As someone who is no stranger to writing for both academic and professional purposes, I am always surprised at how each piece of writing still has its own challenges. I found that giving a written definition by using a structured format helped make my writing much more effective and useful.
I enjoyed the peer review process as it gave me the chance to use what I learned so far from this course, as well as draw from my other experiences as a writer. In addition, I was able to recognize the impact of using the active instead of passive voice for many situations. I have been guilty of overusing the passive voice as I falsely believed it would make me sound more academic, formal or technical, not realizing that it actually distanced the reader and made my sentences harder to decipher.
In my assignment as well as my peers, I recognized that there is a common tendency to be too wordy, especially in an academic context. As I have learned, one of the most difficult parts of writing is being able to condense one’s sentences without sacrificing meaning.
For the revision of my definition assignment, I received feedback from Albert that a more detailed explanation of what my target audience (a program manager) does on day-to-day basis would be helpful. I ended up rewriting this section almost completely and provided an explanation of a program manager’s job by using my example of the testing framework. I realized that using the same example I use throughout the document would provide a clearer picture of why the manager would need to know the definition of framework for his / her job.
Along the same lines, I found the feedback from Albert to add examples of different types of frameworks a good suggestion, but given my audience this might not be necessary, and it may be more effective to focus on defining the word within the context of testing automation.