The first unit of my technical writing journey has been completed. It is an exited start of the course with challenges. And I believe these challenges that I have overcome will become the fuel boosting me forward in this journey.
The assignment of “Write Three Definitions” has brought me a chance to introduce a term that familiar to me but fresh to others. I was quite confidence with such a task and thinking that would be easy to handle, until I was actually planning the strategy for the writing in my mind. It was an easier said than done mission. When it comes to introduce a technical term to people who have non-technical background on it, the task itself is turning into a complicated one. From the three types of definitions to the four expansion strategies, each section was testing my ability on language organization. How to expand the definition from parenthetical and sentences to paragraphs? How to organize the overall structure of the writing? How each strategy can be linked together to explain such a complex term to the audience in detail? Questions like these were keep appearing in my mind and these also acting as a guide for my writing process to achieve the objectives. In addition, that makes me keep reminding myself to stand from the reader’s perspective while writing an article. I first learned that such a self-communicating process leads my technical writing skills to an upward spiral.
I was a bit loss and confuse on the peer review process at the beginning. This is the first time that I formally take the peer review to the writing from other people. However, reading Zainab’s definitions of “bonds” has ease my mind and turning it into a learning process for both the term itself and peer reviewing process. By the guiding of the “301-Peer-Review-form-1” form, I start to realize that the peer review is more than a reviewing process for other’s writing. It is also a reflection on my own writing when I gave suggestions. Some of my weaknesses on writing that were easily overlooked can be emerged through the peer reviewing process. The peer review is highly effective on giving a self-feedback on my writing skills.
The editing of my definitions was completed based on the suggestions that provided by Zainab. I want to appreciate for his serious and meticulous review on my assignment, which I certainly gained a lot of benefits from his detailed suggestions. This gave me feedback that how others are treating my writings. It is noticeable from those suggestions that I have difficulties with conciseness and in correct use of grammar. Suggestions from Zainab’s review may not be easy to come up from my perspective, which it helps me to expand my thinking on how to improve my technical writing skills.
Overall, from both the practice of writing the technical definitions, as well as the back and forth peer reviewing process, I believe that I have received a large amount of ideas on how to cultivate my writing skills. I wish I can get use of these ideas in the upcoming units in this course and apply them to benefit my writing in the future.
Rewritten Definition: Revised Definition
Original Deginition: https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl301-98a-2020sa/2020/06/05/technical-definitions-2/
Peer Review for Zainab: https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl301-98a-2020sa/2020/06/10/peer-review-for-zainab/
Peer Review from Zainab: https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl301-98a-2020sa/2020/06/10/peer-review-for-jiajie/