Rewriting WA2

By Qi Dan
After I identified the problems of my first draft, I decided to rewrite the introductory paragraph and modify the following paragraphs. Since my first draft exceeds the word limit of WA2, I also tried to make my language in the second draft more concise and cut off some unnecessary expressions.
The rewritten introduction begins with definition of Generation IV reactors and gas-cooled fast reactor, one specific type of Generation IV reactors. After the definition, I introduce the key issue, which is “whether R&D funding for gas-cooled fast reactors should be supported”, and talk about opinions from both sides. In the last, sentence of the first paragraph, I write my new thesis statement which contains the argumentative issue, my own stance, and the development of this essay.
After I have done some research, I found that the three main advantages of gas-cooled fast reactors are better sustainability, safety and a wider-range of industrial applications. Regarding the this three advantages, I have searched issues such as the destructive effects radioactive wastes produced by gas-cooled fast reactor, some nuclear accident and the global energy supply scenario in order to identify some opposing views. After reading through many online-document and scientific journals, I summarize the ideas that can be used in my essay. Then, I replace the first sentence of the each body paragraph using a summary of one specific opposing view. After the opposing view, I rebut using some scientific evidence such as some statistical data and experiment results. At the end of each body paragraph, there is a short summary sentence.
Last, I summarize the three main points of my essay and restate my thesis in the last paragraph.

Review on the my WA2 first draft

By Qi Dan
After consultation with Dr. Sadorra, I found that some key features of an argumentative essay were missing in my essay.
In the introductory part, I use one third space of the whole paragraph to talk about some general background information regarding to nuclear power which does not relate to the thesis of my essay very well. After that, there is a definition about the nuclear reactor being discussed in this essay but I forgot to presents the controversial issues surrounding the reactor. This makes my essay more look like a “discussion” essay rather than an argumentative one. Another mistake I made is the ambiguous thesis statement. I write “this essay will examine three main advantages of Gas-cooled Fast Reactors…” instead of answering the essay prompt directly. Hence, readers cannot identify the argumentative issue of this essay from such thesis statement. Moreover, I follow a wrong style in the body paragraphs. For an argumentative essay, each supporting paragraphs should begins with an opposing view. However, I write a topic sentence of my own view at the beginning of each paragraph. Last but not the least, I should do some further research on my topic because most of my arguments in this draft only respond to issues surrounding generation IV reactors in general.
To summarize, the main problem of my WA2 first draft is about the structure. After discussion with Dr. Sadorra, I decided to go back and read the chapter 9 of our writing text book, Writing Academic English, and read more scientific journals on Gas-cooled Fast reactors.

Reply to Xueyuan’s peer review

Shen Xijiao

First, thank you Xueyuan for your inspiring message!

Secondly, thank you for your careful checking. I oversaw the format of essay. I have changed the word font from Arial Unicode MS to Arial so that it is more formal. I have also changed my spacing to 1.5.

Thirdly, thank you for pointing out my language problem. I have some difficulty to write formal English since I always write down what I want to say. This problem is also difficult for me to overcome because of my limited vocabulary. I do not know which word is more suitable to replace current word. However, I will try to make my sentence more formal by rereading it.

Last but not least, thank you for pointing out the unclear sentences. I have worked on it and written a clearer one in my WA2.

Reply to Alfred's review on my WA2

Published by Liu Yangfan

First of all, thank you for your time and advice. I have read your review and found it really helpful to improve my writing skills.
As you said, I need to pay more attention to the structure of the whole essay. As an academic argumentative essay, it should follow either point-to-point structure or block-to-block structure. Otherwise, it will make the readers confused about what I really want to say. Besides, in individual paragraph, I also need to focus on the main idea of this certain paragraph rather than talking about something else. In addition to the mistakes on constructing the structure of the whole essay and the individual paragraphs, I also need to try to avoid common mistakes such as spilling errors and grammar errors. And you are really right that I need to spend time on building my vocabulary. It is true that I always cannot find some appropriate words to express my idea when I am writing an essay. This always makes my essay readable but not formal. Also, I need to improve the structure construction of my sentences in order not to confuse my readers. My so called APA style of my reference also needs to be corrected.
Overall, I got a lot from your review. Thank you and regards.

