As I am writing this final blog post, I am experiencing a bittersweet feeling. For the entire Summer, I have been churning up assignments after assignments alongside my fellow 301 classmates. As the course comes to an end, I will surely miss checking the English 301 course schedule for due dates. The journey from unit one to unit four has been nothing less than eventful. Not only was I able to improve my general writing skills such as my grammar and writing style, but I was also able to develop practical skills that is beneficial to my future pursuits. This is in large because of the large variation of assignments demanded from the course – from writing memoranda for our peers to generating formal reports for professional purposes.

One of my favourite things about this course is that we are given a lot of freedom in our writing. Rather than being assigned a specific topic to write about, Dr. Paterson allows us to choose our own topics for major assignments, including our formal report. By allowing us to choose a topic that we are interested in and that relates to our education/career path, we are able to focus more on improving the technical aspects rather than worrying about the actual content.

As a responsible student, I have always allocated enough time for  the completion of each assignment to ensure submission before deadlines. Ironically, I am also a huge procrastinator. Even though the work I submit meets all the criteria outlined in the rubrics, I know that the quality of my work can be improved significantly if only I get started on the assignments earlier. Despite knowing this, I confess that I still only get started on my work a couple of days before it’s due; never have I looked ahead into the course schedule more than a week in advance. Perhaps this is a habit I should work on breaking for the sake of my future endeavours. My high school teacher once told me, “how you do one thing in life is how you do everything in life,” which is truly applicable to this situation.

Even with my habit of procrastination, I have never let myself go off on a tangent completely. My ability to write objectively in a clear, concise manner has benefited me in my undergrad career and my position as a clinical research assistant. Being a student in the scientific field, effective technical writing is important in writing academic papers and lab reports. My attention to detail and organization skills have also allowed me to complete tasks according to specific guidelines. Even though I am able to write objectively, English 301 has shown me that my writing techniques have a lot of room for improvement, especially in regards to writing with the “you-attitude”.

Over the course of the term, I have undergone a lot of self-development with the help of peer reviews of my work done by Stephen Lee, Hendson Szeto, and Shih-Chun Huang – members of Writing Team Chocolate. I would like to take a moment to thank my team members for all the helpful advice they provided me in a timely fashion. Lastly, I must also thank Dr. Paterson for continuously providing me with friendly feedback for improving my writing techniques throughout the course. Under her instruction, I am now much more confident in my abilities as a technical writer.

In the beginning of the term, “building a WebFolio” sounded like a huge task to complete. Even before I read the assignment guidelines, I already had a dreadful feeling towards it. Little did I know, every assignment I completed throughout the term was actually contributing to my WebFolio. Now that the course is coming to an end, I looked back and realized that 90% of my WebFolio has already been built! All that was left to do was to polish all my assignments and piece everything together on a website.

The building of my WebFolio forced me to revisit my previous assignments and see how much my technical writing skills have improved throughout the term. After so much time has passed, I was able to re-read my assignments with a clear mindset; this has allowed me to spot minor grammatical errors and awkward wording that I have previously overlooked. I felt as if I were peer-reviewing someone else’s work when it is actually written by myself.

As the development of my WebFolio is nearing completion, I am quite proud of what I have accomplished in this course. Unlike most other courses I have taken, English 301 is purely based on assignments rather than exam-writing. As a result, I am able to visualize all the effort I have put into the course through each piece of work I create.

Being a new user of WordPress, I initially found the platform quite confusing to operate. The navigation bars were not very friendly to newcomers like myself, and the User Support section is not very accessible. However, after creating several pages and posts, and continuously playing around with the customization settings, I became more familiar with the tools and features. This allowed me to build my WebFolio with ease.

Because I am not a tech-person, I never realized how much time people put into editing webpages to make things aesthetically pleasing. In the eyes of potential employers, every minor detail tells you something about a person. With technology developing quickly, employers are turning to online sources to seek out potential employees more often now than ever before. Perhaps in the near future, building a WebFolio will be as common as building a resume for a job application. When that time comes, I will know that I am well-prepared by Dr. Paterson’s English 301 course!

