I thought I will at least get 50 responses, because my survey is concerned with how students could learn better in the program. I guess not many people is interested to have assessment in non-traditional classrooms.
Finally, I really want to say thank you to my peer review writer Catherine Yu, who have wrote a very detailed and sincere review for my draft. I learned more ways to analyze data from her peer review, at first, I thought the data section is just to bring the result, but now I think I can combine my literacy review (what I learned from my secondary source) to analyze my primary source.