Language is indispensable and changeable in personal life and social communication. One typical situation people need to use writing or speaking language is work. Even though there is a heated discussion between individual work and teamwork, people listen, speak, read and write when they are working no matter they are working independently or working in a team. This easy will talk about different language usage in individual work and teamwork. These differences will be figured out with notes taking, general writing and critique.
The differences in note are obvious. When I took notes in my note book, the note always has no logic but I’ll underline some important points. Sometimes I might write something into gaps to show the relationship with original notes. Let alone the handwriting is so small and illegible that nobody can read including me. But if I take notes for share to the team, it must be clear, hierarchical and highlight with color pen. In another hand, if we put the note taking in a transcribe situation, mostly, we will take fast notes with our own symbol for special words or sounds. But if people are doing shorthand for special group, they will use specific symbol from shorthand system. When we do some work independently, the notes might be more randomness, but it will be more rigorous in group work. Therefore, taking notes is really different in individual work and teamwork.
Same with taking notes, general writing like journal or reflection also has difference in different situation. A journal for a team work should be logical with an essay style and have clear professional keywords. It should have a position and conclusion and sometimes it needs some humor in it to make people want to read. Besides it, a subtitle or headings can help other clear and easy to understanding what to read or your results. On the other side, individual writing might be boring and messy. In addition, individual writing will carry much grammar and spelling mistakes, even we only use some very easy words. So, language used in teamwork writing is much formal than the language used in individual work writing.
Different with the two mediums of language above, language we used in critique is much similar in those two situations. Just one is share idea with group and one is doing brain storm with people himself. Since critique is spoken language, the way we use it is much careless than we write. After we did the transcriptions for our class critiques, everyone said they didn’t know their spoken language is as messy as that. Actually, it might be clearer that we do critique to ourselves.
As a result, we can see differences between personal language and pre-shared language. In my point of view, as an essay with pragmatism worldview, and I don’t have too many information and recourses; I write that small essay based on my experience. But we still can find the language we used in group work is evolved from the language in individual work. As an international student, I need to practice my English to make it more logical and formal. This from a side confirmed that teamwork is becoming more popular than individual work.