Pitcha Sudjaritjuntorn

Professor Clark

English 21007-B

24 November 2018

 

Technical Description Self-Reflection

            In the technical description assignment, I described an object by breaking it down into its parts and explaining how each part works. The object I have chosen was the Sony Alpha 5000 digital camera. Writing the technical description came with several different challenges. Firstly, while writing the description of the different camera parts, it was hard to maintain a passive voice. I was trying not to write as if I was giving instructions and tried to maintain a consistent passive voice throughout the description as well. I do think that the writing style was similar in the lab report, and since I had trouble in that assignment. The lab report did help me improve in the technical description. I also tried to keep a balance between making the technical description sound clear while incorporating enough details and information for the reader to understand how the camera functions without sounding too confusing. I had to explain to an audience who may have never used the object before and it was a challenge for me because I knew the object so well that explaining it in a simpler means was harder.

While this assignment gave me several challenges, it also helped me improve in different areas in the course learning outcomes. I was able to use sources to support the history of the camera and I used sources to explain about how the camera functions. I strengthened my use of sources by paraphrasing and citing them in my text. Another outcome I achieved was engaging in genre analysis and multimodal composing because since this was my first time writing a technical description of an object, I was able to explore a new type of writing style, improve in technical writing, and practice more with the different tone and language used.