Walking into class on that first day, I did not know what to expect from this class. From my previous english course, I learned a lot of useful techniques that I could apply to this class. As classes went by and got assigned with a bunch of assignments, I could say, I have improved my writing in this class so far. The various assignments that were assigned to me have made me think of things I’ve never thought of before when writing my papers. Some things this class has made me improve when it comes for writing is delivery, purpose, and audience.
Before this class, my writing style was very different to what it is now. I would say that my writing style hasn’t seen any changes during my high school years. During high school, I would write a paper just to satisfy my teachers and in order to get a good grade. I would use definition terms that they wanted to see in the paper, explain them, connect them to the claim, and that’s it. That would be how I would write a paper in high school. I wouldn’t consider my audience, purpose, or other writing elements that could have improved my paper. Reading back at my old papers, I feel like a robot wrote the paper. The paper had no feeling in it and the paper would just go straight to the point. I feel that my papers back in high school were very static, it wouldn’t make you feel something if you read through it.
I started to understand how I can use these writing elements to my advantage in the first term of college in CCNY. In my first writing class for college, I started exploring the different elements writers must take into consideration when writing a paper. Before this, I would not think about the writing elements and just write what ideas I had onto the paper. My first english course was where I began to use the elements to improve my writing for english class and other classes. I learned that when writing any kind of paper, you must always know who you are writing it for and what your purpose for the paper is. As I progressed through the class, I started to see that my writing began to improve and I understood the writing elements better than before. I continued on learning how I could use the writing elements in writing for engineers.
One of the very first assignments for writing for engineers was the technical description. We had to research a topic we were interested in that had to do with our majors. For my technical description, I chose the topic of the jet engine and how it works. This was the very first assignment for this class so I did not know what to expect from it. Thanks to the professor, I received some examples on how a technical description should be and helped me organize my own technical description. When writing the paper, I had to determine who I was writing the paper for and what was my purpose for it. I decided that my audience would know no prior knowledge on jet engines so my paper would be written so it would be easy to understand for the audience. This also made me use images in my paper to further aid the audience when reading the technical description. In the end, I think this assignment made me take into consideration things like audience and purpose which I have never paid attention to before.
For the next assignment, we had a technical report. It’s very similar to the technical description but a bit more advanced. I had to once again focus on my purpose and audience for this paper. The one thing I learned from this paper was the importance of organization. This assignment contains a lot of pages thus it was important to organize it. It made me realize how important and useful a table of contents can be for my papers. Before this paper, I always thought the table of contents was useless, but when I used one for my paper, I saw that it made it easier for my readers to know what page of my report would be useful for them. This paper also further improved my understanding in the audience. For example, this paper was once again talking about jet engines, but this time I talked about the different types of engines. Once again, I had to think of who I was targeting my paper to. In the end, I decided that my paper will target new airline companies getting into the airline business. I would then shape my paper around this purpose and start gathering information that a new company would want. I knew that these new companies would want to know various things like, the cost per engine, the cost to maintain an engine, the size of the engine, the performance of the engine, the carrying capacity of one engine, and much more. These were things I would go research for and put in my paper. The type of research would have been different if my audience were different and if my purpose were different. This just shows how important the audience is in a paper and how I learned how to use the audience in order to shape my paper in order to target my set audience.
The next assignment in writing for engineers that I have experience is the proposal and presentation. This is the first time we had a group where we all came together to come up with a proposal for an issue that we want to fix. Our group chose the issue on energy and how NYC should have solar panels and not be dependent on energy from fossil fuels. Since it was the first time for some of us in the group to work with each other, we needed time to get used to work together. At first, I did not know how this assignment would help my writing improve but when everything was done, I learned some valuable things. When we were writing our proposal, we split up into groups and did our own thing. We had our own section and topic on what we should research on and what to write. When this was done, we came together as a group and shared our information and wrote it down in a google docs where everybody can see and add new things. This really helped since one, when doing their own research, may have bumped into some information that may be of help for the other group member and that person would add that information to the group member. When we all came together and reviewed each other’s work, I learned something from this. As I was reading through the proposal and the different sections covered by my group members, I learned various techniques that I could use in my writing. Since the group consisted of three other people, there were three other methods of writing and techniques. I think by reading through these sections, I was able to find examples of different writing styles and see if there was anything that I could take from it to improve my own writing style.
The presentation portion of the assignment made me learn more about the techniques of delivery. Delivery is one of the writing elements and it’s how you are going to present your work. For this, we discussed as a group on what kind of presentation we should make. We were discussing if we should have a live presentation or a video presentation where everything was pre-recorded. We agreed on the video presentation and began planning it. If we decided on a live presentation, our delivery would be different and what we are going to present is going to be different. This made me understand the importance of delivery and how much of an impact it has when you deliver your work to your audience.
