Drafting and Reviewing Formal Reports

As we have progressed through the semester, our English 301 course work has begun to focus on our formal reports. Creating a formal report draft has been a very unique and extensive experience. I have never had to focus my writing on an issue outside of the classroom like I have in writing my formal report draft. The act of collecting primary and secondary data and then presenting it using professional writing techniques was a very challenging but valuable experience. I believe that this skill will help all English 301 students throughout their education as well as in life outside of school.

The research required for our formal report draft consisted of primary and secondary data. A survey of Coast Mental Health patients made up my primary data. Being that this was my first time conducting an in person survey, I was quite nervous doing it. I can now say that it taught me a lot in terms of speaking professionally, maintaining boundaries, making those surveyed feel comfortable and thoroughly explaining my purpose in front of others. Furthermore, I had to learn to enter the results of my survey into a program called Survey Monkey in order to produce Figure 1 and 2 in my report. I can see myself using this program to display data in graph form for future reports. My secondary data was gathered from various peer reviewed journals and articles. I focused on finding information that supported the results of my survey and proved the benefits of my intended purpose. Although I’ve had to accumulate information this way for other classes, this was a good lesson on the most effective way to go about finding secondary data. I had to relearn how to best utilize my search terms, how to find only the most prominent works and how to cite my findings in MLA style.

I chose to organize my report based off of the core elements that Dr. Paterson suggested we include. The sections of my report include a title page, table of contents, introduction, body, conclusion and recommendations. Doing a formal report outline as a previous assignment helped me determine how to divide my material among the sections of my report draft The assignments and peer reviews that we have completed this semester have taught me the importance of visible, bold headings and subheadings. I made sure to implement my headings and subheadings in this way so that it is easier for the reader to follow the various sections of my report.

The writing of my formal report served as a great way to incorporate the many techniques we have learned during this semester. In my past writing/English classes, the focus was often on being descriptive and providing thorough explanations but producing a formal report was different. The formal report draft was a great lesson in conveying a point in the most concise manner possible. This was especially difficult for me as being overly verbose is one of the weaknesses in my writing. A major part of learning to write with brevity involves avoiding writing in a passive voice. I noticed that helped drastically to cut down on unnecessary words Nevertheless, I have learned that being concise and direct is very effective in professional writing and as our Instructor’s Blog says, we should “consider our readers to be very busy people”. Creating a formal report draft has also been a tutorial on writing from an objective point of view. From early on we are taught to write subjectively and express our opinion, however, writing objectively seems more applicable to our professional futures. The objective manner that we wrote our formal report draft in provides our reader with an educated view point on our topic rather than trying to convince the reader to agree with us. One aspect of writing my formal report that I found particularly challenging was writing with a “You” attitude when necessary. I understand that a “You” attitude is necessary in our report since we are writing to cater to a specific individual and I will definitely try and improve on this when finalizing my report. I will also need to review my formal report draft and add phrases such as “As you are aware” when presenting information that my intended reader will know.

Performing a review of a classmates formal report draft was a very helpful exercise. By pretending that the report was being written for me, I was able to suggest revisions where a “You” attitude was not used. The report that I reviewed was fairly comprehensive. I used the core elements listed on the “Instructors Blog” to make sure that all elements were included and provided reminders when I found one that wasn’t. The peer reviews that we have submitted in the past provided a rough template for me to use for this review, however, I consulted the “Instructors Blog” to make sure that I touched on what wasn’t needed in past reviews. I now feel that I have a valid template to use when conducting peer reviews of formal reports in the future. The rest of my peer review mainly consisted of suggesting areas where rewording of a sentence could prove beneficial and where commas were used improperly. These were just minor revisions that I believe will make the report more pleasant to read. Grammar and punctuation errors have become easier to identify as my writing/reviewing skills have improved over the semester. Performing a peer review of a formal report draft will definitely help me in writing my own finalized report and I hope it will help my peer as well.

Overall, unit three of English 301 was the most challenging unit to date. Incorporating the various skills we have learned so far into a formal report draft was quite difficult, however, I know that this assignment will be one that helps us in our professional and educational futures. I look forward to finalizing my report in the coming weeks and also reading the finalized reports of my classmates. I am proud to say that my peer review process has improved each time I have done a review and I hope it has proven increasingly helpful to my peers. Anyways, on to unit 4 we go. Thank you for reading!