Shadman Rahman

Professor Moser

English 21007

05/22/2020

Reflecting over English 21007

As this semester comes to an end, many ideas that have been acquired from this Writing For Engineers course can be connected to many of the course that I plan to take in the future. This semester we have completed four major assignments that all had changed the way I have first thought for a writing course. These assignments allowed me to explain different idea’s the way I wanted to, not from a specific guideline. I was able to express my understanding for different subjects and not get criticized for my analysis. The assignments that have been completed are the Technical Description, Memo, Lab Report, and finally the engineering proposal assignments. These are all writing pieces that are expected to be done in future courses or even in careers in the future. Writing For Engineers has opened the idea of many techniques to writing that ensured me that my writing is the best it can be. Some of these techniques were drafting, brainstorming, and even peer reviews.

One of the concepts used in this utilized in the assignments during the Writing for Engineering course was the use of outside resources. The use of outside resources increases the credibility of the statement given. Also, the use of outside resources allows the writer to give their own analysis to support their claim, but also allows the writer to create new ideas for their writing. Resources are quite helpful for academic and also career based writing, however, the type of resource you choose is very influential. Many sources of evidence can be misleading, this can be easily noticeable based on where the information was found. Sources that are reliable make the argument more believable and accurate, many of these sources can be found in books, online databases, and even news outlets.

Another technique that has been utilized is the demonstration of drafting and revising. Drafting allows the reader to release their thoughts in one separate document and have a baseline assignment. For this particular course, our instructor, Professor Moser, would critique our drafts and provide helpful feedback. This was extremely helpful during the final Engineering Proposal assignment. Our group had rough start for this assignment however, after the feedback received, we were able to polish our final draft and make our Proposal even better. The most common errors found in our assignments was that whether their wasn’t enough specificity, or too much specificity. One addition aspect from the technique of drafting and revising is the addition of working in groups to revise our drafts and have a  clear idea of how the assignment should be done and also common errors found in different students. These groups of revision would be know as peer reviews, these reviews allowed us how the assignment was from a different prospective, and also allowed room for correction after criticism. Many of these corrections would also be a due to the genre, audience, and even medium of the assignment. The genre, audience, and medium can change the tone of the essay and even the formality of the assignment. Many of these assignments were specified to official above our status, so many of these assignments needed to be formal and revised. The audience of the essay is also very important, it can make the paper from being informational and explaining your analysis, to instructional and providing information to allow the reader to understand the concept. Formulating a stance is quite difficult for some of the wrinting assignments that we have done. For the technical description, it was easy, we chose our interests and finally expressed our knowledge towards it. The lab report and also engineering proposal was however difficult, this is due to the fact that  we were assigned this after the shift towards remote learning so many of these stances were reflected to current events. The genre of the writing is also important. The genre can make writing reliable to unreliable based on the information given and reliability of the sources.

The most influential  technique utilized for these assignments were the reliability of the sources. This begins with where the sources are found, to who wrote these sources. The location of these sources are important because it shows how professional the sources are, how accurate the information is, and finally whether or not the source is biased.  Many of the sources used were thoroughly analyzed to ensure bias wasn’t an issue, as well as the author to unsure accuracy. This is mostly important for the engineering proposal. Many of the sources given should also be credited to prevent plagiarism in the assignment. To prevent plagiarism, the source would be quoted, properly cited ( Authors last name page#), and then have a bibliography in the end of the paper to show where the sources were found and who wrote them. Many of these sources were quoted but some of them were also paraphrased. Even paraphrased ideas were quoted.