In this unit, I was partnered up with Cheryl from my writing team to peer review my three definitions of the term “radiotracer”. Initially, when I wrote the three definitions, I tried to have it written in a way that is as straight forward as possible. That way, my intended audience can fully understand the term without getting confused. Although I have tried to eliminate jargons as best as I can, it wasn’t until when Cheryl point out the sentence “since cancer cells are known to uptake glucose at a much faster rate, deoxyglucose are commonly used as tracers in cancer patients” that I realized it may be confusing for patients who have no knowledge of the chemistry terms. To avoid that, I decided to make a link between the term “deoxyglucose” and “glucose” by adding a parenthesis definition beside the term “deoxyglucose”.
While I was peer reviewing Cherly’s definitions, I had noticed that she gave quite a bit of history behind her term and where the term was originated from. One of the takeaways from reading her definition was that I find it very interesting as a reader to be given background information of the term first before fully defining it. This was also one of the suggestions she had given me regarding my definition. Although I did briefly state the year of when it was discovered, I did not include the history of when tradiotracers were used in humans. I have since added the names of the scientists who discovered the technology as well as the year of the discovery.
It is definitely interesting how I didn’t think explanations for pictures were necessary until I read others’ work. While reading my team members’ definitions, I was able to compare and contrast the different writing styles. For those who had included an explanation of their pictures, I found it much easier to understand why that specific picture was used. However, for those who did not give an explanation of the pictures attached, myself included, I find it very difficult to digest the visuals, especially diagrams. In my case, I thought the diagram was self explanatory because unconsciously, I knew what it meant. On the other hand, Cheryl, who did not have any background in medical physics found it rather confusing. Instead of just attaching the diagram, I have revised it to include a short sentence explaining what radiotracer was used for in that specific case.
Overall, it was a great learning experience to be able to revise others’ work. During the peer review process, I was able to reflect on my own work. I was surprised to find how much editing I was able to do on my own simply through reviewing others’ work. After receiving feedback from my peers, I was able to write a clear and concise definition of the term radiotracer.
Attached is word document of my revised definitions: Definitions – Radiotracer
Here is the Link to Cherly’s peer review of my definitions: https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl301-99a-2019wa/2019/09/26/peer-review-of-your-definition-radiotracer/