Author Archives: LucyLi

This post concludes the last assignment and reflection post for my ENGL 301 Technical Writing course. The learning experience was very worthwhile, especially with the help of Dr. Paterson and my writing team.

At the beginning of the semester, I formed a writing team with Anna Li, Carol Li, and Han Li. We often help each other with peer reviewing and providing suggestions for improvement. I was quite nervous since my greatest weakness was my fear of giving and receiving feedback. However, after giving and receiving multiple reviews and suggestions, my fear has decreased, and I am now more confident in my work and giving suggestions to others. I was glad that one of my strengths was that I like to learn new things and do not easily give up. My strength helped improve my weakness through the long process of reading, writing, and revising.

English is my first language; However, I am not confident in my writing because I have been studying in different countries and did not have the opportunity to perfect all the languages I know. I did not have a good foundation for using the different pronouns, verbs, and writing attitudes. I refused to take any English courses in the past few years since it would make me feel very uncomfortable. However, after taking this technical writing course, I enjoyed writing and reviewing other individuals’ works. I may not be the best at what I am doing. However, I have improved my writing skills through learning how to write letters, memorandums, reports, peer reviews, and a web folio while paying attention to details, imperative verbs, and YOU-attitude.

After completing this course, I feel very accomplished looking back at all the content I have created. I have gained lots of knowledge from the professor’s classmates. Even though my focus semester was on my previous business background, I hope that I can apply all the skills I gained in this course to my current academic studies and future profession. I plan on practicing more on writing and look forward to my future works.

This web folio is where I can post blogs and display my best works creatively on an online canvas. I have never created a web folio or a blog page before, and the thought of creating one made me nervous. In addition, I found it intimidating to use this WordPress website maker since I found it challenging to navigate through the settings and the organization of the posts and pages. So, I decided to break it down into steps and organized my web folio so that it was visually appealing and easy to navigate.

Content:

The content found on the web folio was prewritten for my ENGL 301 Technical Writing Course. Therefore, before posting the content and sharing it with everyone, I revised my work by following the suggestions from the professor and my writing team. The part I found most challenging would be when I had to self-edit since it was hard to find faults in my writing.

Navigation:

I focused on providing easy access to everyone by providing all the content and link within this web folio. Although it would be more accessible to just direct readers to the ENGL 301 Blog page, I believe that having everything within a single blog and found under the menu bar would increase the ease of navigation. The main difficulty I faced was deciding whether the content was to be posted as a post or a page, so I tried many different methods and posted all the contents as pages, and only my reflections would be posted. Also, I made sure all content was accessible through the menu by including each page, whether as a menu or submenu option.

Design:

The Design part was the most enjoyable part of creating the web folio. I chose a simple theme for my web folio and used a hand-drawn picture as the heading image. The theme is clean and straightforward to present my professionalism, and the colour of the heading image displays my side of creativity in designing a web page. In addition, I ensured that all the content was viewable through different devices such as computers, tablets, and phones.

Overall, creating the web folio was not difficult, but it was very time-consuming. I found it most important to make sure I was thinking about my readers when creating the web folio. I believe that a web folio that is easy to navigate, creative and has good content will attract more viewers who will have a good impression of my works. Finally, I am glad that this web folio is complete, and I hope everyone enjoys navigating and reading through my web folio.

In Unit 3, I wrote a memorandum to Evan Crisp with a demonstration of YOU-attitude. I also completed a formal report draft by researching, organizing, and writing the report on Recommendation for Placing a Clothing Donation Bin at the UBC Bus Loop. Finally, I peer-reviewed Han Li’s formal report draft, and I am currently reflecting on the review and working on my final report.

Evan Crisp You-Attitude

You-attitude allowed me to write and let the reader know or feel like I am looking at the situation from their perspective. It made me realize the importance of emphasizing the readers rather than myself. Writing with this style will help accomplish the paper’s purpose and create a positive outcome even in a difficult situation.

Formal Report Draft

The formal report draft consists of three parts: research and collection, organizing the data, and putting it together to write the report.

