Strengths

During ENGL 301, I was able to recognize my strengths in my learning process and assignments. One my strengths is providing and receiving feedback. This course utilized a variety of methods in providing feedback such as instructor grading of the overall work, peer review for the assignments, and self-reflection post. When peer-reviewing my team member’s work, I kept in mind the lessons learned in the course and gave constructive feedback that not only fixed errors in their assignments, but feedback that helps them in future writings. I also looked forward to receiving feedback, as I understand the importance of different perspectives.

Weakness

One of my biggest weakness that I identified when writing my assignments is using imperative verbs in my assignments; especially in the memo to Evan crisp and LinkedIn best practices. Through this course I have learned that you do not want to sound condescending when addressing providing advice to someone; and one way to achieve this is to remove imperative verbs as it can sound like you are commanding the person to do it. The feedback from Dr. Paterson was useful in recognizing imperative verbs. Another weakness that of mine was time management. Throughout the semester, I have submitted a couple assignments late.

My Future after ENGL 301

The skills that I have learned in ENGL 301 will be incredibly useful in my long-term career goal in becoming a software engineer. From professional communications to receiving feedback effectively, these are all important traits for a software engineer to have. You can be the best coder in the world, but if you are unable to communicate with your peers and work together, then your skills will not matter in the end.

For the final assignment of ENGL 301, we are tasked with creating, refining, and reorganizing all the assignments into a “Web Folio”. The purpose of the Web folio is to highlight one’s academic achievements, future goals, marketable skills, and experience.

Organization and Layout

I first needed to determine the purpose of my web folio, to do this i had to go back to lessons from Unit 1; determine who is my audience. I have never created a blog before, so this semester long assignment was refreshing and fun today as it was a place that I can freely write and make something that is mine. Because of this, I decided that my Web Folio will focus on my academic achievement’s and future goals.

With the purpose of the blog determined, I now had to organize the contents that I want to include. I determined how many pages I needed based off Unit 4.3 requirements and anything else that I wanted to include. Similar to the report, creating an outline of my web folio helped a lot in organizing my ideas and how to place everything.

Creating the pages

Populating the pages with the relevant summaries and assignments, I realized since my blog is focused to be more personal, I adjusted the tone of my writing to make it more friendly and welcoming. I also noticed that blog lacked visual elements. To solve this issue, I added a picture of one of my favourite cities in the world; Hong Kong. I also reformatted the texts in all the pages so that it is easier to read.

Conclusion

The Web Folio became a fun and engaging assignment. It allowed me to draw upon the past lessons learned in this course to create something that I am proud of sharing with my peers.

LinkedIn Best Practices

For this assignment, we were tasked with researching best practices when using LinkedIn and then summarizing what we found to 10 tips that we found to be the most useful. LinkedIn has gradually become synonymous with networking in the past decade. I have used LinkedIn for the past couple years and know how to construct a good profile, but I often overlook how important it is to engage with the community and interacting with your connection on LinkedIn. Without engaging with other people, the people you connect with will not remember or know who you are; you will just be another connection that they have. Researching how to create a effective LinkedIn profile and best practices has been a valuable experience, allowing me to gain a deeper understanding in how to effective use LinkedIn.

Research Proposal and Outline

The report proposal assignment tasked us with choosing a problem that we have recently been a part of and investigate, analyze, and recommend solutions that would help improve the proposed problem. Initially I had a hard time brainstorming ideas that I could write my report on. After a couple days of thinking, I thought of an unpleasant experience I had when ordering coffee at Tim Hortons; I went to order one coffee and had to wait over 20 minutes. Once I had the topic, writing the proposal became much smoother.

The formal outline assignment really helped with organizing my ideas and how I want to structure my report. This process gave me the clarity and confidence I needed to move forward with the progress memo assignment.

Peer Review Process

During the peer review process, I was able to review the draft of Delsther James Edralin in my writing team; and also receive a review of my own draft. i found this exercise very informative and beneficial as I learned things that I would not have thought of after reviewing James’s work and also got feedback on my proposal that I used to revise it.

One part of Delsther’s proposal that I did not think of is to view from the perspective of not just the problem, but from the intended audience. This enables you to understand why they initially implemented things the way they did.

The peer review process was very helpful in getting feedback for my proposal. Getting feedback from Aman encouraged me to dig a little deeper with the issue that I chose . Peer reviewing has impacted my view on my writing as it has allowed me to get exposed to new writing perspectives.

Revised Report Proposal 

Peer’s Review of Report Proposal

Writing the first draft of the Technical definition

The first assignment of ENGL301 was to write  three different definitions of a technical term of our choosing. I decided on the definition RAID (redundant array of inexpensive disks) as it was something I have worked on before back in Toronto. This assignment was more challenging than I anticipated as I had to write a parenthetical, sentence, and expanded definition for RAID, something that I have not done before. The parenthetical and sentence definition were the most challenging parts of this assignment. I had to find a way to explain a very technical term like RAID, in a way that non-technical audiences would understand but also not miss out on the defining features of RAID. During this assignment I also learned about the history of RAID which I was not aware of. Writing this assignment was challenging but rewarding. I learned different ways of explaining a complex system into terms that a non-technical audience would understand.

