Writing is a medium to express thoughts. It all starts from constructing few words from alphabets and a meaningful sentence from few words and so on. There are many genres of writing. Despite of the differences among these writings, the common goal is to illustrate the writer’s intension through words, pictures, diagrams, graphs etc. This class is about writing for engineering. Writing for engineering involves the processes of those writings that the engineers face in their workspaces such as lab report, technical description, engineering proposal etc. All these writings focus on technicality and specifics rather than simple plain description. As I took this class in spring semester of 2020, I had a goal to achieve all the necessary processes and prerequisites in order to successfully write all types of engineering papers that might be required in my future studies. I also think that writing is a must have skill for communications in the field of engineering. This is the reason why I personally wanted to invest my time and resources to acquire this valuable skill. Throughout this semester I have found myself learning an extensive number of tools and therefore I have developed myself as a writer in many ways. I am confident that the valuable skillset that I have gained from this class will help me to meet certain requirements and expectation in the field of engineering in near future.

According to the course learning objective, the very first outcome is to acknowledge all the linguistic differences and use them as my resource in order to develop rhetorical sensibility. I strongly believe that I have demonstrated the purpose of acknowledging not only mine but others linguistic differences such as their background, culture, origin and incorporate their thoughts and suggestive behaviors into my own thoughts so that I can come up with a better solution. Before this class, I had no clue regarding the systematic approach that includes reading, drafting, editing and self-assessment. This approach is proven effective in many of my assignments and understanding the material that we have covered. I hope to continue this technique in my future work in order to get optimal result. Another objective of this class talks about negotiating my own writing goals and audience expectations. As the class progressed, I have learned different types of writing that requires the writer to follow some assumption about the audience and their prior knowledge regarding the topic of the writing. This assumption helps me to reevaluate my writing goals so that I can present my work with minimal ambiguity and as detail oriented as possible. This class is about collaboration which brings the next learning objective of this course. My engineering proposal is the evidence of a collaborative work. Although this collaboration does not always go as smooth as expected, I have learned ways to overcome the obstacles and accept the challenges and changes. This type of engagement in collaborative work prepares me for a real-world engineering teamwork where I can demonstrate all the skills that I have achieved from this course. The next leaning objective is about genre analysis and multimodal composing. I have done various genre analysis and my lab report assignment is the outcome of two different lab reports analysis. This is not my area of expertise since I have misunderstood some of the concepts of analyzing. However, I am determined to work on those confusions whenever I would come across writing such genre. Multimodal composing comprises of visual elements such as graph, diagram, picture etc. I have noticed how the incorporation of multimodal composing in my writing can affect the approach in order to engage in audience’s attentions. Visual representation tends to be more effective in cases where a process needs to be demonstrated. The course learning objective also talks about formulating and articulating a stance through and in my writing. I think this particular skill helps the writer to be able to provide a posture regarding a point. This skill is crucial specially for research paper. Now, I felt there is an area of opportunity for me to improve about how to formulate and articulate a stance in my writing. The next learning objective is about the usage of various library resource, online database and internet to locate sources. After this course, now I am very comfortable regarding online research that involves CCNY database, Google Scholar and other reputable academic databases. I used to be reliable mostly on google search engine default results but now I know the necessity of providing solid information with proper citation from the above-mentioned sources. The learning objective also includes quoting, paraphrasing, summarizing, analyzing, citing etc. I think everyone should practice these in any kind of writing. I already knew about MLA format this course helped me understanding APA format which is used in many academic papers for citation. At first, I wasn’t very good at APA format. In my own defense, I was using online APA citation generator and it was not working properly since most of the source was from random google search and later, I learned about reliable databases and it made the citation process easy for me. Summarizing and analyzing helped me completing my lab report assignment since I had to do compare and contrast on two different reports.

Now let’s go back to the very first question that I asked regarding writing. I mentioned writing as a medium to express thoughts. My perception about writing for engineering has changed after taking this course. I had a basic understanding of what this class has to offer from the very beginning. But if I compare engineering writing and regular essay writing then definitely, I found some interesting differences and also some similarities. One of the main differences I found is the amount of clarity and instructions that are present in an engineering writing. My understanding of any kind of writing previously would involve google research and write as I go with no planning, drafting or any of the writing processing that I have learned in this course. As an engineering student, most of my writing would be lab reports, technical writing of some sort or a proposal of an engineering innovation. This course helped me to understand the specific discipline and technique that is somewhat required in the tech industry when it comes to writing. My perception about writing also goes more towards a communication technique or skill rather than just writing a paper. I used to think that writing is essential for individual working with academics, social studies or literature. But now I realized how important it is for an engineer to be actually good at written communication skill. It is crucial for an engineer to develop effective writing as the necessity for precise documentation, complex technical detail is increasing in order to accommodate other engineers. It is essential to communicate with a wide range of potential audience in a way that they can understand the content of the writing. I have found some similarities between regular paper writing and engineering writing such as quoting, paraphrasing, citation etc. I think these are some basic requirements for establishing credibility and reliability in any kind of writing. I did not think of writing so much as a collaborative effort. I used to think it as a solo work effort and this collaboration helps me to understand the need for negotiating my own thoughts and writing goal based on other’s point of view. Overall, I would like to appreciate writing as a soft skill rather than a technical one, that an engineer must practice possessing.

Writing this self-assessment paper has been quite enlightening to me. This helps me to be honest and examine myself in an attempt to discover my strengths and weaknesses when it comes to writing. This course has provided me with specific structures and list of required elements in order to become a successful writer. The amount of discussions, team works, peer reviews I had in this course is very engaging and helped me to become a better listener and participant. I am willing to accept the challenges and changes that I had throughout the course and planning on using them to become a better writer.

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