Research and Collection of Data

The data collection was time-consuming and was not as easy as I expected since I encountered problems with posting the survey. I started by requesting to join UBC groups on Facebook; however, I still have not successfully entered them and have not posted in those groups. Then I decided to post on a Reddit group since it is a popular platform that many UBC students and staffs use; however, I did not have an ethics board number for the project, so my post was not approved. Luckily, I successfully posted the survey link on a UBC student group chat and a BCS Facebook group and managed to collect a total of 30 responses. Although this is a small sample size, I was able to use the data gathered for my report. In addition to the survey, I gathered evidence from the residences’ sorting areas. The process was quite tricky since I was unfamiliar with the locations and mapping of the residences. Finally, I gathered information from online websites and resources to support my report. Even though much of the information on the clothing donation bin was negative, I managed to find positive information that supported my paper.

Organizing Data and Report

After researching and collecting the data, I organized and created graphs for the questions. Then I used the outline I wrote in unit 2 as a template and started to organize the different sections of my report. When organizing the data, I collected according to the outline, and I realized that there were sections that I was missing and sections that I could change.

Writing the Report

The last step of the formal report draft was to write out the report. The biggest challenge I had was that I always had to keep in mind the attitude I was writing in and the tenses of verbs and pronouns I use. It was not easy since I also had to focus on the presentation of the data and the flow of the whole paper. Luckily, the tips from the professor, the textbook and my outline helped a lot during this process.

Peer Review

This third peer review was for Han from my Writing Team. I have not peer-reviewed her work before and reviewing her work this time was beneficial. Han’s report was similar to mine, but instead of placing a clothing donation bin, her report recommended enhancing the safety protection for on-campus dining at UBC. Overall, her report was professional and had a well-written introduction that describes the report’s background information. From peer-reviewing her report, I noticed that my report could improve by adding a figure section in the table of content. I also received a peer-review from Han and learned that the report was missing important information such as the own scope I listed and needed improvements for my report styling and MLA citations. The suggestions were constructive and made me realize how careless I was to leave out important information.

In conclusion, I did my best to improve my weakness by writing with more details and was able to construct a good memorandum to Evan Crisp, write my report draft and complete a detailed peer-review for Han. In addition, I realized the importance of time management having enough time for each step of a report. Finally, I look forward to writing the final recommendation report by improving my draft according to Han’s suggestion and learning more writing skills in unit 4.

Formal Report Draft: ENGL 301 – Lucy Li Final Report Draft

In Unit 2, I researched the best LinkedIn practices for professional networking on LinkedIn, wrote a formal report proposal, and peer-reviewed another individual’s report proposal. After completing these assignments, I learned more about writing and improved my technical writings skills.

LinkedIn

The purpose of this assignment was to write ten best LinkedIn practices to share with my writing team. This exercise was beneficial since it made me aware of the importance of following the many tips for LinkedIn. Before reading the tips, my LinkedIn account only included all the basic information needed for someone to recognize me. However, after reading the LinkedIn tips that the team has written and the ones that I have written, I realized that there are many things that I have left out:

1. Even though I knew about LinkedIn’s resources, I did not use them because I was unaware that they would help promote my profile.
2. I did not include a summary introducing myself, my strengths, and my weaknesses. I now understand that this section is important since it can summarize my professional history, qualification, and personality. It allows other professionals to get to know me, especially when they do not have the time to go over my complete profile.
3. The most important thing I have not done is to add details to the different sections of my profile.

Formal Report Proposal and Survey

The formal report proposal was a piece of writing that I had never done before. Research topics and problems were already given to me when studying for my business degree. However, in this course, I had to choose my research topic, create a research plan to address the problem and provide a possible solution. I brainstormed many different topics: create an app for the Vancouver compass card in order to solve the problem of losing the physical cards; propose that UBC provide COVID-19 pandemic seminars to provide pandemic related information to students so that they can effectively protect themselves and others as well; placing a clothing donation bin at one of UBC’s busy locations to improve the convenience of donating clothes and increase the environmental impact. I ended up choosing the topic of placing a clothing donation bin at UBC’s Bus Loop because I believe this proposal will result in significant benefits for both the students and staff and the environment. Writing the report was straightforward since I had a clear focus on my research topic, audience, solution, and recommendation. The most challenging part of this assignment was to create a survey aiming to gather information from students and staff about my topic. Even though I have a clear plan and schedule on what I will do for March, I do worry that my final report might not end up as put together.

