Reflecting on Unit Three – Formal Report Draft and Peer Review
March 18, 2016
This is the third 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 three was comprised of two major assignments: composing the formal report draft and peer-reviewing a team member’s draft. For this reflection post, I will focus on my experience on those two assignments.
Researching and Data Collection
I chose to write my report on determining public awareness and opinion on purebred dog health issues. One of the most difficult components of the formal report was the research and data collection. The health related issues surrounding purebred dogs is a very controversial topic. Therefore, throughout my data collection, I received some very opinionated respondents. I found some participants’ stories about their personal experience with their dogs both touching and disheartening. The research for the report also had its own difficulties. There was a lot of medical terms related to different health symptoms and there were also many factors that influenced the overall decline in health in purebred overtime. I found consulting with an animal welfare professor was very useful to ensure I was understanding the whole issue.
Organizing the Formal Report
I found that the organizing the formal report pretty easy because we were given a lot of freedom in terms of its layout. For the report, we had to decide on five questions we would like our project to address. Since my scientific research and my survey and interview questions overlapped, I found that systematically answering each question by pooling all gathered information was the best way of writing a clear and concise report.
Writing the Formal Report
What I found most difficult for this report was keeping the report concise. There are a lot of issues that influence the decline in purebred dog health. Choosing to write about certain factors and omitting other factors was a difficult decision to make. Additionally, to effectively communicate to my readers what those issues are, as well as all the different medical problems purebred can experience, meant that some sections of my report were quite lengthy. Another issue I found especially after feedback from my surveys is that my word choices are very important. Since I was writing about a very controversial topic, how current breeding practices over time has led an increase in health inherited disorders, some readers thought I was attacking the breeders themselves, when I wasn’t. I combat this issue, I wrote a short paragraph at the beginning of the report explaining that I was not saying that all breeders are “bad,” but instead saying that our practices, how all breeders bred dogs, are not ideal for the health of purebred dogs. When this was explained to participants during the survey, their disapproval lessened and they were more understanding. I hope to achieve this same results in the report.
Peer-Review
I revised Jasleen Sidhu’s formal report proposal on improving pain relief requirements for cattle castration in Canada. She did a great job at completing a clear, easy to read, and informative report. It is clear that she did her research and was quite knowledgeable about the topic and there minimal spelling and grammatical mistakes. However, having learned a lot from an Animal Welfare class I took at UBC, I informed her of several questions her readers may form and would, therefore, need more clarification and information on to strengthen her report. Peer-reviewing another’s work allowed me to critically review my own work and incorporate strategies and techniques that also helped improved my own report.
In conclusion, this unit expanded my knowledge, writing, and surveying technique. I am looking forward to the next steps of finalizing my formal report and continue to look forward to improving my writing skills throughout this course.
