Formal Letter (Descriptive Reflection)

To Professor Brad,

My name is Chua Kai Chong, I am writing this letter to introduce myself to you as a student in your effective communication class. Having graduated from Nan Yang Polytechnic with a diploma in engineering with business. One key factor of why I chose the path of being an engineer is improving and revolutionize the quality of life for human beings through technology.

When it comes to my strength, I am very comfortable speaking and interacting with people. Through my work experience in bank and engineering-related projects, I witness first-hand the importance of essential communication skills. I have been involved in projects which required me to give presentations regularly. Over time it builds up my confidence in public speaking skills.

In terms of my weakness, I still have difficulty expressing my thought and feeling well in technical written reports. My friends tend to make fun of my grammatical mistakes, which is why I am very insecure in my written report skill. These Insecurities that I have for years affect me mentally questions my ability which bothers me.

There are two goals I wish to achieve by the end of this module, is hoping to refine my technical report writing skill and minimize grammatical error. The English language is the primary language for most people in the world. Due to globalization, we are working with people across the globe. Being fluent in the language is mandatory, it enables messages to be conveyed clearly for the listener to understand.

I believe that my diploma in engineering with business, this hybrid course. Enable me to have the thought process and critical thinking of an engineer and the soft-spoken skill of a businessman. Which differentiates me from the other student, I look forward to attending the coming classes.

Best regards

Kai Chong

SIE2020 group 3

revised 5/12/2020


I've read celine, terry, keiman, ruehong blog post.

Comments

  1. celine17 September 2020 at 08:33

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Junying17 September 2020 at 17:18

    Hi Dexter! I really love your flow of content, everything is organized element by element which makes the letter easy to read and hassle free when pointing out your strengths, weaknesses and goals for effective communication.
    From my point of view, 2nd paragraph line 5 should be "requires" instead of "require".

    ReplyDelete
  3. dowantellyou17 September 2020 at 18:16

    You are making us feel comfortable when we communicate with each other. It was enjoyable when we were in the same group.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Sebastian17 September 2020 at 23:00

    Hi Dexter, I really appreciate your extroverted personality when interacting with others, especially with people from other groups. It really shows that you are comfortable speaking and interacting with people.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Brad Blackstone17 September 2020 at 23:18

    Thank you for this letter, Dexter. I look forward to reading more substantial feedback from your blogging group members, and I will comment after that.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Sebastian19 September 2020 at 22:51

    Dear Kai Chong,

    Thank you for your effort in writing the letter. Your letter is clear and coherent, and I can easily make out the 4 main points of the letter. I believe both hard-skills and soft-skills are equally important as an engineer.

    Here are some main points to take note when writing your letter:

    - “Having graduated from Nan Yang Polytechnic with a diploma in engineering with business.” ➜ Missing a subject. I also believe “Nan Yang” is written as “Nanyang” instead. Your sentence can be written as “I graduated from Nanyang Polytechnic with a diploma in engineering with business.”
    - “The project I was involved require me…” ➜ “project” is singular, and therefore “require” should be “requires”.
    - “…over time it builds up my confidence in public speaking skill.” ➜ missing a pronoun. Can be written as “…over time it builds up my confidence in my public speaking skill.”
    - “I still have difficulty expressing my thought and feeling well” ➜ “thought” and “feeling” should be plural. (“…thoughts and feelings…”)
    - “These insecurities that I have for years, affect me mentally and it questions my ability which bothers me.” ➜ unnecessary comma
    - “There are two goals I wish to achieve by the end of this module, is hoping to refine my technical report writing skill and minimize grammatical error.” ➜ Either you list out your two goals in a separate sentence after writing “There are two goals I wish to achieve by the end of this module. They are…” or you replace “There are” with “My”. The sentence can be better written as “My two goals I wish to achieve by the end of this module are to refine my technical report writing skills and to minimize grammatical errors.”
    - “I believe that my diploma background in engineering with business, this hybrid course. Enables me to have the thought process and critical thinking of an engineer and the soft-spoken skill of a businessman.” Full stop after “course” should be replaced with a comma, as both sentences are not complete. The two sentences should be joined together .
    - “I look forward to attending in the coming classes, refine my communication skill under your tutelage.” ➜ extra preposition “in”, missing preposition “and”, and unnecessary comma. The sentence can be better written as “I look forward to attending the coming classes and refine my communication skill under your tutelage.”

