Week 5 Reflection Blog

This week we were not assigned any articles to read or summaries to write. We read Markel’s Chapter 15 on writing job-application materials, which is the next week’s topic, and Chapter 21 on making oral presentations. Although our team’s project did not involve any live presentations, I found useful the sections on analyzing the audience and purpose, introducing and concluding a presentation, and preparing presentation graphics. Granted, these topics are covered by many college courses, but this particular reading helped me put the process of communicating information in the context of presenting results, findings, or ideas to a live audience. In particular, understanding the role of an oral presentation helps anticipate comments or questions in a written document, such as a tutorial, prepared with a view of persuading clients or customers to agree to or accept something.

Chapter 15 discusses writing job-application materials, which is an essential topic for college students. This is the first time that I got to learn about the job-application process, understanding what employers want, and how to look for positions from a textbook instead of separate articles. One thing that I still might need to learn about is how to apply this knowledge in practice. Hence I look forward to the next week’s activities to cement this chapter’s information.

We also reviewed two PPTs and completed two activities in preparation for the final project. Otherwise, reviewing and revising is pretty much what this whole week has been all about. We reviewed our peers’ work and incorporated their feedback into our own drafts. This has been a useful exercise in that we learned how to critically read drafts and used this skill to revise our own work. I only hope that my reviews have been as useful to other team members as their reviews have been to me.

Today we submitted the polished drafts of our team’s deliverables: research proposal, status report, and tutorial. What a great practice at technical writing! We got to carefully select the audience, identify the rhetorical situation, and analyze the goals of communication. Both instructor’s feedback and peer reviews were very helpful in finding the right angle, tone, and language. This week has been one of the most rewarding so far.