Unit 3 Reflection Blog
Unit three has several assignments and they all taught me how to write more professionally. The assignment that I enjoyed the most in Unit 3 is the “ Writing with You Attitude”; it taught me how to not offend my audiences and make them believe that they are the most important person in the correspondence. I learned how to avoid the pronoun “ you” in the body of correspondence, but use “you” in the introduction and the conclusion in order to make a positive impression on the reader. I also learned how to avoid imperatives within the body of my correspondence, because people are usually defensive, and using imperatives in the body of my correspondence will make them feel like I wrote to command them, instead of giving my advice. Reviewing Zhe Su’s “Writing with attitude” was a pleasure. I really enjoyed reading her assignment, because her memo offered much informative advice for Evan Crisp and the content was nicely organized. I believe her memo would be much “reader-centered ” if she could avoid the pronoun “you” within the body of her memo.
The two letters of “ Complaint” and “ Bad News” allow me to learn how business document persuade the audience to respond or act in a certain way. The tone in business letters is very important, it reflects our professionalism. Employing the appropriate tone can help us to receive the kind of response we want. Moreover, I find the textbook very useful when writing these two letters, on page 353 and 354, there are two-letter samples which clearly showed me the correct structure of the “Bad News” letter and the “Complaint” letter. I followed the guidelines in the textbook, as well as the Lesson 3:1 instructions, and they helped me to formalize my letters and complete them in a professional way.
Writing the formal report draft was a difficult process. The act of gathering data about COVID-19 in Beijing and the results from the online survey, and analyzing the feasibility of my proposed solution was a refreshing experience for me. It was a great challenge for me to identify a problem and then use research and data to come up with a possible solution. I was glad that I did the progress report and the outline of the final report early in the process because they are useful guidelines that helped me to organize my draft. Reviewing Difei Su’s final draft report helped me to learn about the structure of the final report more fully. I find this peer review assignment extremely beneficial because I was not just reviewing other’s work, I was also reflecting my own work. When I pointed out Difei Su’s draft’s strengths and weaknesses (in a polite way) according to the Instructor’s blog’s guidelines, I was also thinking about how I can improve my final report. This peer review assignment allows me to assess my own work more objectively, I also appreciate the comments that Difei Su made about my draft. While synthesizing and completing my final draft, I will be using these informative suggestions to improve my work. I look forward to completing the next Unit’s assignments, especially the final report!
Here’s my final report draft, will really appreciate any suggestions.