    I hope you value my feedback.

    Best regards,
    Sebastian

    ReplyDelete
  7. celine20 September 2020 at 10:12

    Dear Dexter,

    It was a pleasure to read your letter and got to know more about you. I am writing this as a feedback for your self-introductory letter. It was really interesting to hear your thoughts on choosing this to become an engineer.

    First, I will talk about the content of this letter. You gave good elaborations on your strengths and weaknesses. I like your last paragraph where you said about how you are more unique than the rest. In my opinion, I feel that you could improve in giving more information on your interests for engineering. Overall, you fulfilled the task's requirements.

    Secondly, for the organisation of this letter, it is well-organised and neatly paragraphed. The flow of this letter writing is very smooth and clear, starting off with your background and interests, followed up with your strengths and weaknesses and goals, and ending off stating how do you differentiate from the others.

    For language wise, there are some grammatical mistakes such as starting a new sentence when you can actually make it into one sentence. One example would be your last paragraph, I think it can be rewritten as “I believe that my diploma background in engineering with business which is hybrid course enables me to have the thought process and critical thinking of an engineer and communication skill of a businessman”

    Lastly, your spoken skills are definitely stronger and you really showcased it well. I agree that English is an universal language and it is really important to use it correctly. I believe grammatical errors can be improved as time passes. I hope you build confidence in writing a report.

    Yours sincerely,
    Celine Chong

    ReplyDelete
  8. Brad Blackstone2 October 2020 at 22:25

    Dear Dexter,

    Thanks very much for posting this open and honest self reflection. You cover the key points if the assignment, and you do a bit of a deep dive into your feelings about writing. I'm impressed by the fact that you're forthcoming about your insecurity. That takes strength.

    I see too that you've gotten forthright feedback from your classmates, especially Celine and Seb.
    Rather than add to that here, I'm going to suggest that you and I set up a consultation. Let's talk, Dexter. We can sort out some of the writing issues by talking---which is your forte.

    Here's one website you may check out in the meantime since sentence structure seems to be a main issue for you: https://www.englishclub.com/grammar/sentence/sentence-structure.htm

    Thanks for your great willingness to work hard in this module toward your own development.

    Cheers,

    Brad

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Repost Reader's response (revised)

Image
  In the news release, “Feasible for Cross Island MRT Line to run under Central Catchment or skirt around it”, the Land Transport Authority (2019) addressed   the feasibility of two alignment and have each alignment impacts on the environment. Nature groups mentioned that direct alignment would affect the ecology and biodiversity. LTA claims that skirting alignment poses a bigger threat to the standard of living for the residents than direct alignment. Skirting route construction would cause issues such as noise pollution and poorer air quality. The longer route would cost an additional of $2 billion and take a longer traveling duration of 6 minutes. The article addresses the pros and cons of two feasible options. I feel that direct alignment is much more practical in terms of cost and travel time for the commuters in the long term. Firstly,  implementation of the direct alignment would reduce the transportation fare for commuters . Cheng (2019) mentioned that Dr Lam said “government
Read more

Annotated Summary #1

Bertran A. C. (2013, August). Energy System and Economic Analysis of District cooling in the city hall of Gävle [Master’s thesis, University of Gävle]. https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:653274/FULLTEXT01.pdf  This article focuses on the financial analysis of implementing the district cooling system. The monetary analysis includes the investment of installing the district cooling system. Installation costs consist of substation cost and access charge, and the tear-down cost comprises the removal of the old cooling system. According to Bertran, the implementation of the district cooling system has a decent investment margin as it stated “internal rate of return of 12% and a payback of the investment of 21 years.” The district cooling system will be a better investment than a water-cooling system. The article also provides a useful platform for our research project on the feasibility of implementing the district cooling system. Based on our proposed solution, it is not necess
Read more
 The Importance of communication skills for engineers “Communication skills are an essential component in the education of engineering students to facilitate not just students’ education but also to prepare them for their future careers.” Marc Riemer, Faculty of Engineering, Monash University (2007) Essential communication skill is the bread and butter in the working industry. This would ensure students have the ability to lead by empathy and encouragement. Furthermore, it allows messages to be conveyed in a clear and concise manner for the listener to understand. Good communication skills enable us to work more effectively in groups and teams, be it in an informal or formal setting. A vital skill throughout one's career.
Read more