Reflecting on Unit One – Introductions, Definitions & Peer Reviews
January 29, 2016
This is the first of four reflection blogs that will be posted at the end of each unit. These reflections document my experience and thoughts of my progression through English 301.
Unit one was comprised of creating a blog, forming a technical writing team (The Biohazards), defining a term, peer-reviewing a group member’s definitions, and then editing my own definitions from provided feedback. For this reflection post, I will focus on my experience on the definition assignment (Original writing), the peer review, and the revisions.
Original Writing
For this assignment, I had to choose a term and define them to non-technical readers in three different styles (parenthetical, sentence, and expanded) that vary in its disclosed details. The first challenge was selecting a term to define. I wanted to choose a term that related to my field of study, Biology, and one that is often misunderstood. I eventually chose the word phenotype. The second challenging part was being able to efficiently and effectively define phenotype to non-scientific readers (the intended audience). The most difficult part was being able to clearly communicate the difference between phenotype and genotype. These two terms have even, at times, confused people with scientific knowledge. Personally, I find the easiest way to understand something is to be able to visualize it. Therefore, the difference between phenotype and genotype can be visualized by an equation depicting their relationship to one another. Additionally, to further help people understand, I created a pictorial diagram of different examples of phenotypes that people can observe on a daily basis.
Peer Review
For the peer review, I revised Timothy Goh’s definition on titanium. As a strong advocate for editing, I went through Timothy’s assignment with a “fine-tooth comb”. I consider my biggest challenges with editing is my desire to alter every sentence. When reading others’ work, I have a tendency to believe a sentence flows more smoothly if written a certain way. Therefore, even though Timothy’s definition assignment was very well-written and easy to read, I suggested a number of changes. I hope my suggestions did not seem overly critical and that my group mate considers my comments as help to improve an already amazing piece of work.
Revisions (Self Edit)
Although I believe I am a great editor of other people’s work, I find I often miss errors when editing my own work. This has always been a challenge for me because I am a slow and meticulous writer. When I write, I read over each sentence multiple times and constantly re-word them. When I am finished with a piece of work, it has been hours or days later and I have reviewed and revised hundreds of times. However, because of my meticulous nature, I often become blinded or biased to my work. I often believe it looks and sounds a certain way, even if it does not. Therefore, I always value a second set of eyes reviewing all my papers. Another tendency I have is mixing present and past tenses, as Timothy has pointed out in his peer review. Based on his feedback, I was able to adjust and edit the few minor errors and improve the overall clarity of my work. I am very grateful to him and constantly strive to improve on my editing techniques.
In conclusion, I look forward to improving my writing skills throughout this course and getting to know my Biohazardous teammates better.
301 Jodie Ng – Definition of Phenotype
