A retrospective of my experience in English 21007

This past semester, after taking the City College of New York’s English 21007 class, Writing for Engineering, I have been able to improve my skills as a technical writer by engaging in a series of instructive writing assignments. These assignments consisted of a letter of introduction, followed by a memo, a technical description, a lab report and a proposal. Each of these writing assignments provided practice in a specific form of technical writing, as well as the flexibility to choose a topic I’m passionate about. This in turn, helped foster the creation of the best possible work. Each assignment also stimulated growth towards the class’ 8 learning outcomes. These outcomes are a list of skills necessary in effective technical writing, and in learning them, I’ll be leaving this class with the kinds of writing skills I will need for the rest of my college career, as well as my future professional career.

The first assignment, was a formal letter of introduction, from us and addressed to Professor Susan Delamare. In this letter we introduced ourselves, our academic and professional goals, as well as what led us to that point. This assignment developed our abilities toward two of the learning outcomes. The first was acknowledging my own and others’ range of linguistic differences as resources, and drawing on those resources to develop rhetorical sensibility. This is because in a formal letter, one must be mindful of who they are writing the letter to. This was a particularly important skill for me to develop, as I have shown difficulty in knowing my audience in the past. The other skill developed was enhancing strategies for reading, drafting, revising, editing, and self-assessment. As with any writing assignment, one must look over and improve on their work several times until it is in a form the writer and the audience will be most satisfied with. This was a skill that was well developed over the course of the semester, with each assignment having a more intensive editing and revising period than the last.

The second assignment was a memo, that was meant to be written to the either the president of City College, or another leader in our community. These memo’s were meant to inform the intended audience on an issue in our school or local community, along with a proposed course of action for addressing said problem. The ultimate goal of this memo was to persuade the audience to take the course of action described. For my own memo, I wrote a proposal to the mayor of New York City, suggesting an increased implementation of green roof technology, in order to mitigate the effects of climate change on the city. This assignment developed the same abilities as the formal letter, along with my ability to formulate and articulate a stance through my writing. With the purpose of this writing being to persuade, it’s necessary to make your position clear, and present it in a way that’s powerful enough to bring the audience to the same position. This is something I believe I was able to do effectively, allowing me to carry said skill over to future projects.

The next assignment was the Technical Description, in which we had to choose a piece of technology and describe its fundamental parts and functions. This assignment was my personal favorite because it allowed me to embrace the interest in technology that led me to major in computer science, and ultimately end up taking this course. I chose to write about a device called the Arduino Uno, a personal micro controller that allowed users who had an interest in technology and electrical engineering to customize it, building their own electronic devices for various purposes. I broke it down into its most significant components and for each, explained their function and structure. Doing this required intensive research, thus developing my skills toward another learning outcome. In this specific case, I practiced using various library resources, online databases, and the Internet to locate sources appropriate to my technical description, and of course strengthening my source use practices. I even learned a method for citing my sources known as APA, a format that is central to technical writing. From this point in the course, effective source use become a significant requirement in all future assignments, and the skills I learned from this assignment came in handy time and time again.

The following assignment, the Lab Report, marked the first group assignment of the semester. For this assignment, one group member was to provide a lab report from a class taken in the past or currently. We were then to collectively improve the report based on the guidelines of writing one that we learned in class. For this assignment, we developed and engaged in the collaborative and social aspects of the writing processes. Although personally, social situations have never been my strong-suit, I traditionally have been able to collaborate with others quite well when needed. This assignment was no exception. I was able to do my part in the assignment and provide meaningful comments in our discussions.

The final assignment was the proposal and presentation, was another group assignment that further developed my collaborative and social skills. In this assignment our groups would come up with a technological innovation and write a proposal describing it and our plan to implement it. We also were to construct a presentation to effectively sell our innovation to the audience. My group proposed replacing the New York City Subway’s metrocard system, with one that utilized Radio Frequency Identification (R.F.I.D.) technology. I feel as though we did a good job equally distributing the work and agreeing on meeting times. The many facets of this assignment actually led to development towards all of the learning outcomes I’ve mentioned so far, and overall I’m satisfied with development we had displayed. My weakest point was likely during the actual presentation. I came prepared, with note cards of remarks that I had practiced with my teammates, but in the future I’d like to work on maintaining stronger eye contact with my audience. I’d also like to work on projecting my voice better and being more extemporaneous in my delivery.

Overall, this course has proven to be essential in my development as a writer. Through the numerous assignments given, I was able to achieve the learning outcomes, and develop skills that I will continue to use throughout my life.