Hello ENGL peers! Now that I have (almost) successfully completed the first unit of Technical Writing, I can pat myself on the back! As mentioned in my home page – I’m not the biggest fan of writing or English courses in general. So, for me to complete the first unit of this course and it being in my first semester of university I feel pretty darn proud of myself. Throughout the first unit we had to set up our blog and add a biography and home page to introduce ourselves and describe in our own terms what we’ll be learning and taking away from this course. We also got to practice writing an application letter to find teammates for our writing group for the semester. I honestly didn’t know there was a difference between a cover letter and application letter before doing this, so that was new, and I learnt the difference between the two! From there I had to e-mail prospective teammates, (of course using a professional tone) and indicate why their credentials interested me to reach out to ask them to join my team. I believe this was one of the biggest challenges for me in unit one as it was hard to organize a people together when everyone is on different time zones! I had faith throughout that week that everything would work out for me to be on a team, and it did! I have a wonderful writing team named “The Pencil Pack” that I am so happy to be a part of, they are all so supportive and helpful with my writing. In the third week of unit one we had to do a small assignment on definition writing. Our Professor, Erika let us pick something of interest to us in our field to do this assignment on and I think this made me kind of enjoy writing (for once!) Once we had our definitions assignment posted on our team forum my writing team partnered up and peer-reviewed each other’s work. I will go into more detail in the next paragraphs about what I have learnt from the definitions and peer-review aspect of that assignment.
As I mentioned above, writing the definitions assignment was a good experience for me. I really enjoyed how Erika let us pick something that was related to our field – because that makes it so much easier to write about! I am questioning now; do I just have a negative judgement on writing and English courses because I never could write about something that really interested me!? I guess I’ll know after I complete this course. I chose the term ‘dental radiographs’ or x-rays known to most because I figured everyone has probably had some taken at some point in their life. It was cool for me to be able to write out different definitions of this because when I am at work, I always say the same thing to my patients when they ask what a radiograph is– and honestly it gets quite boring and repetitive. From doing this assignment on that term, I think I will now be able to give my patients a more ‘in- depth’ definition or at least different wording! I believe my style of writing for this assignment was pretty straight to the point because I learnt with definitions you shouldn’t add anything that isn’t related to the term.
With having to complete my partners peer review next, I was nervous. Knowing that everyone in my team has had a few years of university under their belt and I had none made me feel anxious about peer-reviewing their work. I took a chance to read over my partners work a few times before I even looked at what was expected for the peer review portion. Once I grasped the idea of what term she was defining it became easier for me to relax and peer review her work as a classmate. At first, I picked up on the spelling and grammar errors that I was aware of, and then continued to look through the document to see if there was anything I didn’t quite understand or words that I was unfamiliar with. Having the Technical Communication textbook helped me to lay out and construct my peer review to my team mate.
Once my team mate had posted her peer review on my assignment, I was excited to see what she thought of it! I was happy to receive any constructive criticism she had for me because I knew she has a great background that could help me with my writing. The first thing my peer had proposed that I change was my introduction; by stating what role I had at the dental office and why I am the one who must explain the use of my term to my patients. I thought this was a really good idea as I knew my team was aware of my profession, but not the fact that I was the one who took the radiographs. The next suggestion by my peer was to change or elaborate on a couple of the words I used (periodontium and periodontal) as she mentioned that being a non-technical audience member, she did not have any idea what they meant, and it was a bit confusing. After reading over her peer review, I happily went back and edited my document with her recommendations. I also added my in-cite references as well, because as mentioned on the chat by another team member this is what we were supposed to do!
With doing the definitions assignment, I am pleasantly surprised with myself. I feel like if I know what the objectives are and there are examples (textbook) then I should be able to conquer what else is coming in this course. I learnt that my writing isn’t bad as I thought (I hope), and maybe I can enjoy writing if it’s something I am passionate about! With having access to all my peers’ definitions assignments, I learnt that everyone has a different style of writing, and no one’s skills are the same, which makes me think that I may fit into this course, just fine.
After the insights and values gained through unit one, I am excited to see what the next unit brings! I have already put in numerous hours into unit one and am glad for what I have learnt and practiced, as I know someday this will be very helpful in my career! I have been starting to brainstorm through this week about what I am going to write about for my formal report and am so thankful that we can write it on something that we pick!
Thanks for reading,
Meagan Rosenberg