For unit three, most of my time was spent on drafting my formal report and practicing writing with an attitude suitable for my readers. Specifically, I learned about how to write with the “you-attitude”, which takes into consideration the reader’s perspective in every sentence composed. We applied this writing technique in two business letters – a complaint letter and a bad news adjustment letter (click here to view them). Even though I previously knew that keeping my reader’s interest in mind is important, I never put in too much effort in centralizing my readers in my writing until this unit. Another assignment in unit three requires us to write a memorandum reviewing en e-mail written to a professor by a student. By providing feedback on how the student can incorporate the “you-attitude” in his writing, I was able to understand how effective the technique is in persuading readers.

The second major part of this unit required us to create a draft of our formal report containing all the core elements of a report. This assignment was the most time-consuming part of the course thus far, as it required us to conduct research, organize primary data, analyze evidence, and write with the “you-attitude” which we started practicing only two weeks ago. Not only was research using secondary resources required, but the report also required us to gather primary data. I chose to conduct interviews and administer surveys. While the interview portion was quite casual and informative, the survey posed to be a challenge due to the small number of participants. However, I was still able to draw some conclusions based on the survey results. I also struggled with how to display objective data in a “you-attitude” fashion without introducing reader bias. Even though a lot of time was dedicated to drafting the report, the process was actually already simplified by some of assignments from the previous units, such as the formal report outline from unit 2.3.

Peer reviews were also required for our formal report drafts. After having previously reviewed several other assignments, I found the process to be a little easier with my improved professional editing techniques. When going over Stephen Lee’s report draft, I was able to quickly identify areas where I felt like more details would benefit the readers. I also identified many unnecessary details he could exclude in order to shorten his 24-page report. His review of my report draft was also informative; it provided both general recommendations and specific modifications I could make to improve my report. I especially liked that he took the time to provide me with an additional attachment of my original report draft complete with tracked changes to give me specific feedback on my grammatical errors.

The last goal of this unit was for us to initiate our search for a job/volunteer position or a graduate school to prepare a full application package for. Because I have been occupied with the other assignments along with working a full-time job and volunteering on the weekends, I have not yet begun my research. I do, however, have a masters program in mind to write an application package for.

With assignments due every couple of days, this course has been quite a challenge for me. However, many of the assignments are related to one another and are actually helping us build our final products, including the formal report. As we improve our writing techniques throughout the term, we will self-edit our past assignments and create a Web-folio displaying our best work near the end of the course. The gradual progression of the course and the chance for us to improve our work before final submission is my favourite aspect of English 301. I look forward to the final unit, and hope that I will be able to apply all my acquired knowledge in the last projects.

In the second unit, we got started on two major components of the course. Even though the first few tasks did not involve an extensive amount of writing, they were important in helping us create a strong foundation to work from. The first component of this unit involves the creation of our application package. I was required to create a LinkedIn profile complete with my skills and experiences. Because I have never used LinkedIn before, I had to learn how to navigate through the site and use certain features, such as the “people who viewed your profile” feature. I also researched the best practices in LinkedIn so I know what areas to focus on and how to make my profile more attractive to potential employers. Lastly, I reviewed and provided feedback to my teammate, Shih-Chun Huang, so that she could also improve her profile.

Through these tasks, I learned about proper networking strategies and what a powerful tool LinkedIn is, especially for people seeking connections in the business sector. However, I feel that employers of the life sciences industry do not pay as much attention to LinkedIn profiles as private companies do. The reason for this is because life sciences employees usually actively seek out work positions, rather than wait for potential employers to contact them. Nonetheless, I was able to practice writing professionally and building a strong resume on LinkedIn. By reviewing my teammate’s LinkedIn profile, I was able to think in the perspective of a potential employer. This helped me realize what viewers actually look for when scrolling through different profiles, and what catches their attention. By peer reviewing her profile, not only was I able to provide her feedback for areas of improvement, but I also found ways that I could improve my own profile.

