This English II second project is about the comparative analysis of two different businesses in the similar industry. In a small group, we were required to find the businesses we intended to approach and our information collected and analysed would be presented in a standard research report. The report were to be presented verbally in class to explain briefly about the business research we had done.
Aims and Accomplishments:
The main intended learning outcome of this assignment is having the skills to appropriately conduct a standard research report with the right content, format and techniques. We will also be able to demonstrate the ability to get relevant information for the topic given by asking proper questions during the interviews with businesses approached. As an example, questions that are too personal or unrelated should not be put in when preparing the questionnaires so as to avoid unnecessary unethical issues with the interviewees. Besides, analysing and synthesising information is also a crucial component in compiling a research report as it requires great amount of thinking and researching. To present the report, we should select and summarize it and clearly explain to the class audiences.
There are several possible good attitudes and practical ways to achieve the outcomes above. First, we as a group must have the ability to work as a team. Everyone must understand the requirements for the project before we begin our research work. In the process of approaching the intended businesses, group members should put the best effort in his own part of job delegated by the leader. As we know that this assignment would be marked as a group so it is impossible and so unfair to leave the job for the others or to do it inappropriately. With all the good teamwork skill and the ability to conduct research, everything would definitely done correctly on time. For example, a secretary who did a good job on preparing the interview form could lead to a positive outcome of information quality obtained. An analyser who carefully extracted and compared the data while kept on updating himself with related knowledge could provide a logical and great middle content of a report. As for the presentation, one should never leave the group by preparing his own slides and contents. It is good to prepare and discuss together in order to be able to present it as a good team.
Learning Process:
Let us start with the group members. I have found a group consisting of 5 members including myself about a week after we were given the project brief. They are Jaclyn, Wei Shan, Jennifer and Jia En. Coincidently, all of them are from economic class so I was told to compromise with them as this assignment would be done simultaneously with their economic project using the same topic.
Lots of online research and phone calls were done during the first week to find the businesses that were willing to be our targets. We looked for pastry shops, optical stores, bicycle shops and lastly we got acceptances from two hardware businesses thanks to Wei Shan's help from his father who happened to know one of the business owners. I had just realised even starting a research is not just a piece of cake.
Now it comes to the task delegation part. I was assigned to conduct the compare analysis of the two businesses. Hence the most part of my job would be done after the interviews with the business owners, where I had to replay the recordings again and again to avoid any information being overlooked. As both of the businesses chosen did not provide any other useful sources that we could refer to for the analysis, therefore we happened to interviewed one of the business owner informally using phone call to get some short answers we did not obtained earlier. I learned about the basic marketing structure, competing strategies and some other useful business knowledge from the research I have done.
After few weeks of struggling, yes we finally completed the whole report. The presentation was nearly the denouement of the whole project. I appreciated all of my group members for giving full commitment in contributing for the final report and presentation.
Here are our works.
i) Research Report
ii) Presentation Slides
Reflection:
This project gave us opportunity to expand our knowledge in business field rather than just focusing on language and writing skills. It is great to understand more about the business and working society as it sharpen our thinking skills in a more matured way. One of the most obvious strength I found in myself in this project is my ability to organize and arrange information orderly. I could help my group members to summarize their long written paragraphs and reallocate every piece of information into a simpler table form in order to meet the word count requirement. What I am lacked of is my presentation skill where I was lacked of the right skill in verbally explaining to the audiences clearly about what I had done in our analysis. It would be better if I practise to present my work among my comrades to get their comments on it. Not to forget the TGC capabilities learned in this project:
Lifelong Learning
- Similar to project one, I learn about analysing and synthesising information collected but it is in a more critical way for this time because I had to work on a totally different topic which appeared unfamiliar to me, which was businesses.
Discipline Specific Knowledge
- Format of a standard research report with proper written language and citation method were done correctly.
Citizenship and Global Perspectives
- I am now able to understand different forms of opinion in the similar working industry from different perspectives and values in our community.
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