To: Brionne McWilliams, ENGL 301 Student
From: Beenish Fatima, ENGL 301 Student
Date: March 5th, 2019
Subject: Peer Review of Writing with You-Attitude Memorandum–Assignment 3.1
As requested I have reviewed your memo to Evan Crisp that demonstrates and promotes use of You- Attitude writing strategies. The memo was articulate and offered a beneficial guide on how to incorporate a reader-centered approach in writing, however for further improvement a few recommendations have been made below.
First Impressions:
The introduction of the of memo effectively characterizes the tone of the message as friendly and helpful rather than critical. The offered suggestions are comprehensive and provide detailed instructions on how to address the highlighted errors. While there is great effort placed on developing a respectful tone, it can be further improved by avoiding the use of imperative verbs.
Layout/Organization:
The layout is effective at organizing the contents of the message. The introduction fulfills it role in stating the purpose and providing a quick overview of the content. There is a subheading to body, that creates a helpful distinction between the sections and highlights the most important component of the message for the reader.
Additionally, recommendations are structured sequentially, addressing the specific components of Evan’s email in the order they appear, allowing the reader to easily follow along.
Content:
The quality of the suggestions provided in the body of the memorandum are applicable and offer constructive feedback in a positive and encouraging manner. Some further feedback for Evan that can be included: minimizing negatives in email and avoiding use of the pronouns that restrict the readers authority such as “you’.
There is repetition in some of the suggestions, specifically bullet point 7:
“Demonstrate appreciation when asking for a favor from the professor. For example, “Thank you for your time and consideration”. Acknowledging that the professor is busy may help your email to be received in a positive light.”
Compared to the last bullet point:
“Demonstrating appreciation when asking for a favor from the professor. For example, “Thank you for your time and consideration”. Acknowledging that the professor is busy may help the email be received in a positive light.”
To provide helpful feedback to Evan, it is more effective to offer a single suggestion per bullet point and mention it only once to avoid redundancy.
Writing style:
The body of the memo incorporates imperative verbs when listing suggestions (ex., include, consider and demonstrate), by avoiding their use the polite tone of the message can be further enhanced. Furthermore, this will allow the reader to perceive the feedback as suggestions for improvement rather than commands.
The writing can also be further improved by utilizing a more concise and clear approach. For example: “Communicating in a polite, professional, and respectful manner. Formally addressing the professor: Dear Dr. X; Sincerely, Your Name. Addressing the professor appropriately shows an acknowledgment of status.”, can be minimized down to just “Message can be improved by communicating in a polite, professional, and respectful manner. This can be done by formally addressing the professor and by extension acknowledging his academic status.” Removing redundant sentences in the bullet point makes it easy to follow along and narrow down the area for improvement.
Some of the listed recommendations offer restrictive negative characterizations of the writer’s email (ex. “chatty statements”), it might be more helpful to Evan if only specific methods of improvements were provided rather than identification of negative aspects of their writing.
There is a definite effort to reduce use of pronouns and determiners however, there are still some present that could potentially be avoided, for example: “Using an academic email address portrays your professionalism as a student”, could be changed to “Using an academic email address portrays professionalism as a student”. Additionally, this statement “Therefore, I have listed common strategies to follow when emailing a professional in a work setting” can be improved by creating a great focus on the reader and removing it from the writer like so: “Therefore, the listed common strategies can be applied when emailing a professional in a work setting”.
Grammar and Wording Choice:
While there is a definite flow to the body of the message it is sometimes interrupted by minor grammatical errors or sentence phrasing. A few of them are listed below for referral:
- “As you requested, I have reviewed your e-mail requesting entry into a full class”
- Can be improved to: “As requested, I have reviewed your e-mail regarding entry into a full class”
- “Providing enough background information to allow the professor to easily the student”
- Can be improved to: “By providing enough background information, it will allow the professor to easily identify the student”
- “Framing the e-mail based on the professor’s benefits…”
- Can be improved to: “Framing the e-mail based on the benefits to the professor…”
- “Focusing on the positives and address any qualifications the professor is looking for to persuade the professor into accepting a request.”
- Can be improved to: “Focusing on the positives and addressing any qualifications that might persuade the professor into accepting the request”
- Furthermore “addressing” can be changed to “presenting” to better convey the intended message.
Some recommendations can be improved in their effectiveness by wording them more as a suggestion rather than a command. For example: “do not assume that the professor knows the details about a situation” can be improved to “the professor does not usually know the context of the situation, so it is generally more helpful to provide all the relevant details.”
Concluding Statements:
The memorandum to Evan Crisp is thorough and helpful in nature, but can be improved by reviewing and fixing grammatical errors, incorporating a recommendation-based tone (contrast to a authoritative tone) and including some additional overlooked suggestions.
Hopefully, these recommendations are effective in helping you formulate future reviews of students’ written work and improve technical writing strategies especially in regards to writing with You-Attitude. Please let me know if you have any concerns or additional questions relating to this review, you can contact me at beenish.ft@alumni.ubc.ca.
Enclosure: Brionne McWilliams’ Writing with You-Attitude Memorandum
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