A Respond to my peer review

by Alfred

In respond to the peer review comments by Yangfan, it was more or less the general mistakes I have made and I agree to your comments. This is especially true for the grammatical errors and typo that I have. That are some of the mistakes that I will make when I am writing, I should have read it first to correct those mistakes. But, due to time constraint I was not able to do so. However, I personally do not find it to be a good argumentative essay. For example my paragraph 4 (argument 3) was not a fully developed argument. After I have read the essay again I find that para 4 could have been better by having a stronger argument. Besides, I also find that my intro was a bit too long and some parts were unnecessary (after reading it again). As for the reference list, I tried to put it in the APA style, but failed due to the MS word 2007 default setting. It was not entirely my fault, so that cannot be considered as a mistake (haha).
Some points are clear but others are not so I would not say that my essay in general is clear. I know that there are room for improvements, I will continue to so. Thanks….

WA2 Peer Rev4 Shen Xijiao by Xue Yuan

Your WA2 essay is excellent from my point of view. You not only did a good job on finding out the facts related to your topic but also organized well. To tell you the truth, your essay is absolutely fantastic.
Although you did an excellent job in writing the WA2 essay, there are still some thing you can do improve your essay and thus makes it a more fantastic one.
The first thing is not concerned about the content. Remember our tutor told us to use TNR font? I think you use the wrong font. I think you use the Arial Unicode MS instead of TNR. What’s more, the line space is not 1.5.
Secondly, you wrote this sentence in your essay:”It means that the success of development of Generation IV reactors means a great improvement of living environment for human beings in the future.” It seems confusing for me. I did not understand it fully. I think if you can rewrite this sentence and make it more simple, it would be easier for the readers to read.
Apart from the above things, there are some other small things you can do to improve your essay. One is concerned about word choice and the other is about sentence structure.

A peer review on my classmate essay

By Alfred

I did a peer review on Yangfan’s WA2. It was an essay on should there be R&D funding for generation IV reactors. In general there were attempts to follow the structure of an argumentative essay. He does have the general outline of an argumentative essay, though in certain paragraph it was not properly structured. There were a few grammatical errors here and there but not much of a problem. I find that his conclusion is good as it did briefly summarise the arguments mentioned earlier in the essay. There is flow in the essay. However, there were times whereby I have tough time trying to follow what he is trying to say. In the essay, within the same paragraph, his argument could be moving in different directions. There were times whereby he was not clear in his explanation about his arguments. he has a few sentence structure error in a few occasion which made it tough for me to understand what is the point he was trying to bring across. Furthermore, his reference list was not in the APA style. Overall, the essay was understandable and addressed the issue that he had identified.

PeerRev4_Xueyuan_byShenXijiao

I am Shen Xijiao, Xueyuan’s classmate. I am going to write my review on Xuanyuan’s WA2 draft.
A message to Xueyuan,
First, the structure of the essay makes the your argument a bit confusing. I suggest you to restructure your essay. Currently you are writing the benefit of Generation IV reactors at the beginning of each paragraph and you rebut the point from the second sentence. Since you oppose to give R&D funding for Generation IV reactors, I suggest you to put your topic sentence which list the disadvantage of Generation IV reactors at the beginning of each paragraph and explain it a bit. The benefits of Generation IV reactors may come in as a counter argument which helps to balance your essay. After that, you may write a rebut to the counter argument so as to make your stand stronger.
Secondly, some sentences in your essay are too assertive. For example, you have write, “Building generation IV reactors will leave us in nuclear-weapon-danger and terrorism-danger.” There is no support for your view and your judgement is so absolute that others can rebut your view easily.
Last but not least, the meaning of some sentences is not very clear. Thus, you may want to restructure it. Your references should be in APA style.
(Haha, I know my comments are very hush, but I hope they help! Good luck for your EG1471 exam and all other exams!)

Cheers,
Xijiao

Review on the Feedback of my roundtable discussion

My reviewer said I was not keeping eye contact with the listeners. I remember that, on that day, when I do the roundtable discussion, I was not nervous at all and I feel energetic and are in high spirit. So, what my reviewer said should not be a result of nervousness. In my opinion, the reason why I did not keep eye contact with the listeners is that I was looking at my opponents.
However, I think I did a poor work on generating my ideas and post them out. I really got a lot of materials and figures that can reenforce my arguements. When it is my turn to speak, I always got excited and speak on one thing for a long time. After that, I did not have time to deliver my other facts that can reenforce myself.
For the whole roundtable disscussion, I think what I did is not so good. I think I can do better next time if I can make myself more organized. Anyway, this roundtable disscussion is useful for my WA2 wrinting I think, and it did improve myself.

