Good communication is one of the most key factors to succeed in many fields. English 301 is a technical writing course designed to equip students with better writing skills in both business and professional activities, and to meet the challenges of changing technologies and globalized communications. It provides an online platform that students can learn independently and collaboratively. During this course, students will be assigned different kinds of written tasks every week, including abstracts, proposals, applications, reports, correspondence and online communications: emails, texts, Web Folio and networking. There will also a discussion forum that students can use to communicate with each other. Other than this, students can interact with each other through Facebook group. The students may also receive instructor and fellow classmates’ feedbacks for their submitted work.
As a forth-year Chemical Biology student, I have a lot of expectations from this course. Upon completing this course, I will apply for medical schools, poster presentation in Chemistry conference and publish a research paper for my Chemistry research project. I expect that I can utilize what I would learn from this course to write personal statement for medical school application, abstracts for poster presentation and research paper. From my previous English courses, I did not get specific training for business and professional writing. However, I hope what I will learn from this course would be very practical for my future education and career. Other than these, the course will also teach students proper online communication, such as Web Folio and networking. Nowadays, more than 3.2 billion people are using Internet globally. Therefore, wisely making use of the Internet for communication would not only help us access to all kinds of resources and expand networking, but also help us more widely distribute our ideas and knowledge. I am really looking forward to creating my own Web Folio at the end of this course.