Overall

By taking the ENGL 301 class,  I learned how to write in business, professional and technical contexts. Meanwhile, I also find much weakness that I need to improve in the future.

Strength and Things I learned

First, I am familiar with designing job-oriented website (LinkedIn and Web folio) which helps me in career development and also master more strategies and techniques for building job-search material such as resumes, cover letter, and request for reference letters. Second, I learned how to write three different types of definition and workplace memo and letter. It includes writing the parts, formats, and design features of workplace memo and letters. Third, I learned how to work collaboratively with a team and how to peer review the assignments of my teammates. During this peer review process, I reflected on my writing and developed self-editing skills.  Finally, I studied the process of writing the formal report, including writing proposal, outline, progress report and final formal report. I also learned how to design and implement a survey and search source online.

Weakness

During this class, I found much weakness in my writing ability. The most important issue is grammar. From the review from my instructor and teammates, they all pointed out that there is more or less grammar issues in every assignment. I realized I lack much fundamental grammar knowledge (e.g., usage of “a” and “the” and tense consistency)  which I should review them in the future. The next big weakness is sentence structure and word choice when I write the assignments, I found that my sentence structure is simple and monotonous. Most of the structure I use is subject-predicate structure while my teammates know how to vary the sentence structure and make their article more fluent and interesting. The word choice is also a challenge for me since my vocabulary is limited. I would continue to read more books and articles in the future and learned their sentence structure and word choice under different situations and environments.

Career Development

This course helped me a lot regarding my career development in the future. First of all, strategies and techniques for building job-search material such as resumes, cover letter and request for reference letter increase my opportunities to find my dream job. Second, learning writing three different types of definition and workplace memo enhances technical communication in the job environment. Third, working collaboratively with a team develops my team sprite during the work. Last, learning writing the formal report strengthens my research ability which is a useful skill for many employers.

Conclusion

I will bring what I learned in this course to my career (Coop and full time) in the future, and I will try my best correct my defects and shortcoming. 

 

This is my first time when I am creating my web folio online. It is an interesting and valuable experience for me to create and modify my web folio and I learned a lot during this process.

The first important thing I learned is writing for the web environment, which depends on how people read web pages. Because the readers are busy and they want the information quickly, the paragraphs must be short, and the content should be worthwhile and valuable to readers. Also, I need to write in a factual and neutral tone to increase the credibility and authority of the web folio.

The next thing I learned is designing web pages. Research shows that readers of web page employ the “F-shaped” reading pattern to skim quickly. Because of this, I need to use the top paragraphs or sections for the most important information or visuals. Besides, the font style and size should keep consistent and avoid mixing and matching typefaces randomly. Finally, use visuals effectively, the writer should balance text with visuals to make the content more readable.

The third thing I learned is the elements of a web folio which includes homepage, blog page, and any other necessary pages. The home page should welcome your readers and tell the reader’s the purpose of the web folio and any other important information. The blog page is where you can post blogs, and the readers view them chronologically. The menu should contain the hyperlink to provide access to the necessary pages for readers.

 

 

 

Reflection on researching the formal report:

For the first time, I learned how to create and design survey questions, including the survey introduction. Many things need to be considered for a good survey. First, personal questions should be avoided since privacy is concerned with ethics and legality. Second, always avoid the negative when writing survey questions. We should stress positive outcomes rather than negative situations for professional writing (such as formal report, proposal and survey questions) because readers generally conflict with negative sentences. Three, avoid leading questions due to the fact that the survey should always stay neutral.

Besides, conducting the survey is not an easy thing. At first, although I spread the survey to lots of people, only a few of them responded. I realized that some reward mechanism should be applied to encourage the joining to the survey. Thus, I decided people who finished the survey can enter the draw and win money. After that, the number of respondents increased a lot. Thus, obtaining primary data source require time, energy and financial investment.

 

Reflection on organizing and writing and formal report:

The proposal and outline did give me a big favor when organizing the formal report. Proposal provide the direction of agreement and thesis, while outline breaks the report into many connected subsections. Also, formal reports are almost written for decision makers such as government officials or corporate managers, so I should consider the readers and ask myself why this particular topic is useful for them. Another important thing I learned is that most reports can be divided into three main sections, introduction, body, and conclusion. The introduction provides background and engages the audience. The body section describes and explains my finding, and conclusion answers the questions that originally sparked the analysis. A strategy for organizing the report is to figure out these three main parts first and then add more points to corresponding sections.

Regarding writing the formal reports, I reviewed to write front matter precedes the report, such as title page, table of contents and list of figures. Also, I reviewed how to cite in text for MLA style and included a Works Cited list. However, the challenge for me to write the report is how to choose the precise words and vary sentence structures. I would expand vocabulary and practice using different kinds of sentence structure in the future.

 

Reflection on peer review teammates’ report:

From reviewing my partner’s report, there are many strong points from which I can learn in the future. The biggest thing is that Jones uses various sentence structure and advanced grammar.  For example, Jones wrote, “this research can only give us particular insight into what the applicant should do, as every year there is a different group of people, and with that the competitive nature changes as well.” Although this sentence is not very complex, it uses object clause induced by wh-words “what” and follows adverbial clause of cause induced by “as”.

 

Conclusion

Researching, organizing and drafting the first draft of the formal report gave me good practice to learn the process of writing the formal report, and from peer review, I also find many weaknesses. I will improve and revise the report in future.

 

Link to Formal Report First Draft