1.1 Application Letter for ENGL 301 Writing Team
No.3 Road
Richmond, B.C. V1k 4A9
Sept 18, 2020
ENGL301 students,
Campus Mailing Services
2329 West Mall
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4
Dear writers of Engl301:
Please consider my application for a writing poison at your professional writing team. I will graduate next year from the University of British Columbia. I am currently a student of the IDST program. IDST program offered at UBC is aimed at helping students who are unsure about or are struggling about to make one subject as their major. In the program, I get to choose three subjects as my majors. Hence, instead of studying just one subject, I am taking History, English, and Asia as my three majors.
As you can see from my education experience, I have a broad interest, and I always think outside of the box. Aside from my own studies, I am also a volunteer at the UBC Chinese Oral Practice program. Because I am a native speaker of Chinese, I help foreign students to practice speaking Chinese in my spare time, and I am planning to apply for a TA position in the following Winter term 2.
I have worked hard to hone my cooperation skills and communication skills. My experience, education, and personality have prepared me to work well with others and to respond creatively to challenges, crises, and added responsibilities.
If my background meets your needs, please email me any weekday or even weekends if you need my emergent response at pengshujunschool@gmail.com.
Sincerely,
Shujun Peng.
1. 2 Memo to Dr. Erika Paterson
To: Dr. Erika Paterson, Instructor of ENGL301
From : Shujun Peng, Student of ENGL 301
Date: Sept18, 2020
Subject: Completion of Application Letter
I wanted to send a brief message to inform you that I’ve posted my application letter to the position of a professional writing team member according to the ENGL301 unit 1.2 Assignment request. I have attached my application letter to this memo and will summarize the key point of the document below:
- My major in UBC.
- My interests in the study
- My Personality
- My volunteer experience
- My enthusiasm in becoming a good team member
If you require any points of clarification, please let me know at your next earliest convenience.
Best,
Shujun.
301_ Shujun’s Application letter
1.3 Emails to classmates
- To Syed Ahmed:
No.3 Road
Richmond, B.C. V1k 4A9
Sept 23rd, 2020
123 Syed Drive,
Vancouver, British Columbia
Dear Syed Ahmed,
I hope all is well with you! Thank you for posting the Application Letter, it was really well written and I am amazed that you are in the “second-degree BCS program”. I am also planning to pursue a master’s degree after I graduate from UBC, for me, I think learning is a life long process, and I will probably come back to school after gaining some years of working experience.
From your educational background, and your writing, I truly believe you are a strong candidate for a professional writing team. I admire that you contributed to writing feedback to science journalists, it must take years of research practices in order to get to that position. Your application letter also inspired me in a way that someone better than me is still trying to improve their writing. Hence, there’s really no reason for me to stop trying.
I hope you will consider me as a member of your team. I know I am not as experienced as you academically and I am not a native speaker. but I am eager to learn, and I appreciate criticism as you do.
I have attached my application letter in this email, I hope once you read it, you will know more about me.
Richmond, B.C. V1k 4A9
Junrong Zhu ENGL301 students,
Campus Mailing Services
2329 West Mall
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4
Dear Junrong Zhu,
Thank you for posting your Application Letter! I have read your Application Letter, it was clear and well written.
Read through your application letter, I was delighted to discover that you have working experiences which helped you hone your interpersonal skills, I am currently working as a volunteer at UBC Chinese program, although I don’t receive wages, I also experienced that communicating with people in a daily basis really hone our interpersonal skills.
I found your study philosophy is really inspiring. I also try to challenge myself by taking classes from different disciplines, and ENGL301 is one of them. Like you, I am also not a native speaker, and it often takes great pain for me to write in English. But I still select ENGL 301 in this term, because I wanted to see how far can I go if I take this chance and practice my writing skills.
I have attached my Application Letter in this email. If you went through it and thinks I am a good fit, please let me know.
Best,
Shujun.
3). To Evan
Richmond, B.C. V1k 4A9
The University of British Columbia,
2205 Lower Mall,
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4
Dear Evan,
I hope all is well with you. I went through your application letter, and I think you are a strong candidate!
As I was going through your application letter, I discovered that you are also in the IDST program. How is the program working for you? I find it very challenging to take classes from different disciplines; moreover, we are taking advanced classes as well.
Your study philosophy is also a quality that attracts me. You are very determined in your application letter, I truly believe we would make up a great team!
Moreover, I see that you have several working experiences, including internships. I think you definitely would be benefiting from taking this course, and I hope I can learn from your previous experience with professional writing as we go through this term.
I have attached my application letter, if you think I am a good fit, please contact me.
Stay healthy!
Best,
Shujun.
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.