After reading and understanding the topic, the initial drafting is a collection of ideas, phrases, words which may include grammatical mistakes, spelling errors, punctuation. I may draft sections at the different or same time provided that I feel convenient. I intend or not to use them in my final writing. The process of drafting takes place continuously or stop for a while to help the writer refresh his mind and back to work. The draft could be sent to peers' review for their feedback to enrich ideas. Final drafting is a process to cut off unnecessary, abundant ideas, phrases.
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I join a group of colleagues to go to a beach on weekends to stay away from the bustle and hustle of a city. As an office staff, we organise some kinds of activities combining a relaxation. The purpose of going to sea is to take a moment of rest and clean the beach. Starting a trip early in the morning when people are still falling into a sleep, the city is still enlightened, we drive a van to head off to the beach. It takes us two hours to go there. We divide our people into small groups. Some make a tent, some unpack things, and others prepare breakfast for us. When everything is well done, we sit on the beach to eat breakfast in open air. Before we swim in the turquoise water, play a volleyball on the white sand, we join hands to clean the beach. When we clear the beach of rubbish, papers, people nearly come to do with us. It looks like Dominique's action. We feel hilarious to see they respond to our activity.
I think our weekend trip is full meaningful. We enjoy our date-outing together while we raise awareness on protecting the environment. - How does your outward appearance reflect your cultural identity?
Every morning I wear a white shirt and black trousers to work. It shows simplicity, cleanness. In my job, I do everything simply and quickly. My office is organised in good order which draws attention from my colleagues. - How do your behaviour and practice reflect your cultural identity? In my life, I always help women, old people, and children. Thinking that they need support in the society, I am the first person to help them when they are in trouble. This is why my friends call me an aid provider. - How do your beliefs and values reflect your cultural identity? My beliefs focus on human rights. The human rights bring people opportunities to develop themselves, to improve the society they are living by contributing their ideas, thoughts to grow it. It is a chance for them to pay their contribution to the betterment of their country. - How do your dietary and domestic practices reflect your cultural identity? - Describe a time when you are judged, excluded, or misunderstood because of one of the cultural traits noted above. I like vegetarian food. It does not only helps my status of health but also I don't eat beef, pork to avoid killing animals. I always keep my house clean, retain my surrounding environment clean. I always think of the green environment. - How does your region, location in the world reflect your cultural identity? A Vietnamese usually smiles to a foreigner in any occasion to show their hospitality. It brings a good impressive to a foreigner, however, in some case it causes trouble. When a foreigner made a mistake, I smile, it does not mean I criticise him or her, but they think I mock them with sarcasm by smiling. When starting a writing, I need ideas, thoughts to convey my message to the target audience and to express my purpose into words. This is a process of generating ideas. Generally, I take a piece of paper to jot down what ideas I generate in my mind. I don't care about grammatical, spelling errors, syntax, punctuation, even the order of ideas. I always pay attention to the setting to generate ideas. It may take place in a cafe, in a park, or on the terrace of my house where I can concentrate my mind on thinking about ideas. During the process of generating ideas, I can take a break to refresh my mind with some drinks, and back to work. It may give some more new ideas to add. If I have more time, I give my ideas to my friends, class peers for their feedback. After above approaches, I reread, review, and revise my ideas, then put them into my writing. Nobody can deny the importance of writing. When we go to the elementary school, we learn to write the alphabet. Writing goes along with us from that moment to the end of life. Though we select an industry to earn our living, writing plays a vital role in our career life.
