Through this week’s assignment, I was able to develop my technical communication skills by creating, and revising my own definitions in addition to providing constructive feedback for my partner.
Initially when I started this assignment, I was fairly confident in my ability to clearly define the term “full stack developer” to senior high school students. Throughout this process, I continually devised and revised my definitions while referring to the textbook guidelines and reading various definitions of this term using credible resources which I then cited. However, after reading through my partner’s peer review report, I became aware of the knowledge gap in the terms “front-end “and “back-end” which would similarly be unfamiliar to my targeted audience. I decided to replace these terms with analogous words that would improve the readability of my article.
In short, I have learned that it is important to often reread your work multiple times, but it is equally important to have another individual with a fresh pair of eyes to proof-read and reap the benefits of catching mistakes you otherwise would have overlooked. When peer reviewing for my partner, I learned to ask questions while reading to evaluate the clarity of the piece. This is a valuable editing technique that I can apply to my own self-editing process to ensure that the targeted audience can understand the term without any technical knowledge.