My review for Alfred's WA2

Pbulished by Liu Yangfan

I am a classmate of Alfred’s and I have read his WA2 essay. Now I am going to make a peer review about this essay.
Generally speaking, this is a good argumentive essay with a clear point-to-point structure. The language is fluent and the choice of word is correct. Besides, the structures of sentence are various and the author’s points are very clear with a lot of powerful supporting.
However, there still exist some little mistakes such as wrong spellings. And there are a lot of sentences which are so long that I become a little confused. For instance, I really cannot figure it out that what is the “they” in the first sentence of the second paragraph referring to. Besides, there are also a lot of noun and verb agreement mistakes such as the “produce” in the second sentence of the third paragraph should be “produces”. In addition, because of the carelessness of the author, some sentences are not complete ones such as the first and the third ones in the third paragraph. Moreover, the style of intext credits is also not correct. The full stop should be behind the parentheses which are used to make an intext credit. At last, the APA style of the references is also not correct.
In a nutshell, this is an essay with a clear point and a clear structure. Nevertheless, there is still some space to be improved.

Review on my roundtable performance

Published by Liu Yangfan

We had a roundtable discussion a few days ago, through which I realized that I still had to be improved in a lot of aspects. As the comment given by my classmate said, I was not so fluent when I was expressing my opinions and sometimes my rebuttals did not seem to be so logic. Although I have prepared for the roundtable discussion, I still felt nervous when I was asked by the moderator. I think it is because that I do not talk so much in class, it is hard for me to express my own opinion even if I really have something in mind. Besides, I also felt that sometimes I cannot totally understand the opinions delivered by the opponents, so it became much more difficult for me to rebut. For one thing, it is because my vocabulary is poor so that I cannot get the meaning even when I get the word; for another, it may be because I cannot focus attention. I need to practice more if I want to really make a progress.
In a nutshell, this is a meaningful discussion. I got a lot from it and I will try my best to overcome these weaknesses exposed in this roundtable discussion. And thanks for my classmate's neutral comments, from which I really benefit a lot.

Review on Rountable

by Alfred

This is a review on own performance at the roundtable discussion on the Generation IV reactors. After reading the comments by my peer, I find that I still have room for improvement. It was mentioned that I have several pauses along the way and I agreed with it as the pauses were due to my nervousness. I was not well prepared and thus when asked by the moderator, I was crafting he answers on the spot which causes those pauses.
Although my classmate did not mention in his review, I feel that I was not fluent enough when I was giving my views in the beginning. Overall, I find that my performance is not as great as what my peer have commented. I find his comments too lenient. I will be more prepared in the future so that I am able to deliver a more fluent speech and express my idea more clearly.

Roundtable Discussion

By Shen Xijiao

 Clarity of points (score: 8): As a moderator, she can clearly present the main point and guide the discussion around the main point.
 Quality of roundtable contribution (score: 9): As a moderator, she successfully engaged the participants to say out their opinions.
 Non-verbal qualities of delivery (score: 8): She spends too much time to read the notes so that may lack of eye contacts with listeners. She speaks very natural and comfortable posture. Her clothes are very smart.
 Specific tasks (score: 9): She performed her tasks well especially as an energy and harmonizer.
From Xu Pengxuan

As a moderator, I tried to talk a very energetic and pleasant way. While posing question, I kept eye contact with the participant. However, I felt what I said lacked influence. This may be because that I was not prepared well enough. I was also too busy taking notes to keep eye contact with the participants while they were talking. I gave every participant a chance to talk and asked balanced questions. I linked the participants together by giving a small summary for the previous participant and posing a new question to another participant.

Review on Round Table Feedback

By Qi Dan

We had our round table discussion on whether there should be R&D funding for the development of Generation IV reactors on this Thursday. After the discussion session, we wrote feedback to each other in class. After reading through the feedback form, I found the feedback from my classmates really helped to assess my performance in the round table discussion.
As I missed the previous class, I came without much preparation. Summarizing the in-class discussion about Nuclear power’s new dawn (Butler, 2004), I just got some main ideas on the advantages of Generation IV reactors. So I was busying searching the internet for some concrete examples to support my stance but failed to find something useful in such a short time. Since the first group was quite prepared, I am kind of nervous before discussion. During the round table discussion, Yangfan answered the more challenging question and let me took the more general one which is summarize the advantages of Generation IV reactors in brief. Overall, I am not active and did not participate much in the round table discussion. Besides, when speaking, I read my notes instead of delivering my points in a conversational manner. Since I was not well-prepared, I seldom rebutted opinions from the other side. I will pay more attention on the deficiencies mentioned above in order to improve my delivering skills in the future.

Reference:
Butler, D. (2004, May 20). Nuclear power’s new dawn. Nature, 429, 238-240.

Journal Review: Assessing Engineering Design and Innovation Process

By Qi Dan

EG1471 E25

Innovation plays an important role in today’s engineering design. However, in the paper “Innovation and performance in engineering design”[1], Salter and Torbett indicate that misunderstandings in performance measurement of engineering design do limit the innovative potential in many industries. Some firms focus too much on the financial benefit of their products while ignoring other essentials in engineering design such as user friendliness, safety and durability. Addressing this problem, Salter and Torbett [1] examine different approaches to assess engineering design based on interviews and feedbacks from both individuals and organizations.

First of all, commercial benefit is the most common concern when assessing engineering design as there is a distinct connection between performance failures and economic failures. Meanwhile, some claim that the best engineered product may not be the ones bring the most financial benefit. In this case, too much reliance on financial indicators would probably limit innovation. Furthermore, time as an indicator of performance may also restrict engineers’ creativity and even cause stresses on them. Similarly, due to the failure of current feedback mechanism, engineers have to conform to others’ view sometimes. The three factors discussed above shows that many industries are still in urgent need of an appropriate environment to promote innovation.

Designing is a complex process which involves collaboration between different departments. Although financial factors do create incentive for designing, other methods of performance measurement should also be involved in the process of engineering design. More importantly, to fully assess a product requires a closer interaction between designers and other department of a project.

Reference:

[1] A. Salter and R. Torbett, Innovation and Performance in Engineering Design. Construction Management and Economics. Taylor & Francis Ltd, 2003.

Creativity and Innovation Talk (News Feature)

By Alfred
EG1471 E25

Dr. Marcelo H Ang Jr, the Associate Professor from Department of Mechanical
Engineering of the National University of Singapore gave a talk on “Creativity and Innovation” on 28 August 2009. The talk was about how a dream can lead to creativity which in turn developed into an innovation.

Dr. Marcelo H Ang Jr started of by showing a video on the various inventions found in our daily life such as refrigerator. It was a video to show that many things were invented over the past centuries to help men solve their problem. With it he left the audience a question about what leads to inventions.

Another video on the inventions of the airplane by the Wrights brother was shown which answer the question the Dr. Marcelo H Ang Jr asked earlier on and the answer was dream. He further explained that it was dream that leads to creativity because anything can happen in the dream. For creativity one needs to think out of the box, the dream is the best place for one to do so.

After a dream one will then continue to create the product. According to Dr. Marcelo H Ang Jr this product will only become an invention when it is accepted by the general public if not it will always remain as a innovation. He gave the example of Apple’s ipod and Creative’s zen. To illustrate further he also showed various pictures of weird products such as a chin support stand that will allow passenger to sleep while standing on the train.

Lastly, due to the technical failure a video of importance to his talk (according to Dr. Marcelo H Ang Jr) was not shown. He ended off with an encouragement for all to continue to dream and one day someone may come out with an brilliant inventions.

How to be creative and finally make an Innovation (brief communication)

based on the presentation "Creativity and Innovation" given by Dr. Marcelo H Ang Jr, the Associate Professor from Department of Mechanical Engineering of the National University of Singapore

by Liu Yangfan
EG1471 E25
Monday, September, 2009

People always say that the world now is so advanced that nothing can be improved. However, it is just on the contrary that our world now is changing at a speed faster than ever and it will never stop.

The power to drive the world keep constantly changing is that people will never stop dreaming. And what makes us keep dreaming is the purpose to make life easier and enjoy life more, both of which will never turn to the end.

Based on what is presented above, we can clearly see that everyone can make a difference because everyone can dream. Dare to dream is the beginning of to be creative. “Everyone can be street smart.”(Marcelo H Ang Jr, 2009) The only thing you need to concern is that do not accept things so quickly, that is to say, do not do something as everyone else is doing it.

However, creativity is necessary but not enough to make an invention. Another essential element needed to make an invention is a good study of different produces and system available. In other words, we should be practical as well as creative. Besides, the most important thing is that this invention must be useable because the reason for an invention to exist is to be used in life and change life. It will be meaningless if a new product is invented while nobody wants to use it in real life. So the cost, practicality and attractiveness of a new invention must be considered carefully. Otherwise, it can only exist in the lab and never be an innovation. Only when everybody is willing to use it can an invention become an innovation and eventually change the world.

All those presented above are based on Dr. Marcelo’s presentation. Actually, I cannot agree with him more. Edison can be everyone. After all, Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.



Reference: NUS WEBCAST LECTURES, EG1471-Guest Lecture, http://ivle.nus.edu.sg/bank/media/modvideo.aspx?KEY=c135ac97-e41a-42eb-a4ee-e48927627e75&ChannelID=30a5e9bc-8fb0-4d9c-b54a-028f2c51cb6d#

Develop Innovations from Dreams (Commentary)

By Xue Yuan
EG 1471 E25
Monday, August 31, 2009

When dreaming or wandering our minds, random idea would come and that may lead to technology innovation someday. However, what we really want to know is that how can we develop innovations from dreams.

When dreaming, we can combine anything as a whole and thus form something that seems to be meaningless at first sight. To transform this seemingly useless idea into a useful practical, we should first think of what can we do using this idea.

When thinking, we can just let our mind wander without any borders. However, when we have made the decision on what the practical would be, we should be careful. As long as I am concerned, what Dr. Marcelo H Ang Jr said in his lecture is of great importance. On one hand, we should always ask questions related to this idea and never accept things too easy. On the other hand, we should be confident and energetic all the time.

By the above steps, we may make a good invention. However, it is not enough to make it an innovation. At this point, I agree with Dr. Marcelo H Ang Jr fully. “It makes a good invention if people like it; it makes an innovation if everyone likes it.” (Marcelo H Ang Jr, 2009) In order to make everyone likes our invention; we should focus on whether it is useable. That is to say, we should consider the cost to use this invention, the practicality, and the attractiveness. (Marcelo H Ang Jr, 2009)

On the way to create our technology innovation, there are surely some struggles. We may experience difficulties or even failures before we reach the finish line. However, I think that is worthy because when we try to fulfill our dreams, we should pay for it.

As for the presentation itself, I value it a lot that Dr. Marcelo H Ang Jr is very energetic and enthusiastic. Probably the only flaw is the suddenly shut-down of the computer.

Creativity and Innovation Talk for English Learners at NUS (News Feature)

Creativity and Innovation Talk for English Learners at NUS
By Shen Xijiao
EG1471 E25
Sunday, August 30, 2009

Singapore -- Last Friday Dr. Marcelo H Ang Jr, the Associate Professor from Department of Mechanical Engineering of the National University of Singapore, was busy with settling his projector at Lecture Theatre 7 where a large group of NUS students taking “English for Academic Purposes” were waiting for his speech- “Creativity and Innovation.”

Dr. Ang started by making students ponder what drive people to innovate. It was the desire to raise the standard of living so that we can enjoy better life. Giving current problems in daily life, people tend to start to dream in which anything can happen, including the solutions to the problems in real life. The tip to start to dream about something new is not to be easily satisfied with things around us so that we could consistently think about ways to improve. Dr. Ang also used the development of tooth brush and shower as examples to show that improvement is continuous since we could always innovate based on current products.

In order to let students think about what makes a good invention, Dr. Ang then showed several interesting pictures of small inventions such as plastic material around an umbrella and a hat with tissue paper on the top. The criterion for a good invention was the popularity of the invention among users.

The most important part of the talk was that students were educated to link dream with reality which means how to put ideas into practice. We should first know what resources are available and we need the knowledge and technology to put things together.

Unfortunately, when Dr. Ang tried to illustrate this important message by using a video, the computer broke down and it took quite a long time to settle down everything. Due to lack of time, Dr. Ang was unable to finish his talk but left one take-home message to encourage students, “You Can Do It!”