Throughout the process of creating the web folio, I have learned a lot about my strengths and weaknesses.
In terms of strengths, I feel that I am a very passionate writer and I can quickly produce writable contents regarding various topics. From my years of intensive training as a computer science student, I can feel that I am very logically focused when it comes to organizing paragraphs in a hierarchical order. Many of my peer reviews has reflected my strength in my technical knowledge regarding computer science and software engineering in the topics that I’ve chose for several assignments. I am very happy to get a chance to realize and utilize my strengths in technical writing.

In terms of weaknesses, I received many feedback from my peer reviews as well as my instructor. For example, I learned that I don’t write enough contents at times. This is something I need to work on because sometimes it takes more writing to fully explain certain topics. I tend to skip a lot of background information when I write, which is something that I should consider to include. Following up to the previous section where I mentioned my passion for writing, my passion for writing tends to drive me into writing at a fast pace. By writing very fast, I often mistyped, misspelled or misused words at various occasions because my hands can’t keep up with my thoughts. Throughout the term, I learned to slow down from time to time, and read my writing a second time just to catch various errors that I might have missed previously.

I feel that the skills and techniques I learned in the course will help me with my future career as a software developer. In my intended profession, I will be writing terminologies and definitions very often to help document the software development cycle. Having a chance to learn how to define terms properly in English 301 really helped me understand which techniques have the most impact under which circumstances. The assignment with writing with “You Attitude” will also be very helpful giving the situation of handling customer complaints or emails showing dissatisfaction with my company’s products. Overall, I feel that I’ve learned a lot from this course.

The process of creating my web folio was fun and rewarding.

When I first started researching into this project, I must admit I was slightly overwhelmed. Perhaps it was the insecurity and self doubt speaking, but at the time when I first thought about building a web folio, I was afraid that I had nothing interesting to share with the world. However, I always enjoyed completing assignments for English 301, as each assignment always brings new challenges and help me learn practical skills in a hand-on manner. I started using google to look at other people’s web folios so I can get some inspirations.

Through the process of researching, I learned that web folio is closely related to a personal portfolio. Infact, many people would say they are the same thing. I broadened my search terms on google and came across a lot of interesting personal portfolio/ web folio websites. Since I am a geek at heart, I really enjoyed looking at web folios completed by people in the technology sector. One of the web folios that I came across was an interactive site by Robby Leonard, a coder and designer. He was very innovative in designing his webfolio to meet the target audience of the industry that he was working in. I have attached a screenshot.

Since I wanted my web folio to look formal, and meet the criteria for English 301, I quickly abandoned the idea of building an interactive HTML web folio that can respond to user interaction. However, that might be a side project for me to respond down the road. After reading many of my peers’ works, I realized how different every one of us are. Even under the same set of criteria, with similar WordPress themes to work with, we are each going to come up with something unique. I gathered some of my best works for this term and tried to build a professional, and visually pleasing web folio. I hope you enjoyed this post, as well as my web folio.

For this unit, I have worked on many interesting tasks. The unit started with writing with the right attitude no matter what the situation. Through writing a feedback letter to a student with an unprofessional attitude, and reading the peer review from my partner, I have identified a few weaknesses in my writing. For example, I was slightly outraged by the example email of Evan Crisp for the lack of “you attitude” he demonstrated in his writing. Although I tried very hard to write with the “you attitude” in mind while providing feedback for Evan, I noticed that I might have came across harsh in a couple of places. I need to constantly be aware of my readers and stay in tune with their feelings so I can always write with the best attitude.

Another assignment of this unit is regarding writing the draft for the formal report. Through this assignment, I learned the importance of time management. I worked very hard to plan out the schedules for conducting the surveys and formulating the data analysis along with the first draft of my report. In the past, I was a procrastinator with a habit of rushing things for completion at the last minute. I purposely wanted to overcome my weakness of poor time management by planning out this task in weekly iterations. Every week, I would have a certain set of major tasks to complete, which breaks down to smaller tasks I can work on throughout the weekdays. It was very satisfying to see that for this task, I wasn’t rushed at the last minute as I overcame my major struggle with time management. I wouldn’t have managed my time so well without the outline of the final report that our instructor has asked us to write for one of the earlier assignments.

Something I learned through working on collecting primary data for my report was the importance of taking initiative. This past week, my client, Ms. Rombu was sick and cannot make it to her pottery class. However, I planned to complete the survey by my scheduled date so I contacted the substitute instructor in advance to plan out the process of conducting a survey right between classes. I am a bit shy talking to strangers, but for the purpose of collecting good primary data, I introduced myself to many people that I haven’t met before and asked them for help in participating in my research. Most people I interacted with were very friendly, and I enjoyed the socializing aspects of this assignment. By taking initiative, I felt in control of my assignment, my progress and my life.