In my job, the communication skill is considered as an effective tool to exchange information each other. The communication includes verbal and non-verbal approach. Writing is a non-verbal communication. As I communicate through a non-verbal approach, I can't use body language, give the facial expression, raise up and down tone, voice, it is easy to misunderstand. Thus, written communication should be concise and precise. I think writing is a long life process. I learn and practise writing all course of my life. Additionally, writing should focus on different fields of study, for instance, science, technology, education, medicine... Learning outcomes of this course is useful for me to writing. I use them as a guideline to write effectively and efficiently. When I write a letter, I define my purpose I want to put in the letter. If I don't have it in my mind, I put aside the writing. Next, I identify my target audience that receives my letter. The audience will decide the format, style of writing, tone, voice I should use to draw the attention of readers. I also choose the kind of communication channels, for instance, email, letter, press release, newsletter. Then I draft ideas, thoughts, opinions that are included. I jot down in a piece of paper what I have in my mind without considering grammar, spelling, syntax, an order of ideas. Additionally, I pay attention to the context of my writing. It helps me select a formal or informal letter. Recently, I wrote a press release to raise awareness on a charity run among the public, businesses and local high-rank officers. My goal focuses on calling for their participation, donating to the fund-raising event. My target audience consists of businesses, officers, and people. This is a formal press release to send out to the print and online media to highlight this activity. During the process of writing, I decide font, format, use of words to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the press release. Rhetorical knowledge provides me with basic know-how to set up a plan, strategy to do a professional writing I use in my career. When I do a small project: writing a letter, sending an email, drafting a thank-you note, I do by myself. However, a long, labour-required project takes time, needs the contribution of many people, I think we can't avoid collaboration. Collaboration gathers people, students, colleagues to join hands to do a project, solve a problem, achieve a common goal. As for me, I feel collaboration is a little challenge as I am under the control, the management of a group. I can't do a job in my own way. A project should be divided into many pieces of work. Each member takes one of them to carry out their part of work. During the process, they have meetings to present their progress in the project, share their ideas, creation how to work effectively and efficiently, raise their problem to ask for a solution. Sometimes, someone takes an easy piece of work, leave harder one to other, other lacks motivation that makes slow down the progress. However, the positive of collaboration is people can learn from other members the way to work, brilliant ideas to speed up the work, and the workload lessens. WPA outcomes play an important role in the collaboration. Members can read others' piece of work, they can provide their feedback, comments to help their member perfect his/her job. We consider this process as rereading, reviewing, revising to fix errors, give ideas to help out the difficulties. Writer's journal # 3: Reflecting on reflection
Starting a letter, I identify my purpose of the letter and target readers who receive it. During the process of writing, I write ceaselessly what come up in my mind. I don't care about grammar, spelling, syntax. I also pay no attention the order of ideas, thoughts, opinions. This is my draft letter. When completing the letter, I reread the letter as many times as possible. This process helps me realize grammatical, spelling errors, typos, punctuation. Additionally, I may develop some more ideas or some new opinions appear in my mind. Reflection makes student's writing more perfect. In addition to rereading, I have some peers review my letter and give me some feedback, comments. Last but not least, I put my letter in the grammar checker before sending out to my audience. In my process of writing, I use rhetorical knowledge, critical thinking and process. Reading is one of the ways to learn writing. The student should choose reading materials or asks his teachers' advice what kind of books he reads. The continuous reading helps students pay close attention to grammar, spelling, syntax. Additionally, the student should read many kinds of books, for instance, science, technology, medicine, psychology, education. This process gives the student a sea of knowledge in writing. Writing should go with reading. The student practises what he learns from the book. Reading and practising writing will improve the student's writing skill.
Writing plays an important role in our life. It accompanies us when we begin to start study at school till the end of our life. Nobody denies its necessity. The writing outcomes help us write effectively and efficiently. What does the student think of before starting a letter. It is a question in the student’s mind. First of all, he focuses on the purpose why he wants to send out the letter. Next, what kind of a reader that receives his letter? From these elements, he develops his outline. What information he wants to send out. Does he need to search on website to know more information to provide, style of writing he uses, format of letter, tone, voice he should consider. After writing, he should reread, revise the letter to avoid typos, grammatical mistakes before sending.
The outcomes presented in the course include detailed information I don’t think of to start a letter. As they have many elements to do before and after writing which make me unable to remember. However, in a work place, I think we don’t need to do what elements the course presents. It is simpler as our business just focuses on some purposes, audiences. The general approach taught in the course helps us write a letter in different situations. |
Loc Dang
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