Peer Review Process

In this the peer review process of this assignment, I was partnered with Corbyn Kwan to review and critique each other’s definitions. I throughly enjoyed the peer review process as I was able to compare the techniques I used to the ones that Corbyn employed. I liked his use of simple terminology to explain relational database. I was more than happy to provide constructive feedback in how he could improve his own work. This gave me a whole new perspective of the reader, which allowed me to see what I would like if I was reading a definition I was not familiar with.  The peer review process was beneficial  to my writing and professional reviewing of others’ work.

Revision Process

After the peer review, I read over the criticism on my definitions and gained a unique perspective of an audience member reading a technical definition. I am fortunate to have team members that were not afraid to address everything that can be improved in my definitions, their criticism was insightful and very helpful. Taking in the feedback, I recognized now that even some terms I thought I explained might not be enough for the non-technical audience to understand. My teammate also gave me positive comments about addressing the difference between RAID and backup, as many people even in the industry do not know. The feedback I received allowed me to effectively refine my definition and improve my writing skills as a whole. Overall, creating a technical definition and participating in a peer review and revision process has furthered my writing skills. I am excited for the other assignments to come.

Link to my revised definition: https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl30199c2022w2/2023/02/16/revised-definition-raid/

Link to peer review of my definition: https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl30199c2022w2/2023/02/14/peer-review-raid/

ets

To: Corbyn Kwan, English 301 Student <naruto01@student.ubc.ca>

From: Justin Tang, English 301 Student <jtang102@student.ubc.ca>

Date: February 1, 2023

Subject: English 301 Writing Team

Dear Corbyn,

I am writing to express my interest in forming a writing team with Aman, James, and I. I have reviewed your application letter and believe that the four of us would make a strong team, and I would be excited to collaborate with all of you.

I reviewed your application letter and I was impressed by your professional experience working in Microsoft and SAP. I believe that your professional experience in the tech industry will compliment our group as we are all aspiring software engineers. I would be eager to help improve your technical writing as someone coming from a traditional science background.

I would be honoured to work with you.  You can find me application letter here: https://blogs.ubc.ca/justintang/2023/01/25/letter-of-application/. I look forward to hearing back from you.

Best regards,

Justin Tang

To: Delsther James Edralin, English 301 Student <dedralin@student.ubc.ca>

From: Justin Tang, English 301 Student <jtang102@student.ubc.ca>

Date: February 1, 2023

Subject: English 301 Writing Team

Dear James,

Thank you for reviewing my application letter and reaching out to me about forming a writing team. I would like to accept your proposal of forming a team. I have also reviewed your letter of application and am very excited to work together in a writing team. I believe that your experience with research papers  and architectural studies  summarization during your time as an Architectural Technologist and your attention to detail needed as an Architect makes you an essential writing team member and I hope to learn a lot working together.

I appreciate that you have are reaching out to other ENGL 301 students  to join our prospective team. I will review their letters and contact them as well.

Thank you for considering me for this opportunity and I look forward to working together.

Best regards,

Justin Tang

To: Aman Johal, English 301 Student <ajohal21@gmail.com>

From: Justin Tang, English 301 Student <jtang102@student.ubc.ca>

Date: February 1, 2023

Subject: English 301 Writing Team

Dear Aman,

Thank you for reviewing my application letter and reaching out to me about forming a writing team. I would like to accept your proposal of forming a team. I have also reviewed your letter of application and am very excited to work together in a writing team. I believe that your experience with technical writing and weekly reports to the senior executive team during your time as a pharmacist manager and your open mindset makes you an essential writing team member and I hope to learn a lot working together.

I appreciate that you have are reaching out to other ENGL 301 students  to join our prospective team. I will review their letters and contact them as well.

Thank you for considering me for this opportunity and I look forward to working together.

Best regards,

Justin Tang

To:                      Professor Erika Paterson                                                                                                    From:                 Justin Tang, ENGL 301 Student                                                                                          Date:                  January 27 2023                                                                                                                    Subject:             Application Letter Submission to Blog

Please note that I have posted a letter of application for an ENGL 301 writing team on my UBC blog. The application letter includes my:

• interest in a position on a professional writing team
• professional interests: environmental science and computer science
• academic background: computer science student and bachelor’s graduate in environmental science
• experience with technical writing: writing lab reports and summarizing academic literature
• professional experience: numerous jobs
• personal strength: strong leadership skills, effective communication skills, and a broad-mindset

Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you.

Enclosure: 301 Justin Tang Application Letter