Unit One Reflection Blog
It has been a long time since I have enrolled into a credited course, and certainly has been a challenging writing journey. In the most recent writing assignment, I was asked to choose a complex term and to define it using the methods outlined in the textbook. I picked the term “Methemoglobinemia’ – a medical condition which babies can appear blue if they have consumed food or water that is contaminated with nitrates. This is a term I learnt 12 years ago when I was studying at BCIT and I have not encountered a case in my 12-year Environmental Health Officer career. When I revisited this term at the beginning of the week, I had a good idea how I wanted to write the definition and what information I needed to include in the writing. There were a few challenges I faced during the writing process:
- the limited diagrams I could find on the Internet that could properly illustrate the concept I wanted to discuss,
- whether the conveyed information would create confusions to my target audience, and
- whether I made serious grammatical errors which would affect the quality of this assignment.
I appreciate how this course is designed which allows my peers to critique my writing skill and point out areas where need to be corrected. Evidently, my peer reviewer, Diana Choi, identified some missing articles, which is one of my usual grammatical mistakes that has been brought to my attention in other occasions (link to the peer review is available at the end of this blog). In addition, there was a lack of explanation on a visual (i.e. Figure 1) I used in the assignment, which needed to be further elaborated to reduce confusions. I concur with her comments. After reviewed my own writing several times, I have decided to remove the first visual as it does not improve the clarity of the definition (finalized document is enclosed in this blog below). In addition, I have started editing my writing in a methodical manner:
- Sentence structures
- Tenses
- Prepositions
- Articles
- Punctuation
I understand that this process is time-consuming; and my writing is not perfect in this assignment. However, from Diana’s review, I have made a good progress by developing a straightforward description of the term “methemoglobinemia”. I am confident that by continue practicing self-editing and reflections, my English writing skill will be improved. I look forward to the upcoming assignments, peer reviews and the reflections of my writing style for the remaining of the course.