Monthly Archives: November 2021

The biggest assignment in unit three of ENGL 301 as well as the whole course was a formal report on a topic of our choosing. The only constraint was that the report needed to be written to aid a professional or academic organization. My report was written for the Computer Science Student Society (CSSS) at UBC to be distributed to interested computer science students. The topic was on the negative health effects of sitting for too long. After completing the first drafts of our reports, ENGL 301 students were tasked with peer reviewing each other’s reports within writing teams that were previously formed. I peer reviewed Sidney Singh’s report about maintaining active membership in the Creative Writing Student Association (CWSA) at UBC. This peer review was in the form of a memorandum.

While I have some experience writing analytical reports, I found my report challenging to write. The research on how sitting affects back pain and obesity is filled with conflicting studies. I learned to read systematic reviews in order to get a more complete picture of all the research that was done on a particular question. The whole report writing process taught me strategies to organize literature searches so that they give accurate results. I also learned to plan my writing and research time so that I could finish a large report before a deadline. This report was my first opportunity to create and collect data from a survey. The Qualtrics Survey Tool UBC provided made the process go smoothly. It even helped me create figures for the report.

Giving feedback to my writing team member about their formal report was quite time consuming. I learned that a memorandum is not the best method to advise someone on lots of editing. Since Microsoft’s Word is used to write the report, it makes more sense to use the “track changes” feature. This allows users to suggest edits and add comments to any section within the file. For instance, it would be much quicker to correct spelling mistakes since you would not need to write out the incorrect word, the corrected word, and the location in the report. Despite this, I improved my ability to effectively organize a memo with a lot of disjoint information. There is a lot to say about the first draft of a 10-page report.

Formal Report (.pdf) – Negative Effects of Long-Term Sitting – Phillip Tellier

The second unit of ENGL 301 involved a mix of different writing assignments. We needed to write a list of the best networking practices for LinkedIn, begin planning out a formal report on a topic of our choosing, and create a proposal for this report. Students also peer reviewed each others formal report proposals within writing teams of four. The LinkedIn assignment was designed to hone our networking expertise by researching LinkedIn best practices. On the other hand, the formal report proposal and associated peer reviewing taught organizational skills for writing. It gave insight into how a professional technical writer would make preparations within their organization to write a great report.

While I can see how writing a guide on LinkedIn networking could help some students learn online networking practices, I learned little. As a second-degree student with work experience in a competitive field, I already knew how to use LinkedIn well. Furthermore, I am hesitant to say that any list of best practices can be known as the most effective way to navigate the professional environment. It might stem from a skepticism of the social sciences, but in my opinion the scenarios and goals of people using LinkedIn vary too much for conclusions to be drawn from anecdotes and controlled studies. Best practices depend on what the individual wants to achieve and who they want to appeal to. In essence, I believe each person should act on LinkedIn according to their particular situation, and not strictly adhere to a generalized list.

Most students would agree that a formal report with a minimum of 12 pages is daunting, especially for students in programs that do less writing like myself. Although I conform to this, the requirement for both a formal report outline and a report proposal helped. This required us to get organized by breaking down the task into more manageable pieces. Specifically, we created a schedule of the sub-tasks to complete in the proposal. In this way, we committed to avoiding procrastination and we re-imagined the workload as reasonable. It was difficult for me to decide on the topic of my report, the negative effects of long-term sitting, but once I did it was fairly easy to find subtopics and design an outline.

The peer review I received for my formal report proposal was mostly positive which was reassuring. There were nuanced parts of my proposal that I could have been clearer about since my reviewer did not understand them. For instance, I could have expanded on what is currently known about the long-term effects of sitting, and what I think students know. When peer reviewing my writing teammate’s formal report proposal, I put into practice phrasing my critiques as suggestions. Hence, I am learning to keep a positive encouraging tone. It felt easier than my first peer review. I was also interested to learn about my peer’s formal report topic. She plans to write a report on different types of food packaging to help a local start-up. I look forward to reading the full report.

Formal Report Proposal on the Negative Effects of Sitting – Phillip Tellier
Peer Review for my Formal Report Proposal – Lea Ang Salamanca