Peer Review: Proposal to Reduce Cost of Expenses at the UBC Vancouver Campus During the Pandemic

To: Eric Zhang, Member of Team Connect4

From: Hansol Yang, Member of Team Connect4

Date: February 17th, 2022

Subject: Peer Review – Proposal to Reduce Cost of Expenses at the UBC Vancouver Campus During the Pandemic

Thank you for your work on the research proposal assignment for Unit 2.1 in ENGL 301 course. Your research proposal to reduce the cost of expenses in the UBC Vancouver campus during the pandemic is very interesting. As the proposal points out the real-life problems, reading the proposal was highly enjoyable. Please see the review of the proposal below with suggestions for improvements.

First Impression:
The proposal identifies the actual problem of high living costs in the UBC Vancouver campus using well-organized sentences and paragraphs. The proposal contains all the requirements of the assignment in the correct format.

Organization:
– The proposal is well-organized, following the right format introduced in the textbook.

• The titles are big and bolded, which makes the contents easy to distinguish.
• Please state the titles of the person receiving the proposal (Professor Erika in this case) and yourself.

Audience Description and Introduction:

• The audience description declares that the staff, store owners, and managers will be able to understand the students’ opinions and make some actions on the living cost problem by reading the research report. By showing the expected effects of the research on the audiences, the paragraph makes the purpose of the research more obvious.
• If you focus on suggesting solutions to the targets (staff, store owners, and managers) and not expand the audience to UBC students, the report might have better organization concentrating on solutions.
• The introduction is very interesting, arousing readers’ attention by quoting students’ voices and giving detailed examples.

Statement of Problem and Proposed Solution:

• The statement of problem states the core points of the students’ financial difficulty; the overpriced products offered on the campus.
• Some parts will be easier to understand if more explanations are added. For example, the first sentence, ‘Tuition have been increasing multiple times for the past ten years, but the cost of studying on-campus have stayed the same,’ makes me wonder why is it a problem if the living cost has not increased for ten years.
• The proposed solution is very well written, giving a good, simple suggestion for the problem. At the same time, the proposed solution makes the readers feel the necessity of the research as the paragraph implies that more realistic and acceptable solutions are required.

Scope and Methods:

• The overall scope covers the research subject well.
• As the proposal title focuses on the problem in the pandemic, I suggest adding the effect of the pandemic in the scope. For example, ‘How much do the students feel the need for reducing the living costs on the campus, especially during the pandemic?’
• Interviewing store managers on the UBC campus and surveying UBC students seem to be a proper method for the research.
• The secondary source needs more clarification. If you are planning to interview the store managers outside of UBC or collect the price information of their products for comparison, the method written as a secondary source should be the primary source. Please refer that a secondary source is a document or recording that relates or discusses information originally presented elsewhere. (Wikipedia, n.d.)

Qualifications and Conclusion:

• The qualifications paragraph mentioning your experience as a UBC student is a good support to the proposal.
• The conclusion properly summarizes the proposal by emphasizing the problem.
• To improve the conclusion, one way might be pointing out the necessity of the research. For example: ’This can be done simply by adjusting the price of overpriced items. However, the solution is hard to realize since the stores on campus always pursue better profits. By this research, I hope to find more realizable solutions for both students and store owners.’

Expression:

• Most expressions are clear and easy to understand, but some sentences need to be more simplified.
  For example: ‘Many of these expenses are a necessity when studying on campus and the students are forced to spend on overpriced products.’ -> ‘The students are forced to spend expenses on overpriced, but necessary products.’

Grammar and Typos:

• There are some grammar errors especially in using verbs.
  For example: ‘Tuition have been increasing multiple times for the past ten years, but the cost of studying on-campus have stayed the same.’ -> ‘Tuition has been increasing multiple times for the past ten years, but the cost of studying on-campus has stayed the same.’

Concluding Comments:

The proposal clearly shows the background and plan of the research in simple expressions and accurate methodology. Please consider the points provided below while editing the proposal.

• Focusing on the targets of the suggestions in the ‘Audience Description’.
• Providing detailed explanations for the ‘Statement of Problem’
• Adding the effect of the pandemic for the research scope
• Finding the useful secondary sources
• Mentioning the need for the research in the Conclusion
• Checking the expressions and grammar, especially for the verbs

If you have any questions about the review, please feel free to ask me. Thank you for the great work. It was a pleasure reading your proposal, and hopefully, this review might be helpful for improvements.

 

 

Research Proposal for Formal Report