Monthly Archives: October 2016

I learned a lot in the second unit of English 301. My favorite part of it was planning for the formal report. I’ve been able to use my report to help the place that I love most in the world, Ruxton island. The Ruxton Island Home Owner’s Association has been mulling over building docks for years, and someone even built an illegal dock at one point, but they haven’t been able to do any research on the social, economical, and environmental consequences of building a dock. I thought, ” I have the resources to do the research, and a class that will mark me for it, so why not do it?
Moving ahead in this course, I look forward to finishing my formal report complete with the surveys that I made. I feel like it is an accomplishment to feel proud of.

Below are my reflections of the Unit Two LinkedIn account creation, formal report proposal and outline, my investigation for my formal report thus far, comments about my review of Kayla Grisack’s formal report proposal, and about the reviewing process in general. Attached you’ll find my revised report proposal and somewhere in the writing you’ll find a hyperlink to my review of Kayla’s report proposal.

LinkedIn account creation:

Before this course, I had only filled in the very basics of my LinkedIn account. Creating a professional social media network made me feel confident that I could carry my business forward like never before. Meanwhile when I am eventually looking for a job besides my business, I will only have to edit my profile picture and my summary to suit the nature of my profile. LinkedIn was much easier to use than I thought it would be. I just filled in my qualifications, after some research, of course, and my profile looked pretty good. I could use a few endorsements, but those will come in time.

Preparing my formal report proposal and outline:

As stated above, I really enjoyed this part of the course. Once I decided that my topic was going to be researching the impacts of  docks on Ruxton Island, the proposal basically wrote itself. That is to say, I’ve heard the issues that Ruxtonites have with docks so many times, that my main task was organizing those issues into a proposal and figuring out how to do my research. The research should be fun too, because I get to analyze facts about my community such as just how much crime happens in the Southern Gulf Islands. I found the outline a bit tedious to write because of all of the subtopics, but I think that I can get used to that with some practice.

Formal report investigation:

So far my investigation is going well and I have created a timeline to suit my needs so I should be fine. I’ve also read up in the course text book about what a formal report should look like, so I think that I am well on my way to the final product of my formal report. I just have to get the research done with help from my divers and from participants from the local island community.

Kayla Grisack’s Formal Report Proposal review:

I may have been even tougher on Kayla Grisack than I was on Sean Chan last unit. The problem was that her topic was not well thought out or researched. A solution for her topic already existed through a government of Canada website, which I had coincidentally heard about in a CBC broadcast two days before reading Kayla’s report. She also wanted to do a survey of very few people which consisted of the staff and management of her workplace. Although it is likely that such a survey would create a consensus, a survey of so few people is not usually done in a formal report, and in a situation where people are not communicating in the work place is likely to cause drama. I like the thought of Kayla wanting to help her workplace succeed in communicating, but I’m not sure that a formal report is the right tactic to do that.  From reviewing Kayla’s formal report proposal, I learned that a person’s grammar and spelling are just as important as their topic. Kayla and I reviewed each other’s topics and while she found that my grammar and spelling make my topic seem confusing, I understood her topic very well because of her spelling and grammar.

The reviewing process in general:

I was not surprised by the kinds of topics in my group came up with. They are diverse and it has been a pleasure to read their work. I have learned a lot from them. I learned why not to use too much Jargon from Sean, why to use proper grammar from Kayla, and how to do a good LinkedIn account from Mike. From doing reviews, I think that I have to be more careful with my grammar because sometimes it is not very good.

revised-ruxton-proposal

The first unit of English 301 had a steep learning curve. It is not necessarily a difficult course, but I am used to writing stories – not typing out technical writing. That said, I am learning a lot about technical writing and I am enjoying the process of writing for business. Moving ahead in this course, I look forward to learning how to write a formal report.  Below are my reflections of the unit one definitions assignment, critiquing process, editing process, and what I learned. Attached you will also find the edited version of my definitions assignment.

The Writing Process:

The writing process for the definition assignment was fairly straight forward once I figured out the right word to define. “Fetch” is a term that mostly people who work on the water or students in oceanography or ecology would know, so it seemed like a good fit for the assignment. Defining it in a way that someone who does not work in that field would understand was fairly easy, although upon reflection, I feel like I may have made my definition too simple. People complete PhD’s on fetch, such as those listed in the bibliography of my assignment, and to oversimplify that term is not giving them enough credit for the conditions that fetch has. I suppose that if I had made the definition more complex though, it would ruin the point of parenthetical and sentence definitions.

Sean Chan’s Critique Of My Assignment:

Sean Chan’s critique of my definition assignment was generally positive. His one critique was that the diagram that I used should have a bi-directional arrow. The nature of fetch is that it is caused by wind in one constant direction, as stated in my sentence definition, so I could not agree with that critique.

The Editing Process:

Due to the fact that Sean did not understand my diagram, when I edited my definition assignment, I changed the diagram that I used. The new diagram is more complex, but the descriptions of the arrows in the diagram better describe fetch than those in my last submission of the assignment. I also updated the references to show the source for the new diagram.

My Critique Of Sean Chan’s Assignment:

I have to admit that I am a tough critic. Compared to the singular critique on the diagram that Sean made of my assignment, my critique of his assignment looks rather harsh. My critiques were on his grammar, his word choice, his visual, his citations, and his format. Looking back at my critique, I still standby what I wrote because his original assignment needs some work. Sean is capable though. His final copy of the definitions assignment will undoubtedly be much more polished.

What I learned:

I learned that definitions can be quite useful in business documents but that jargon should not be used if at all possible. It also makes sense that there are different expansion strategies for definitions because not everyone will understand a definition with just a diagram, or just an a sentence definition. I did not understand Sean Chan’s definition of “trading algorithm” until I saw his diagram, which makes sense because I am a highly visual learner. Likewise he did not understand the diagram that I used, but he understood the words that I wrote, so he possibly learns well from reading.

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