For every assignment we had, we always had a peer review. When I first had peer review in high school, it was way different to the peer review in college. Back in high school, I thought peer reviews were a waste of time and were not useful at all. We would do a peer review and take up the whole period and in the end, with no valuable information. However, peer review is much more different in college than highschool. In college, the way the professors set up the peer review is very efficient and helps out the students. When I had my first peer review in college, I was amazed at how much information I got from it and how the feedback can really help my writing improve. With every peer review done, I learned changes I could make to make my paper better and while I peered reviewed someone else’s work, I learned new writing styles and was able to take some techniques from my peers and make it part of my writing style. One time in writing for engineer, during a peer review session, I looked at my peer’s work and found something that I could have used for my report. This person used titles and subsections, which I have never used before, so I thought I should give it a try and incorporate it in my writing. In the end, it was beneficial, since it made my work more organized and it showed the reader what section they were reading and what that section is going to be about. This is why I have changed my point of view on peer reviews because it can be very beneficial for a writer like me.
Writing for engineers has been a course where I have improved my writing. Not only did my writing for this class improve, but also for other classes. Mentioned before, every time I had an assignment for school, I would just write the main points and use the definition the teachers wanted. I wouldn’t care about the audience, organization, delivery, or any other writing elements. I did not understand how to use the writing elements to help my writing, but after the two english courses I have taken in college, I have seen an improvement in my writing style. For example, when I used to write my paper just to satisfy the teacher, I would take so long to be able to use the terms they wanted and put it in the format they wanted. Yes, this was playing it safe and I did not take into consideration the writing element, but it got me a good grade. However, this took a lot of time to think and sometimes my paper would be disorganized. After I relearned the writing elements, I was able to write my papers much faster than before and still have a very strong and organized paper. This class especially, has taught me how to present my work in various ways. This is why he had assignments like, technical description, reports, and proposals. These are all different types of writing formats that we will use later as engineers when we get into the engineering field. Not only did this class get me prepared for my engineering field but also for my other classes. During writing for engineers, I took World civilization which required me to write a ton of papers. Thanks to writing for engineers, I was able to polish my writing and was able to write the papers quickly and efficiently. One thing I forgot to mention in writing for engineers is that it reminded me how to do proper citations once again. This is a skill that I wasn’t very good at in the beginning and it’s a skill that can be very useful in my field of study. As an engineer we have to conduct research and provide a research paper. Without proper citation, our research is invalid and is just seen as an opinion paper, so learning this once again in writing for engineers, refreshed my mind and helped me get better at using citations.
I believe that with the skills I learned from this class, I can write my papers more efficiently for my finals or other important assignments. With all the research I have done in this class, I have gone through many papers and have read every single document that I was required to read and believe I improved my ability to extract information that I only need. In writing for engineers, every single assignment we had, we had to do a very extensive research for our topics. In my opinion, my researching skills weren’t that great in the beginning. I never knew I could improve this skill in this class, but I did. Throughout the semester, I have seen that whenever we had to find some information on our topics for our assignments, I have been able to get important information quicker than before. Before I would read a long research paper and not understand what I read, but with all the papers I read in this class, the more I was able to learn what to look for in papers. I was able to identify writing elements in other people’s paper such as their purpose, their audience, and their form. Then I would find the right information in a short period of time instead of having to re-read the whole paper just to find the information that I needed.
If I have known these techniques in high school, my writing experience could have been so much different. Now, having known many writing styles and techniques, I have fun writing. Before in high school, writing papers was a hassle and time consuming. I would hate when a teacher would assign us a paper out of nowhere. I would take hours just trying to find a proper source to use for my papers. In my english classes in high school, I did learn about the writing elements, but for some reason I did not understand them. As much as I tried to learn and understand them, I couldn’t. This is why I believe I hated writing in high school. Here in college, I know how to use the elements and I have fun writing papers. The words just flow through my head and they flow smoothly onto the paper. It’s fun reading other people’s work and trying to identify their purpose and what writing style they are using.
In addition to peer review, this class has exposed me to different kinds of writing styles. I have seen various amounts of different writing styles because I could see my peers’ works through black board. I would read some of their work and I would analyze them and compare them to my work. I believe this is how I learn and how I have improved my writing. I would see other people’s work and find interesting styles that interest me. I would attempt to use some of my peers techniques and make them part of mine. I wouldn’t just copy their same exact format, but I would use them as an example. There was this one friend I had in my english class and I have never read his paper before. When I did, I got introduced to many techniques that I could have used for my papers. Sometimes he would use titles or even images and I would ask myself, why haven’t I thought of doing that for my paper. I would use him as an example, instead of going online and finding one, and try to use those techniques in my paper.
One other thing writing for engineers did for me was that I learn how to write an extensive amount of papers. In this class we had discussion posts assigned to us almost everyday. Each one of those posts, we had to meet a certain word count. I have seen this for my previous english course, but the word count was pretty high. However, this kind of benefitted me in the end. I learned how to use my words effectively and learned how to write a pretty decent and long paper from a topic with very small information. It also taught me to endure long papers in my other classes and with the almost daily posts, I have been able to practice my writing and improve on it.
As I progress in college, I would have harder classes which will require me to write extensive research papers. Having experienced this in writing for engineers, I am now confident that I could tackle any research paper in the future as long as I remember how to use the writing elements to my advantage.I wasn’t the best of writers and I’m still not a great writer, but I do feel I have improved from when I first started college to now.
