Pitcha Sudjaritjuntorn

Professor Clark

English 21007-B

13 December 2018

 

Final Self-Assessment (of entire class)

Throughout this English course, I was exposed to many new types of writing and I was able to improve my skills by doing writing assignments, communicating with the professor and classmates, and by reading the textbook. My perspective on engineering have also widened because I was able to meet other students with engineering majors and I got to learn their ideas and mindsets. Each class session, I did different writing assignments and class activities that helped stimulated my learning experience. In the beginning of the course, I had very little knowledge in technical writing. However, by the end of this course, I was able to showcase the knowledge I learned from the semester in my recent assignments and in the final project.

The first assignment I have done in the course was the Formal Letter of Introduction where I mainly had to write about myself. However, the challenging part of this was finding what to write about myself. I felt like I did not have a lot to say because I just came out of high school and I did not have many work experience or amazing accomplishments. Therefore, I chose to write about my future goals instead. Although this assignment was straightforward, it did have important elements such as the correct letter format and word count that I had to keep in mind while writing. After this assignment, I had to write a memo. This assignment was more difficult because instead of writing to my professor, I was writing to the President of City College about a certain problem that needs to be fixed at the college. I had to maintain my tone and voice to be formal, I had to make sure I was being clear and concise without giving too much information and sounding brash. However, this assignment helped me write a memo and I was able to achieve the course learning outcome of negotiating my own writing goals and audience expectations regarding conventions of genre, medium, and rhetorical situation. Since I was writing to the President, I had to know what the President expects to read from my memo.

Next, I wrote a lab report on an experiment where I had to see where bananas are best conserved in comparison to the degradation rate. As the course progressed, the assignments became increasingly difficult. Many assignments I have submitted were also in APA format, in the past I used mainly MLA format. Therefore, it took me a while to get familiar with using APA format. In the lab report, I had to explain the procedures, the results I got, and briefly talk about the history and background of bananas. What I had trouble with in this assignment was the voice I had to use; passive voice. Active voice was not allowed, and I had difficulty with writing in passive voice because I was so used to writing in the active voice. There were many things that I encountered in this course that I trouble with because it was all very new to me. In high school, my English classes were more focused on writing papers based on literature while in this course it is more based on writing about a certain subject that needs instructions or clear explanations. However, I was able to learn from my mistakes I did on the assignments, and I tried to improve my technical writing skills.

The second to last major writing assignment I did was the technical description, this assignment was similar to the lab report. However, in the technical description, I had to describe an object; its parts and functions. Most importantly, I was not supposed to give instructions, I was supposed to describe how to something works by using the passive voice. Pictures were also incorporated into the technical descriptions and I had to be aware of the audience since I had to edit and place them in a certain way that the reader will be able to understand them. I was proud of this assignment because it showed that I have improved in my writing. Another important thing I learned in this course was the importance of the audience, in every assignment I was often reminded to be aware of who I was writing to because a lot of the audience’s preferences are different based on their culture, religion, and how much they know about a certain topic. Audience analysis is important in any form of writing.

Lastly, the final assignment I did was the group proposal and presentation. My classmates and I got to share our engineering invention ideas and created a proposal for the selected invention and then we did a presentation on it. In my perspective, this assignment was like a practice for our future jobs where we would have to go up to our employers and present our ideas to them. Since, our technical writing skills gained from this course would be helpful in those types of situations. The assignment included components such as collaborating with other people, dividing up work equally, and presenting our work as a team. This assignment was difficult because my group and I were not able to narrow our idea at first because we all had different ideas and we wanted to combine them all together. However, it was not practical. I also realized that this final project, we were able to use all our skills learned from the past assignments to use them in our research proposals, I was able to use APA format, the language used in the memo, and the technical descriptions (describing how something works). Research was also essential in this assignment because we needed research to support our invention such as the reasons and effects of the problem.

Some of the course learning outcomes I was able to achieve through the final project were practicing the use of the Internet to locate appropriate sources and strengthening my source use practices. Since I was using APA more often in my writing, I was able to integrate sources from the internet onto my proposal by citing them. I also was able to formulate and articulate a stance in my writing. Since I did research on the problem of limited parking space, I had to make sure I was sticking to one point of view so that my audience can be convinced. I was also able to negotiate our writing goals and audience expectations regarding conventions of genre, medium, and rhetorical situation since my group members and I had to pay attention about whether our idea mattered, whether our audience will care, and whether our invention will be a modified version of the original one. Lastly, my group members and I were able to enhance strategies for reading, drafting, revising, editing, and self-assessment. Throughout the project, all of us had to check each other’s work in case of mistakes. Overall, all the major assignments I have done for this class has really helped me improve in my newfound technical writing skill and achieve the course learning outcomes.

Other than the major assignments I’ve done, I also benefited from the class sessions, interacting with the professor and my classmates, and by reading the textbook. I really liked the group activities that was done in the class because it helped me feel less awkward with my classmates. In the beginning of the semester, I had little knowledge of technical writing, I became even more timid because most of the students were upperclassmen and since I just graduated from high school, I was so used to being around people my age. However, throughout this course, I was able to overcome my problems by doing the rough drafts, getting help by doing research, and by talking with other classmates I was able to realize that they are interesting and not intimidating. I believe that I have improved a lot on formatting, writing in a more formal and clear voice. Before, I was wordy, and I put too much information in one paragraph. It is difficulty transitioning from a whole different type of writing, but in the end, I think I have shown improvement and I wished I had more time to expand my knowledge in technical writing.