Monthly Archives: August 2021

After four months of ENGL 301, I have gained a lot of knowledge on technical writing in a professional setting, such as report proposal, progress report, formal report, business letter. Besides, I have improved many practical skills as well, such as how to effectively expanding professional network and how to schedule my time for a huge project.

My strength
Having various working experiences before, I am very proactive and good at communicating with my team. I created a team group chat where we exchange ideas and ask questions. I had a wonderful time with my team.
Besides, I showed strong organizational skills and time management. Even though my summer schedule was pretty busy, I still managed to finish every assignment on time with decent quality and never delayed any assignment or communication with the instructor and my peers.

My weakness
Even though I finished most of the assignments with good quality, I have to mention that I need to read the requirement/ instructions more carefully. For example, in the progress report, we were asked to attach the survey questions in a survey tool provided by UBC. However, I missed that piece of information and posted my survey questions on my personal blog as text. It took a few days to change back to the survey tool, which has wasted some valuable time for survey distribution. from this experience, I have learned that I have to carefully read and understand the requirements. And I found out that reading them out loud would help me concentrate on those tiny details.

Skills, strength and my career

Throughout the course, I have learned many useful and practical techniques on technical writing and communication in professional settings. I was exposed to various communication documents, such as memos, peer reviews, business letters.
Here are some skills I have gained or improved in ENGL 301:

Writing a proposal
Knowing and specifying your audience in the proposal is one of the most important things in writing a proposal. In my very first draft, I did not address my targeted audience which was pointed out by my instructor later. This helps remind me of knowing your audience whenever you write to someone.

Time management and organizational skills
Even though the incident of survey tool wasted a few days in my report project, I still managed to keep up with my scheduled timeline and received over 120 responses on my survey. Such strong time management skills would help me in my future career.

Web folio and networking skills
ENGL 301 guided me to build my very first personal website which could show great benefit in my future job searching. Also, I have learned a lot about effectively expanding my professional network via various tools such as LinkedIn.

Structure
The whole web folio is based on my personal blog during ENGL 301. I structured and organized my web folio according to the requirements from the instructor. The most important thing is to identify the reader. Since I am looking to get into the industry right after graduation, I decided to design my web folio to be attractive to my potential employers.

Home Page and About Me
In this section, I included a welcome message to the reader and navigate them through my web folio. Also, I included some highlights of this web folio.
Next, in the section of “About Me”, I introduced myself to the reader including my past experience and my career goal.

App Package and Resume
The most important section in this web folio, as I am trying to convince my future employers that I am capable and diligent. The application package contains three comments: a resume, a cover letter, and three letters requesting reference. I have put the resume on another page so that the reader can directly see my resume by simply clicking it without downloading. This represents one of the key ideas of this course – to know and attract your audience.

My Best Work
A collection of revised posts that I have written this summer. Going through all those posts gave me a sense of achievement. In this course, we have covered a wide range of topics in technical writing, from business letters to LinkedIn practice, from report proposal to peer review practice. All of these will become valuable experiences for us to practice in future professional settings.

Blog (Reflections)
This best summarizes my ENGL 301 journey. Each reflection post represents the summary and lessons learned from that particular unit. Writing those reflections will help me to rethink the process of writing and remind me what I have learned from this unit.