As a writer, I tried to write in a simple, easy-to-understand language while defining the disease phenylketonuria for grade 12 Biology students. My goal was to use less scientific words as possible because I did not want to overwhelm my young readers. However, some scientific words were necessary to use, such as amino acids and tyrosine, in order to deepen the understanding of a biochemical disease. Although my peer reviewer, Tanis Lewis-King, suggested I eliminate such words or expand on their definition, I chose not to. This is because, most grade 12 Biology students have some sense of what amino acids are and I believe I provided enough background information not to overwhelm them. If I defined words like amino acids, then I would have lost my emphasis on the actual term being defined, which is phenylketonuria.
Also in the first draft, I talked about the history and discovery of phenylketonuria because I thought my audience may be curious to know. But after the peer review, I realized that this piece of information is not important as it shifts away from the actual definition.
As a peer reviewer, I noticed that my writing is quite similar to Tanis Lewis-King’s. It was similar because we both have an extensive science background, hence our writing is understandable to each other. The main difference between our writing was that I tend to include too much additional information that is unnecessary, while Tanis Lewis-King is very concise and to the point. After peer reviewing, I realized that I need to make my writing more organized and brief to the assignment.
Overall, this assignment challenged our inner writer and editor skills. It was a great learning experience to write for a specific audience. When we are familiar with or knowledgeable about a certain topic or term, we assume others may be aware of it as well. However, this is not always true. Therefore, this assignment was useful in teaching us to respect the skill level of our audience.
Revised Definition:
ENG 301 – Definitions (Edited)
Peer Review: