In Unit 1, we learned the basics of technical writing. At the end of the unit, we were tasked to write a document that explains a definition of a technical term. We were then asked to write a peer review for other students’ documents and re-edit our own work.
Writing process
In unit 1:3, we had the assignment to write three different kinds of definitions of a technical term targetting a non-technical audience. In this process, I found difficulty in conveying information for an audience who has no prior knowledge but I learned the importance of concise writing. The term I choose for the assignment, authoritative parents, comes from the psychology field. I had to write three different definitions for this term: parenthetical, sentence, and expanded definition. I learned how it differs in terms of its format and usage. While a parenthetical definition cannot include much information, an expanded definition requires enough explanation for a non-technical audience to deeply understand the meaning. The most difficult part of this assignment was to carefully choose the words for each sentence, especially in sentence definition and expanded definition. I learned the significance of considering if each word needs to be replaced by general terms. Another challenge in this process was to consider the extent of the depth of the information. In order to make the document simple, comprehensible, and meaningful, I had to avoid complicated topics and information but enough knowledge. Overall, this experience taught me the importance of controlling the information in documents.
Peer reviewing process
In this process, we were tasked to write a peer review for our partners. I wrote a peer review for my partner, Liam Plosker, and provided feedback for his definition assignment. Reviewing my partner’s work gives me the hint for better writing. His assignment has very detailed information about the term that he choose, and I was interested to read and understand the story. This made me realize that the depth of information is also important to draw the reader’s attention. Also, the process to examine other people’s writing gave me the chance to reflect on my work. Trying to find the revisable parts requires me to read as a third party, and it enables me to pay attention to the conciseness, wording, and accuracy of the tone. Also, reading the feedback that he gave me on my work had an impact on my understanding of writing. His feedback taught me that the impression of my writing can differ from what I expected, and how I can revise that.
Self-editing process
The self-editing process was a chance to reflect on what I learned through the past processes into the work. I revised my document based on the suggestions that I got from the feedback. In my peer’s review, I got the feedback that my expanded definition can be more simple and more concise by using bullet points. In order to do so, I had to consider how to reorganize the paragraphs, but I could learn how to shorten the sentence and make the information more straightforward. Also, reading the positive feedback from my partner is helpful to know the benchmark for the next assignment. His positive comments on the flow of the document taught me its significance.