The first unit and set of assignments have been a nice and smooth introduction into this technical writing course. Before diving into a reflection on my own work and process, I want to thank Christina for writing a very simple educational definition for such a complex term. I often find when learning medical terms, explanations can often be hard for a reader to digest with one passing. I found she did an excellent job of making periodontitis simpler to understand. When peer-reviewing her work, I started off by reading the assignment out loud. I find that this helps locate points in the writing that may not be fluid. If there is a point where I stumble reading, it can likely be adjusted. In this specific case, I found that Dr. Paterson’s template was helpful as a guideline. It helped me narrow down what to point out within my teammate’s work. Something I have learned from Christina’s writing is that she is very articulate and is able to explain complex concepts in a simplistic way for everyone to understand. I also admire her creativity and ability to create a realistic scenario in the presentation of her work. Going forward, I hope to learn from her conciseness and directness and apply it to my own work.
Choosing a word for my assignment was easy, yet difficult. It was easy for me to decide on picking a word from my residential building profession, but deciding on the exact term was difficult as there are so many to choose from. In addition, I would need to be able to explain it in a simplistic way for my peers and there are many terms where that would not be possible. Once I had decided on arterial, I found it challenging to rephrase the same definition in three ways. It is not very often where someone needs to explain a word in three different, expanded ways to someone, so my largest challenge was not being too repetitive or providing contrasting explanations accidentally.
That being said, Christina’s peer-review of my own definition was extremely helpful. After reading her peer-review, it was very clear to me where I needed improvement in my assignment. Her review highlighted problematic areas that I did not originally catch. For example, “at-grade” is commonly used in my workplace, but to the common reader it may not be, and therefore needed further elaboration. Going forward, I think I need to more critically edit my work and think about it from the perspective of another person. Where can I elaborate more? Will the reader understand all that’s presented? In addition, I need to improve on better addressing an audience in all of my writing. In contexts like these, setting a clear audience is just as important as setting a clear thesis in a formal paper/report. I hope to achieve these improvements in my future assignments for this course.
Discussed assignments can be found here: