In unit three, the major tasks I have done were You Attitude, Business Letters, formal report draft and peer review formal report. I actually felt challenged by all of them in some ways.
When I was writing You Attitude, I was really confused about whether I was doing anything related to “You Attitude” because I felt I was just writing down some general advice of writing an email. The peer review I got from Justin Chau revealed that I did not put down things empathizing “you” instead of “I”. In order to write a good professional email, I need to think in the angle of my audience and let them feel being respected or serve their need.
Writing business letters (complain & bad news letters) was interesting but challenging. It was fun because it was like wiring scripts for two different roles. But the most difficult part was to use appropriate tone to express the complaint. I wanted to make the complaint to draw the attention of the bookstore manager, and let him/her realize that it was a very serious issue selling missing page book. But I have to use the language politely.
The most demanding job for this unit was writing the formal report draft. Because of my previous research experience, it was hard for me to distinguish between wiring a research paper and wiring a formal report. I aimed too high at the beginning since I really wanted to find out something relevant or meaningful through this study. However, since the time and resource was limited to make big things happen and it did not suit a formal report, I tried to redirect myself to write a formal report. The original purpose of my report was to find out what were the reasons people misuse or overuse antibiotics, but it fitted a research paper more than a formal report. After I discussed this problem with Erika, I changed my purpose to “raise awareness of antibiotic resistance”. As well, my original audience was not clear neither. Then I made the audience as general public. With the clear audience, I felt it was easier to write the draft. It was quite hard to get participants to fill out the survey at the beginning. I created an event on Facebook and invited 100 friends. But only 4 people filled them out. Then I texted friends to ask them fill out survey on Facebook and text massage individually. This way was way more useful than inviting a bunch of people to do it. In addition, when I was wring the draft, the most challenging part was to analyze the data and then find the appropriate recommendation or solution for the problem based on the results. Using concise language in the report was also another difficulty. On the other hand, peer review was useful for me to see how my own report was compared with my peer’s, and I can find the weakness of mine from his strength. Also, from Matthew Fung’s peer review on my report draft, I noticed some hidden problem that I did not realize before the peer review.
Eng301 First Report Draft, Yin Zhou (Maggie)