Document Development Exposition: Recommendation Report

ENGL 2116 | Spring 2018

Explain in detail your document’s development from planning to finish, describing your
challenges, how you overcame them, and what you learned.

Planning
Coming up with the subject about water to write this about was difficult for me. I was
thinking too literally about just water itself and couldn’t come up with anything that would
have both the depth and solutions to work with this assignment. However, once I started
thinking about issues tangential to water I quickly thought of numerous possibilities. My first
thoughts were of droughts or water issues like in Flint, but they too seemed difficult to come
up with good recommendations for. Then I considered local government issues which fit the
memo format well and had a good amount of research to consult for the issues and potential
solutions.

First Draft
For my first draft my main issue was spending too much time researching instead of writing
once I had decided on runoff pollution. Between the EPA, NCBI, and even Mecklenburg
County there was a very large amount of information and research about the study that made
it difficult to narrow down what I wanted to include in the report. I ended up finding a storm
water program from the EPA that was concise enough while still including all the relevant
information that I felt the report should include. After that I was able to make a fairly detailed
outline that I stuck with all the way through. I was then able to write a short introduction and
conclusion and flesh out the recommendation to bulleted sentences but still had the main body
in an outline form.

Second Draft
For the second draft I first corrected some grammar and wording issues that were pointed out
in the review. I think these were caused from expanding the outline non-linearly into
paragraphs and changing the content of the sentences without reading them afterwards. I also
improved the formatting of my heading to better contrast the different heading levels and
body text. After that I just wrote the body paragraphs based on all the research I’d found and
expanded the recommendations into paragraph form. I had some issues listing the many
different sources of pollution and still having the paragraph flow. I considered a list but
decided the descriptions and details were important to help provide context for the issues.

Final Draft
Revising for the final draft I first combined my introduction and summary and added a proper
summary that summarized the body text in its place. I then corrected some awkward wording
found especially in the introduction and first section of the main body. I went through and
made some wordiness more concise and fixed several missing commas that had been
overlooked. Finally, I changed some of the wording in the recommendation section to sound
more necessary and important instead of sounding so optional. I learned a lot about writing
for the format of a memo and better methods for setting up the style of headers.