Assignment 1: Formal letter
Subject: Self introduction
Dear Prof Blackstone,
My name is Bryan Wong, I am attending your effective
communication class. I just completed my national service on May 2020. Prior to
this, I was a student in Singapore polytechnic, I graduated in May 2018 with a
diploma in Aerospace Electronics. In my secondary school days, I picked up a liking
on fixing airplane models which is why after my O’levels, I decided to pick
the said course for my polytechnic education.
My father works in the building industry and he use to point
out the various buildings that he was involved in during our outings. As I grew
older, I started to get more interested in his work and thus my interest in the
building industry grew. Hence, during my application for my degree studies I decided
to apply for a course in Sustainable Infrastructure Engineering (Building
Services). I believe this course offers a good job prospect as the building industry
is growing every year and there are many existing buildings that require
maintaining and upgrading in a sustainable way.
I believe my main strength in communication is my ability to
work well in a team. Being able to contribute ideas to a project as well as
listen to others and take their ideas on board, I feel that I am a cooperative
and receptive person. In my polytechnic days, we often had team-based projects,
one of it being my Final Year Project (FYP) which was recognized by the FYP
committee and recommended to take part in the 2018 SP Engineering show.
As for my weaknesses, I feel that I lack the confidence
while doing public speaking in front of a large crowd. Likewise, my ability in essay
writings, which I actually struggled to produce this letter and it took me
quite some time to complete. I hope that through this effective communication
module, I am able to improve on my said weaknesses which is my public speaking and writing skills.
I believe in my communication skills and my ability to
liaise with people of different characters which makes me stand out.
Regards,
Bryan Wong
Thanks, Bryan, for this letter. I look forward to reading your peer readers' feedback, and then I'll comment.
ReplyDeleteDear Bryan,
ReplyDeleteI had a great time reading your introduction letter and it is nice to see how your interest in building industry grew over the years.
The content overall is sufficient. You managed to take me all the way back to explaining your decision to select your diploma course and slowly tell me how your interest in building services grew. Your strengths are nicely justified with the achievement that you and your FYP group got. Your weakness is honest which helped me relate to you. With that being said, I personally feel that you could elaborate more on your last paragraph, you could maybe tell us how your " ability to liaise with people of different characters " helps you to stand out. I believe this can allow your reader to see how you standout from the others.
The flow of your letter is rather smooth. Each paragraph smoothly brings me to the next segment of the letter. The letter also follow the flow of the questions listed in the assignment.
All in all, I enjoyed reading your letter and I definitely got to know you better. I hope my pointers will help improve your letter and I look forward to reading more letters from you in future.
Best regards,
Dennis Chan
Dear Bryan,
ReplyDeleteThank you for writing this letter. While reading it, the flow and orgainzation of the content is done well. You have answered all the questions in the assignement and your content is sufficient.
Just by reading the first paragraph, it seems to show why you even chose Aerospace as your choice of course in the Polytechnics. I believe when someone has an interest in a certain course, they will tend to do better. I think there is an improvement you can make, just like Dennis mentioned, I think you could've elaborated more on your last point, "your abilitiy to liaise with people of different character".
Reading sentence by sentence, and to the following paragraphs, it makes me want to continue reading your letter without stopping as I find it very interesting. After reading the entire letter, I feel that I've known more about you.
Regards,
Donovan
Dear Bryan,
ReplyDeleteThank you for this introductory letter, I learnt a lot about you after reading it.
The letter has great content and satisfies all the requirements. The individual parts were also well explained with examples provided. The organisation was good as there was a clear structure to the letter and it flowed well too.
The use of language was good, however there are some minor issues. The 'on' in the sentence "I just completed my national service on May 2020" I believe should be replaced with 'in' because 'on' is more appropriately used if u provided the specific date. In addition, I feel that there is a tense issue in the sentence "In my secondary school days, I picked up a liking on fixing airplane models which is why after my O’levels, I decided to pick the said course for my polytechnic education". The 'is' should be in the past tense as it was something that already happened.
Overall, this letter is a great start for me to know you better. I hope that through interacting with you in the coming weeks ahead, I would get to know you a lot better.
Regards,
Joel
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteDear Bryan,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your sharing in this fairly detailed and informative letter. We readers learn a bit about you in terms of your background, interests, and your view of your own comm skills. I'm happy to know that you view yourself as a cooperative team player. That trait will serve you well in study and in life.
I also enjoy finding out how you have been influenced by your father's work. It might be good though to explain that in more detail. When you mention family outings, for example, what sort of things did your dad point out that actually had an impact on you? What was his work?
You might also explain more about how your comm skills strengths can support your module work this term and can help you turn any weaknesses into strengths.
There are a few language issues that you need to address to make this a more impactful effort:
1. word/phrasing
-- I picked up a liking on fixing airplane models.... > (more succinct?)
-- he use to point > he used to point
-- team-based projects, one of it >. (it?)
2. caps > see https://wmich.edu/writing/rules/capitalization
I look forward to learning more about you and from you this term.
Cheers,
Brad