Peer Review

As I mentioned in my Unit 1 reflection blog, I feared receiving and giving feedback from other individuals. I have now completed my second-time peer-reviewing written works from my writing team, and I have discovered new improvements and things I still need to work on. Carol did a good job reviewing my work and providing me with more suggestions in making my proposal better. I was a bit confused with some of the suggestions, but I was able to ask her in person to clarify what the feedback meant. Also, I peer-reviewed Carol’s report proposal and found it quite interesting, especially since it was a problem I could not relate with, but I look forward and hope that the problem gets solved. Her report was very detailed, and this is one of the things I need to improve on. I now learned that my future writings and peer review could be much better if I included more details and avoided being too general.

To Summarize, these three activities helped me discover weaknesses and strengths that I can continue to improve on. For example, after completing all the work and receiving feedback from both Carol and the professor, I realized that it is important to provide more details in memos, peer reviews, and other written works. I look forward to Unit three, and I hope I will improve by adding more details and reducing the use of pronouns and imperative words.

Revised Definition: https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl301-99c-2021wc/2022/02/16/formal-report-proposal-placing-a-clothings-bin-at-the-ubc-bus-loop/

Peer Review: https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl301-99c-2021wc/2022/02/18/peer-review-of-formal-report-proposal-placing-a-clothings-bin-at-the-ubc-bus-loop/

After completing assignments and reviewing a team member’s assignment, I have learned more about reviewing, editing and revising.

Writing three definitions:

For the assignment, I was tasked with coming up with three different definitions of a word that is commonly used in my profession or discipline. In addition, I was also required to come up with a set of expansion strategies, a visual, and a reference list for the term. Since the term “back-of-house” was a term I used most often in my past five years or school and work, I already had a good understanding of what the term means. This has caused me difficulty finding multiple sources with enough content for my assignment. This term can be easily understood; however, not many people know about it. It was difficult to explain as a parenthetical definition or sentence definition. I felt that there was not enough room to share the term. After reading the textbook and learning more about the expanded definition, I could use different methods to share more about the term. Since I was used to citing in APA format, I decided to challenge myself and completed the citations in MLA format. Before this assignment, I was not aware that definitions could be done in different types of definitions. This assignment has taught me about the use of different types of definitions and the importance of the different types.

Peer Review Process:

For this second task, I had to review my teammate’s (Anna) definition assignment and provide feedback and suggestions. This assignment was not something I usually do; it is one of my weaknesses, and it was something that I completed while being very nervous. Since I was not confident in my writing, it often caused me to think that other individuals’ writing was “perfect .” However, after reviewing Anna’s assignment, it has allowed me not to be as nervous. At the same time, I learned more about peer review and even thought about the same errors I have made when writing my assignment. Peer reviewing Anna’s work also showed me how different people’s writing styles are. After completing this process, I started self-reflecting on what could improve my assignment.

Revision Process:

Before receiving the review, I was very nervous, thinking that my writing for the assignment must have been bad. However, after receiving Anna’s peer review for my assignment, I felt great from reading the notes about what I did right and what could be improved. I have learned to pay more attention to the grammar and the requirements of an assignment. Thanks to Anna’s hint for the MLA formatting of the citations, I have learned more about how to cite and what I need to pay more attention to next time.

In conclusion, unit 1 and its assignments have allowed me to improve my writing and my weakness in giving and receiving feedback.

Revised Definition: https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl301-99c-2021wc/2022/02/09/revised-defenition-back-of-house/

Peer Review: https://blogs.ubc.ca/engl301-99c-2021wc/2022/02/05/peer-review-on-definition-of-the-back-of-house/