Introduction
Unit 3 involved writing a formal report draft and a peer review of a formal draft of another student in ENGL301. The formal report draft was composed of researching, organizing, and writing,
Formal Report Draft
Overall, the formal report draft was the hardest assignment in this course. It involved sophisticated researching and organizing before the writing. However, I was able to learn how to properly research and organize to write an effective report.
Researching
I greatly underestimated how much work is required to do research and gather data. Constructing a survey is much harder than I anticipated and required a lot of planning and thought. While developing the survey I realized that I have not thoroughly thought about what I am trying to measure and what specific approach I am going to take. I did already have a general plan and idea of the survey but I did not expect the specific details to develop the survey would be that difficult. For example, when asking about “How many years of experience should developers in our lab have?”, at first it seemed to be a simple question so I constructed multiple choice answers of 1 year, 2 years, 3year, and 4year+. It became evident that this is a poorly constructed survey question because almost every developer in the lab has less than 1 year of experience. Furthermore, I started to question the format of the answers. Could the text box be better? How about range? What is easier to understand? In the end, I decided to use a multiple-choice answer that has a smaller range (e.g. no experience, less than 6 months, between 6 months and 1 year, more than 1 year). The interview question was informative since I was able to learn about things that are not directly asked in the survey.
Organizing
Organizing the time and work required a great amount of effort. I initially did not have a strong plan and therefore struggled to collect all the data I needed in my formal report. Due to my poor planning, I had to ask some developers in the lab to the survey again with better questions. If I would do this project again, I would spend more time developing survey and interview questions, and start early on collecting data.
Writing
The writing section allowed me to state the background, address the problem, and the solution. All the data collected significantly supported my argument with figures, survey questions, and interview questions.
Peer Review
By reading Kelly’s draft of the formal report I had an opportunity to learn about how data can be effectively used to strengthen the argument. She did an excellent job organizing the sections and constructing a smooth flow of the writing. I especially liked the introduction explaining the background and the problem. The two sections were strongly supported by data through thorough research and convinced me to be serious about the topic. The solution section provided two alternatives and was extremely informative. Furthermore, by reviewing Kelly’s report I was able to review some writing techniques such as “You” and avoiding the negatives technique.
Conclusion
Although unit 3 was the hardest so far, I was able to improve my writing skill along with my research and planning skills. I learned that writing a big report takes large time and effort in research, planning, and organization. The peer review was an excellent opportunity to refine my writing skills and learn from other member of the team. Overall, I am satisfied of my work and grateful for this opportunity.