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What is engineering writing?

Writing is a medium to express meaningful thoughts in a proper way. It has different purpose and different audiences. A successful writing has a well-defined purpose and audiences. Speaking and writing both express your thoughts but writing is more accurate and organized medium. It consists of words constructed from alphabets which can develop some meaningful sentences. There are many genres of writing. Despite of having differences among these writings, the common goal is to illustrate the writer’s intension and purpose through words, pictures, diagrams, graphs etc. The English class we are taking is all about writing for engineering. Writing for engineering is a type of professional writing which involves all the processes that engineers face in their workplaces such as lab report, technical description, engineering proposal etc. All these writings focus on technicality and specifications rather than simple description. As I am taking this class as a chemical engineer, I have a goal to achieve knowledge about all the necessary processes and prerequisites in order to be able to successfully write all types of engineering papers that might be required in my future studies and in my future career. This engineering writing should require skillful thought and authenticity than other types of writing. This is the reason why I personally wanted to invest my time and resources to acquire this valuable skill. Throughout the whole fall semester, I have learnt about some tools and sources. Therefore, I have developed myself as a writer in many ways. Now my confidence as a writer enhanced because of learning the valuable skillset from this class. This class also helps me to meet certain requirements and expectation in the field of engineering in near future.

Linguistic differences have a great impact on communication. According to the learning objectives of this course, the very first outcome is to acknowledge all the linguistic differences and use them as our resources. To develop rhetorical sensibility, a writer needs to have the knowledge about this. The linguistic variations are related to the background, culture, origin of individuals. I strongly believe that I have learnt the purpose of acknowledging not only mine but others linguistic differences as well as their thoughts, suggestive behaviors and tried to integrate all into my own thoughts so that I can come up with a better solution. At the very beginning of this class, I had no idea regarding the systematic approach for better communications that includes reading, drafting, editing and self-assessment. I have found all these approaches very effective in many ways during this semester. It helped me better understanding the materials related to the assignment that we have covered. I have learnt this systematic approach in this class and wished to continue this technique in my future work in order to get best result.
The purpose and audiences are two major parts of writing. This class talks about how to successfully achieve writer’s own writing goals and audience expectations. Different types of writing require to have different assumptions about their audience’s prior knowledge regarding the topic and expectations in the writing. This assumption helps the writer to evaluate the goal of the writing. As the class progress, I have learnt how to negotiate the audience’s expectation and achieve my own goal of writing. It also helps me to present my work as detail oriented as possible.
Another learning objective of this class is to teach collaboration. Collaboration is very important in any profession as people need to work in a group or in a team. We have learned how to collaborate with peers and classmates in a group work in this class. The engineering proposal assignment is the evidence of such collaborative work. It’s very challenging to communicate and work in a group especially virtually at this Covid pandemic time. This collaboration does not always go in expected way. There are many challenges that come on my way of working in such project. That’s why I have learned all the possible ways to accept the challenges and also learned how to overcome the obstacles from this collaboration. It also helps me to be prepared for the future teamwork where I can use all the skills that I have achieved from this course.
Another leaning objective is about genre analysis and multimodal composing. I have done various genre analysis in this class. My lab report assignment is such example of genre analysis. I have analyzed two different lab reports in order to compare and contrast them. This is not the area where I am expert. But I have learned the concepts of analyzation and will try to apply my knowledge whenever I would come across writing such genre. Multimodal composing is also very common in writing. It comprises of visual elements such as graph, diagram, picture etc. I have learned how to use multimodal composing in my writing in order to fulfil the required approaches and grab the audience’s attentions. Visual representation helps to make the demonstration of any technical or regular topic more clear and more effective.
Another learning objective of this course is formulating and articulating a stance through and in my writing. This skill helps the writer to be able to provide a particular point of view regarding a topic. This skill is very important specially for advertising, offer letter, research paper etc. As an Engineer, I need to learn how to formulate and articulate a stance in my writing. This course gives me the opportunity to improve my ability on such thing.

The next and most important learning objective of this course is about the usage of various library resource, online database and internet recourses. They have very reliable and trustworthy solid information with proper citation to use. I used to be dependent on google search engine. But In this course, I have learned the importance of these sources and how to use these sources effectively. Now I am very comfortable using these online recourses that involves CCNY database, Google Scholar and other reputable academic databases.
The next learning objective is about to strengthen our writing which includes quoting, paraphrasing, summarizing, analyzing, citing etc. These should be practiced in any kind of writing. Among all the elements, citation is the most important part. I already used MLA format of citation. In this course, I have learned APA format which is the most recommended one to be used in my many academic papers for citation. At the very beginning of the class, I wasn’t good at APA format. I was using online APA citation generator which was not working properly. Because most of the source was from random google search. Since, I have learned using reliable databases, the citation process become understandable and easy for me to use. Summarizing and analyzing are also helpful for me to be on right track during writing. It also helps me to make my audience understand my intention of writing and get a valuable feedback from them. My lab report assignment was such an example of effective usage of summarizing and analyzing.
Writing is not only a medium to express one’s thought, but also it has some specific purpose. Engineering writing is different than other writings. I have learnt how the engineering writing is different than others in this course. Now I have a basic knowledge about what this class has offered from the very beginning to till now. But in the comparison of engineering writing and regular essay writing, I have found some interesting differences and also some similarities. Some of the main differences I have found are the evidential support that the writer needs to provide to strengthen the claim, logical analyzation, instruction, amount of clarity etc. The similarities that I have found are format of writing, well-defined structure and purpose, specific audiences etc. As an engineer, I have learnt how to make an effective document by following the suggested approaches.
This course not only provides me the learning elements and objectives but also make me understand and capable of using all these into my other academic-life writing. Now I have become more confident on writing after taking this course because I have learnt so many approaches such as editing, drafting, analyzing etc. I also experience a new thing called peer review which really works as I got different feedback from my peers. It helps me to enhance the quality of my writings. I also have earned experience on collaborative work by working on the group proposal.
This self-assessment essay enlightens me in many ways. This course teaches me how to examine myself in an attempt and helps me to find my strengths and weaknesses when it comes to writing. It also provides me with a list of required elements to become a successful writer.