Last but not least, providing peer review for Luke’s final report was a great learning experience. I have a lot of respect for Luke in choosing a challenging topic for his final report. Through reading his paper, I have learned a lot of technical knowledge about automated testing. Some of the recommendations I suggested to Luke, which I also need to work on myself, are regarding explaining concepts clearly. For example, Luke explained a lot of technical terms in his definitions section. However, there were terms such as “sanity test” that were not explained previously. Although a well-experienced engineer could easily understood these terms, but fresh new graduates and junior engineers might misinterpret their meaning and significance.

Overall, unit three was a very challenging unit. I will remember to use the “you attitude” throughout my writing career. I will continue to improve on my peer review skills and look forward to the next unit of this exciting course.

I have been using LinkedIn since 2012, but I never really looked at some of the details carefully enough until I became a student of English 301. For example, I missed the opportunity to unitize the summary section of my LinkedIn profile to come across as professional and personable. With the help of English 301 curriculum, and peer review from my writing group, I was able to come up with a much better summary.

In regards to my final report proposal, I think I have a much clearer understanding now. I have always been passionate in building web technologies, and being able to help the less fortunate community groups with my skill set brings me a lot of joy. I did struggle with defining the audience and significance of my report. After much though and deliberation, I decided to focus my report on what I can accomplish instead of what I hope to accomplish. With that being said, I am confident that I would be able to deliver primary data collection in the forms of surveys and interviews, and gather data to recommend technical specifications for a successful online digital media marketing campaign.

I enjoyed the peer review process for this unit. My partner, Luke, is an excellent writer. I provided some critical feedbacks about his writing style as I wish him to further refine his writing style.  Being a Computer Science student, I can relate to Luke’s struggles of finding layman terms for conveying technical concepts. It is something we all have to constantly work on in order to keep the audience engaged. From Luke’s review, I learned that some times I come across vague in my writing style. I need to state my thought more specifically, and I will continue to work on that for the rest of this term.

Formal Report Proposal

Peer Review of Jenny Lian’s Research Proposal by Luke Zhang

Jenny’s Definitions RewriteMy First Draft

For this assignment, I chose the word “driver”, which is a commonly used word in the field of Software Engineering. I programmed a lot of drivers during my internship at Ericsson, and learned what “drivers” are beyond the Computer Science curriculum. I thought it would be a good exercise to try and define drivers to my fellow students. I followed our textbook’s instructions on how to write parenthetical, sentence, and expanded definitions. I tried formulating my sentence definitions several times as I find “driver” a bit hard to distinguish from other computer software. After struggling for some time, I asked a friend what he thought “drivers” were and realized that for a non-computer science student, the examples of software can have a wide spectrum (from iPhone apps to a vending machine). I was then able to formulate a sentence definition that can uniquely define “drivers” from a programming perspective.

The Peer Review Process/Editing Process

My teammate, Lisa, provided me with some feedback for me to improve on my writing. Since I always enjoyed reading Lisa’s blog posts, I was very receptive of her criticisms. Lisa had a lot of positive things to say and was very encouraging. For instance, she thought my paper was well organized and easy to read. In addition to positive feedbacks, Lisa also provided constructive criticisms on how to write with minimal grammar mistakes – reading it out loud. After reading Lisa’s feedback, I read my paper out loud and noticed a couple of grammar mistakes. I was very happy to learn this technique as I quickly fixed all the grammar mistakes I spotted. One thing that I contemplated about was Lisa’s suggestion about “low-level” software. She thought that many readers might not know what “low-level” software is. Although I agree with her, but I think that a sentence definition needs to be short and concise. I decided not modify my sentence definition for now, but to explain my thoughts further with the expanded definitions.

What Have I Learned

I learned that I tend to write as I think. Writing is like thinking out loud for me. As a result of this habit, I tend to omit words in my writing or not pay enough attention to subject verb agreements. It is very good idea to read my writing out loud to myself and to have a friend read it. I also learned that Lisa is a very strong writer. She has a firm understanding of English grammar and is very detail oriented. After reading her review, I have learned new writing techniques. I am very appreciative of having such peer-reviews through English 301 to learn from each other.

Jenny’s Definitions (Refined)

Peer Review (by Lisa Wong)

Hello world!