To: Darius Zhang, Student ENGL 301 Technical Writing
From: Catherine Yu, Student ENGL 301 Technical Writing
Date: November 20th, 2021
Subject: Peer Review of Formal Report Draft
Thank you for submitting the draft of your formal report in a timely manner. The report is organized, concise, and was a pleasure to read. You have a great start in addressing the existing problem in the Chinese-learning department regarding the absence of an assessment system used to monitor student learning. Here are some suggestions that could be used to improve your formal report.
First Impression
The report draft did an excellent job of introducing the problem of the lack of student learning assessments and makes the case of why these assessments are important to improve student learning. There is in-depth literature review on the importance of assessments in education and the types of assessments that can be used. However, certain sections of the report like the title and the conclusion is missing and other components such as the primary data analysis and figures could benefit from adding more detail.
Introduction
- The introduction does a great job of describing the current state of the Chinese-learning department and gives sufficient background information on the oral practice sessions that Chinese language program is centred around.
- There are minor errors in the grammar, as in the sentence “the oral practice sessions are part of this program, the OP organizer Victoria Ni would recruit volunteers every semester, the role of the volunteer s to help UBC students dealing with varied challenges in learning Chinese.”
- It would be helpful if OP was bracketed beside the term “oral practice” to let readers know what the abbreviation stands for.
Literature Review
- The literature review is very informative and organized.
- The figure enhances the reader’s understanding of the types of learning assessments that could be used.
- In-text citations should be added to properly reference data gathered from literature review and allow readers to easily locate sourced articles.
- The methods section is informative to understanding how graphs were generated.
- The figure should be labelled to be consistent with the formal report requirements.
- Consider describing the method of data collection in this section, for example, indicating that primary data collection was done by surveying students.
- To be consistent with maintaining a YOU attitude, the use of pronouns could be minimized to create a more professional tone. Refer to the Style section for an example of a suggested edit.
Data Section (Primary analysis)
- Great analysis of the last 2 figures presented in the primary data section. You have gathered very interesting insights on the types of assessments that students find the most beneficial.
- Strongly consider describing each of the other figures mentioned in the report instead of linking the website for the survey questions. It is better to clarify the survey questions in the actual report as the intended audience may not have the time to click through a different link and try to find your survey questions.
- Labelling the figures and writing descriptive captions for each figure will help readers better comprehend the data at hand and make the primary data more digestible to the audience.
- More content and in-depth analysis of all figures will provide even more insight on the data generated from student surveys and provide greater reasoning as to why how you came to certain conclusions or recommendations.
Recommendations
- The recommendations are well-organized and very easy to read.
- The first recommendation could be described in more detail.
- Why do you recommend a quiz as the learning assessment after OP sessions? Refer to the primary data gathered in your survey to explain why this is a feasible recommendation and to further support this point.
- The second recommendation is explained clearly and seems to be very feasible. Consider citing the primary data in this point as well to further strengthen your argument.
Conclusion
- Please include a conclusion section that summarizes the findings and the proposed solution.
Organization
- Overall, most of the components that are required in a formal report draft is present, with the exception of the title page, the conclusion, and the works cited page.
- There is a logical flow throughout the introduction and the content focuses more specifically to the problem at hand.
- More sub-headings could be used to better organize the content of the report.
- For example, the introduction could have subheadings such as background of the organization, intended audience, problem statement, primary and secondary sources used in the report, and the scope of inquiry where you list the five areas of inquiry you planned to pursue.
- Another suggestion is to merge the literature review, methods, and primary data analysis to all be under the data section.
- The methods could be used to introduce the sources of data used in this report, including the literature review section since research from published articles can be considered a secondary source of data.
Style
- The report maintains a positive and positive tone throughout.
- The removal of pronouns will be helpful in increasing professionalism as described in the you-attitude unit of this course.
- For example: “This is because the survey platform does not allow me to generate graphs based on the responses, so what I did is that I recorded their response, and then put into an Excel sheet, the below section is the graphs that I made —in order to visualize the responses” could be edited to “Since graphs could not be generated using the survey platform, responses were recorded in an Excel sheet and the graphs seen below were then produced in order to visualize the responses.”
- Without proper labeling and analysis of the survey responses, it is quite difficult to follow what the survey responses mean and how they can be interpreted to support your recommendations.
Technical
- An appropriate title page and a proper running head through the document will help you meet the title page requirements for the formal report.
- Reading over the report before submitting the final report will ensure the content is free of grammatical errors such as run-on sentences and unnecessary capitalizations.
- Keeping the figures a consistent size, labelling and describing each figure will improve readability and professionalism, as well as assist readers in better understanding your data.
Design
- The graphics could be labelled and captioned more consistently.
- The figures could be positioned more appropriately to remove the overlap of four graphics on page 8.
- The figures should be labelled with a title and the appropriate x and y axis for readers to better interpret the data.
- The spacing of subsections could be kept more consistent. For example, some headings are labelled while others aren’t and there is random white space between paragraphs. Try to keep consistent formatting and labelling throughout to improve readability of the document.
Concluding Comments
Overall, this draft is an excellent start to the what will become the final report. There was thorough discussion on the need for student learning assessments and excellent insight generated on how to best implement these assessments in Chinese-learning departments. The following suggestions can help to improve the effectiveness of the report:
- Including all the required sections such as working title, running head, conclusion, and works cited page
- Additional subheadings can be used to improve readability of the report
- Describing the survey questions and further analysis on the primary data will better support the conclusions and recommendations
- Figures can be labelled, captioned, and integrated more appropriately to improve readability and understanding of the data
- Including in-text citations and the works cited page in MLA style will allow readers to identify the corresponding articles and perform their own additional research
- Read over the document for grammatical errors before submitting the final report
I hope this peer review was helpful and will be beneficial in perfecting the formal report. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.
Bests,
Catherine
Enclosed: Darius Zhang’s Formal Report Draft
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