For the second component, we brainstormed possible topics that are worthy of primary and secondary research in order to get started on our formal report. The first assignment for this component was to write a formal report proposal to showcase our ideas and research goals for the specific topic we decide on. After having our ideas reviewed by our peers and Dr. Paterson, we went ahead and developed an outline showing what our tentative formal report may look like. Lastly, we developed a progress report in the form of a memo to notify Dr. Paterson about what we have already done and how we plan to proceed with our report to ensure that we will complete it by the deadline.

The most difficult part of this unit was trying to come up with a viable topic to write my report on. Because I am currently only involved in two different organizations, both of which are related to healthcare, I found difficulty in coming up with topics I could research about without running into ethical issues regarding participant confidentiality. However, once I came up with a topic I am interested in pursuing, the planning component was not too difficult. The guidelines provided by the course textbook helped a lot in my report planning. I also really appreciate the time my teammate, Stephen Lee, put in reviewing my report proposal. Not only was his feedback (please see hyperlink at the end of this post) clear and concise, but he also pointed out specific things I could do to improve my proposal and make it sound more convincing. In my peer review of his report, I found myself seeking for specific details and examples that would support his ideas. This made me realize that I could potentially do the same for my own proposal in order to strengthen it. When writing assignments, I generally pay a lot of attention to my organization and grammar. Even though I am careful in my writing, I sometimes oversee minor errors. Thankfully, Stephen caught these errors in his review of my proposal. After taking into consideration his advice, I revised my formal report proposal, which I have attached to the end of this post. By having much of my planning and brainstorming completed through this unit, I feel much more comfortable in proceeding with piecing together my formal report.

From time to time, I would browse over my classmates’ work through the writing team forum in order to seek ideas and ways to improve my own work after completing a draft. This is especially beneficial because everyone has their own unique writing style, and one person’s way of writing may be better than another’s under certain situations. Many times, I would find myself going back and changing things in my work after coming across an impressive piece presented by my peers. I think that the writing team forum is beneficial for all the students, as we are able to analyze each other’s work, which can give us a better idea of our own strengths and weaknesses relative to others.

To see Stephen’s peer review of my Formal Report Proposal, please click here.

To download a copy of my revised Formal Report Proposal, please click here.

The first three weeks of English 301 has been a nice introduction to the course. We started off by composing specific documents such as letters, memos, and emails. Before this course, I rarely paid attention to the wording and organization of such documents. Being expected to meet certain criteria required me to write more critically.

Personally, the most challenging assignment this unit is the Definitions Assignment, where we had to define a technical term using different methods. In my writing of the definition for Parkinson’s disease, I found myself struggling to compose explanations using simplified scientific terms. At times, I would be unsure about whether or not my definition is too technical for readers with no background knowledge of the topic to understand.

Despite the challenge of the assignment, Hendson’s peer review of my work provided me with valuable feedback for areas of improvement. Because he was unfamiliar with the topic, he was able to comment on the technicality of my writing. For example, because “down-regulation” was a self-explanatory term in my field, I did not put much thought into using the term to explain the concept of the disorder. However, Hendson pointed out that the term does not provide sufficient context to unfamiliar readers.

With Hendson’s helpful suggestions, I was able to revisit and improve my assignment. Because his feedback was clear and concise, I was able to edit my assignment without any difficulties. Instead of using “down-regulation” as an explanatory term, I instead used the phrase “decrease in the number”, which would make more sense to non-technical readers. If I had not received Hendson’s peer review, I would have stayed oblivious to my errors.

Overall, unit one has prepared me to write professionally and critically. Knowing that my work is available on the web for public viewing encourages me to put in extra effort to ensure that my assignments are of acceptable quality. I am happy to be a part of this course, and look forward to improving my writing through different challenges in the next few months.

To see Hendson’s peer review of my Definitions Assignment, please click here.

To download a copy of my revised Definitions Assignment, please click here.