Junrong Zhu ENGL301 students,
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Unit 1 Reflection Blog 

In Unit 1, I learned how to write an application letter, a memo, emails, types of definitions of a technical term, and peer review. What a productive unit!  The application letter assignment allows me to reflect on my strengths and weaknesses in writing, I learned that when writing an application, we as applicants, must think about how to “market” ourselves to other people. In this unit, I also learned how to write a memo, I see the difference between an email and a memo; in a memo, the content is more official and more concise. It is like an outline, informing the receiver about your process in a project. Emails are less formal between group members, and I don’t always include an attachment in emails, and sometimes I and my group members communicate without adding our names on the top.

As for assignment 1.3, I think I benefit more from writing a peer review then doing the assignment. The process of peer review is also a process of reflecting on my own work. I become more familiar with the assignment instructions, and after writing the peer review, I go back to my assignment and made changes based on my suggestions to others. For instance, I did not include an introduction and a conclusion in my assignment, so I added in my revised definition assignment. I also learned that my format needs to be improved, therefore, I organize my revised definition assignment using bolded subheadings, listing the parenthesis definition, sentence definition, and expanded definition more clearly. I also learned the MLA citation format in this unit, in my other classes, we mainly use the APA citation format.

Although no one reviewed my assignment, I am still able to learn something from reviewing others’ work, and see how other member write their definition assignment and learn from them. In their assignments, a lesson I gained is that, when defining a technical term, we need to think of ourselves as the reader or put ourselves in the reader’s shoes. Using common sense to explain difficult concepts.

Unit 3 Reflection Blog

In the third unit of the ENGL 301 course, we were tasked to write “ Writing with You Attitude Memo to Evan Crisp”, “ Business Letters: Complaint & Bad Newsletter”, a formal report draft, as well as two peer reviews. I learned much in this unit, and I am confident that these strategies are useful in the workplace.

“Writing with You Attitude Memo to Evan Crisp” Reflection

This assignment is by far the most challenging one because it was difficult to not use personal pronouns when I am writing a Memo to someone. However, this exercise made me understand that using personal pronouns too often, can make my message sound informal.

I learned that effective writer avoids using pronouns because they want to be respectful. Pronouns should be omitted or carefully used when we are providing suggestions, writing emails, or doing peer reviews.  Our message can sound condescending if we don’t know how to use a positive tone.

“ Business Letters: Complaint & Bad Newsletter” Reflection

This assignment helps me to place myself in the shoes of the manager -the person who receives my complain. In this exercise, I understand the importance of respecting readers even though they might make a mistake. The best way to file a complaint is not to just express our anger, but to communicate the problem effectively and in a respectful tone so that the person that receives our complaint will be more likely to help us.

“Formal Report Draft” Reflection

I enjoyed the process of writing a draft because I was able to learn about business writing. This is my first time taking a technical writing class, I was ignorant about the format of business writing and everything, but luckily the instructor blog provided me a lot of suggestions, and I use textbook’s examples to organize my draft.

I also encountered some problems when I was writing, the first problem I had is that, I can find little research on the subject I am writing about. My group member (Annie) also writes about this in her peer review of my draft. Annie said that my literacy review does not fit into the paper, which I agree with, and I will try my best to make parts fit these days.

“Peer Review Reflection”

In this stage of the assignment, I was able to see writing techniques that worked well in Annie’s assignment, and mirror that in my own writing. I like the way how Annie organizes her survey results, and I will probably do a similar organization these days. I was able to find parts of my writing that don’t fit and some parts that were written ungrammatically. Because I am not a native speaker, I appreciate other’s suggestions because I might not able to see the problems in my own writing.