MEMORANDUM
To: Jenny Zhu, ENGL 301 Student
From: Jobina Tamminga, ENGL 301 Student
Date: December 5, 2019
Subject: Formal Report Draft Peer Review
Your formal report draft was reviewed, and comments on your draft are included below.
First Impressions:
From a first glance, it is clear that you are passionate about the reduction of plastic and have thought a lot about this project. Your first draft is well written, though could use some work in a few key areas.
Title Page:
The title page is well presented, though has a few areas of improvement. The title might catch more eyes if it is in the centre of the page rather than the top. The title might also benefit from being reworded. The report analyzes the single-use plastic consumption of UBC Geering Up, and then then proposes ways to improve. The current title indicates that the report only focuses on the reduction of the single-use plastics rather than the analysis aspect and may give the wrong message to the manager of UBC Geering Up.
Table of Contents:
The titles and overall organization of the table of contents are well done, though may benefit from keeping each line equally spaced out. Instead of putting the last word of each title on a new line, you could keep each title on its own line. It also may be unnecessary to include the word (body) next to the data section since these are equivalent in this case. The table of contents may also benefit from being on one page instead of breaking into two pages, though fixing the line spacing may also fix this issue as well. Lastly, it may make more sense to start the letter subsections over when you switch from the introduction to the data section.
Introduction:
The introduction is well structured with short sections which makes it easy for the reader to follow. The introduction may be a bit long as it includes some unnecessary information. The interview and survey questions may fit better in an appendix or in the data section where you then talk about the results of the interviews and surveys. The introduction should just include and overview of the topic, not such a detailed methodology. On the other hand, it is not clear from the introduction how UBC Geering Up actually contributes to producing plastic. It may be good to be more specific here. Your introduction may also benefit from including a section about what questions you aim to answer throughout your report. What topics will you discuss?
Data Section:
Overall, the data section is very informative and achieved its purpose of presenting data to the reader. The data section is well organized, and information is presented in a logical manner. One suggestion for the whole data section is to make sure that the headings of the sections match the section headings laid out in the table of contents.
The Role of Plastics at Geering Up:
This section is very informative and well done, though may benefit to reference Figure 1 when talking about the photo. The sections of different initiatives at Geering Up flowed very nicely.
Impact of Plastics:
To follow up with your question about section H, I do not think that it would add value to the report. The impact of plastic is clearly negative, though if you wanted to expand on this point further you could add some of this information in the introduction or other sections where you already speak about the harmful effects of microplastics and plastics in general.
Impact of Plastics at Geering Up:
This section has very nice visuals, and a great description about the results. A suggestion might be to either have a few less diagrams or elaborate more on each result. For instance, why do you think that there was such a high discrepancy between the answers for Figure 4? The data from the interviews are summarized very nicely.
Proposed Solutions for Plastic Reduction:
Proposing alternative products for each item used by Geering Up is a great idea, though some proposed items left me with questions. Why is using Scotch tape or grafting tape better than using duct tape? Are these solutions viable to implement? The general suggestions all made sense and were in bullet form which made it very easy to read.
Summary and Overall Interpretation of Findings:
This section summarizes the overall findings concisely and clearly, though data from research papers are mentioned here and not elaborated on. It may benefit your paper to either include the research findings in the data section so that you can summarize them here or not include them at all. The conclusion should not be introducing new information.
Recommendations:
Your recommendation section is excellent. This section is to the point and summarizes the proposed solutions very nicely. Great job!
Organization:
Overall, the report is organized into smaller sections that logically flowed together. The sections are clear and effective at all points. There are no big chunks of text throughout the report.
Style:
The tone of the report is quite objective and emphasizes different opinions throughout. The report is very reader friendly and emphasizes a you-attitude throughout, great work!
Design:
The graphics used are all visually pleasing and eye catching. A suggestion might be to space them out a bit more, as they are all in one spot and may break up more of your text throughout the report.
Grammar and Typos:
Your report is well written, though here are a few grammatical fixes you might want to incorporate into your final report:
- Changing the first sentence of section Ga) instead of “for grades K – 12 students” to “for grades K-12”
- Changing “About half of the people” to “About half of participants” in section Ia)
Overall:
Your report is very well done and is organized logically. Plastic reduction strategies are very interesting, and very relevant to issues we all face on a daily basis. Here is a summary of my suggestions below:
- Centralizing and re-wording the report title on the title page
- Spacing each line on the table of contents equally
- Starting the section letter back at “A” when moving between the introduction and data section
- Moving the interview and survey questions to the data section or an appendix
- Elaborating on why your proposed materials are better than the currently used ones
- Spacing out your diagrams
Enclosure: 301 Jenny Zhu Formal Report Draft
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