For Unit 3 in English 301, students were tasked with doing the majority of the work required for their formal report. Specifically, we wrote our formal report draft and provided a peer review for a member of our writing team. Unit 3 was definitely the most challenging and rewarding unit so far. It challenged me as a writer, and taught me a lot.
Formal Report
The formal report was both enjoyable and challenging. As I have a background in life sciences/computer sciences, writing my report was my first experience tackling a problem that could be classified as a business issue. Specifically, the subject of my formal report was on introducing daily specials at Cactus Club Cafe to increase customer volume during dry season (January to April). This pushed me outside of my comfort zone in many ways. I found it more difficult than I had anticipated to find sources for my formal report. I mainly had to examine statistics and then draw my own conclusions from them, as opposed to having the conclusions stated for me.
Designing the qualitrics survey for my report was a rewarding experience. It was especially difficult at first to word questions in a positive tone while also ensuring that they were not leading questions. This challenged my writing skills, and through much fine-tunning, I was able to come up with a survey that I believe met all the necessary criteria for a good survey. The distribution of the survey went smoother than anticipated. I was able to distribute it to many friends in the lower mainland, and found the use of old Facebook messenger chats for classes I had taken to be a valuable resource to spread my survey. I was able to garner 29 responses; although I wish this number could have been higher, with no incentives attached to filling out my survey, I was still pleased with the results. I had used qualitrics before, but never knew that the application had built-in software to generate tables and figures for your survey questions. I found this very convenient as I was concerned about transforming my data into tables and figures.
Composing the interview questions and conducting the interview with the head manager of Cactus Club Cafe Park Royal was my favourite part of Unit three. It was very rewarding to get out into the “real world” and apply the lessons I had learned from the Instructor’s Blog and the textbook. My manager offered me very valuable information, and shared a lot of enthusiasm towards reading my final report. I am looking forward to finishing and sharing it report with her.
Writing the report was initially very challenging. The first two days, I made very little progress as I had “writers block”. However, I decided to change my approach, and write my report in note form. This allowed me to get all my ideas down on paper without the constraints of proper sentence structure and grammar. From there, the road map for writing my report became clear, and I was able to find momentum and flow. The organization of the structure was difficult at first, as Microsoft Word did not automatically format the report to meet the necessary requirements. Nevertheless, the more I formatted, the easier it became. Writing the report also vastly improved my ability to maintain a positive tone in writing. It was difficult, as there was some data that I collected that raised questions about the validity of my proposed solution to increase customer volume. However, consulting the textbook and previous work that I had done in ENGL 301 allowed me to ensure a positive tone was maintained. Overall, the process of writing the report was the most challenging yet rewarding assignment I have had in this course so far. I am looking forward to incorporating the peer-review comments I received and finalzing a report I will be proud of.
Peer Review
The peer review process for the formal report was a stressful one for me. Initially, the two other members of my writing team had extraneous circumstances that prevented them from submitting their reports on the due-date. This caused a lot of stress for me, as on the day the peer review was due, they had not yet posted their formal report drafts. However, this proved to be an invaluable lesson in dealing with difficult situations with teammates. With the support of Dr. Paterson, I was able to communicate in a friendly manner with my writing team and share my concerns with them. This led to one of my members posting their report the day I communicated my concerns. As such, I was able to write a peer-review for one of my writing team members.
The writing of the peer review for an assignment as large as the formal report was rather difficult. In past classes, I have written peer-reviews on google docs, which allowed me to highlight and comment on the document itself. For this peer-review, we had to compose a memorandum style peer-review. This put me outside of my comfort zone, as I had to pay special attention in how I worded my constructive criticism to ensure my writing team partner knew which areas of their report I was referring to. However, this also allowed me to really think about the wording I used when providing review, increasing its quality.
I also found the feedback I received to be helpful. I especially appreciated having a second pair of eyes to catch any grammar mistakes or typos that I missed in my report. Finally, my peer-reviwers offered me great advice in terms of formatting my figures to make them more readable. I initially described the axes of my figures in the figure caption. Using the suggestions provided to me, I will now change that around so that the X- and Y-axis titles are in the figures themselves, making the information presented in the figures easier to digest.
Concluding Remarks
Overall, I found Unit Three to be the most challenging yet rewarding unit of the term thus far. My writing skills were challenged, but through overcoming these challenges, I can see myself improving as a technical communicator. I am very much looking forward to finalzing my report and presenting to Cactus Club Cafe.
I have attached my Formal Report Draft as a PDF below.
Enclosure: Formal Report Draft ENGL 301
