Abstract: This is self-assessment on my academic progress on the course of writing for engineering. This assessment goes in-depth with each assignments to answer the questions, “To what extent have I achieved the course learning objectives? In what ways have my perceptions on what writing is and does evolved this semester?”. Each paragraph focuses on the individual course objectives that every student is expected to accomplish. Furthermore, the unaccomplished objectives are also mentioned.   

Writing for Engineering was my second college level class. As someone who is fairly new to the English language, I was oblivious to what to expect from the course. Implementation of professional writing on engineering seemed small to me. It’s a typical saying of ‘what is there to writing about for engineers’. But throughout this course I was introduced to so many possible ways to learn about writing and applying them on engineering. Although my learning experience wasn’t a smooth process, I still am taking a lot with me for the future of my writing experience.

My linguistic difference is very much visible on my academic writings. Although writing for engineering is mostly dealing with technical writing, my linguistic difference is never an exception. This goes back to when I made simple spelling mistakes on my technical description. It was pointed out my one of my peers and it put a mark of my linguistic abilities. As English is not my first language, prioritizing grammar has also been a challenge to me. When my cover letter was being peer reviewed, a lot of punctuation mistakes were pointed by my peers. In my opinion my linguistic difference has not seen any enhancement as it is all up to me on how much I work on it. But this course has allowed me to broaden my vocabulary with more technical terms as I had the opportunity to focus on preferred career topics.    

Compared to my previous writing class, this course has exposed me to a more concentrated form of drafting and peer-reviewing. Before this course I was familiar to the concept of peer-review, but I never had to implement it so much as in this course. In my opinion the resume and cover letter had the most effect of strategizing and peer-reviewing. This was mainly because everyone had some prior knowledge of resume and cover letter to an extent. For example, my resume was reviewed by career advisers and it reflected the ideal resume. I used that knowledge to inform my peers about the importance of organization and consistency on a resume. I suggested the use of direct approach to their activities and achievements to provide an easy and convenient experience to their audience. Peer reviews also helped me enhance my knowledge about cover letter. Specifically, one of my peers suggested me to add the job number and title to help my audience better identify my internship application. I was also suggested to explain my experience and responsibilities on one of the projects I had previously worked on. I further used this knowledge about drafting and revising on my group project. This was a major strategy in creating the group project. We started with writing our plans to each parts of the project proposal. Then we strategized to assign each members their sections to be dedicated on. We excessively revised each member responses on each part to fabricate the final piece. For example, our group leader wasn’t comfortable with abstracts. So helped him strategize the layout of the abstract for the project proposal. I explained the key points of an abstract such as, mentioning the issue, the solution to the problem, names of evaluation techniques and the results of the solution. But most importantly we both took in account of the briefness of the abstract. I think I’ve enhanced my skills to strategize in writing but I still have a lot to learn. This goes to my inability to follow the course format for memos. I still have a lot to learn about writing strategies and I will put the experience in good use.

I find it difficult to negotiate my writing goals as it takes more time than usual for me to come up with them in the first place. But with the unfortunate shift of the course to online platforms I had to negotiate to some extent. This goes beyond academic writing as I had to take in account of peer perspectives about grand challenge discussions. In terms of audience expectations, I had to find a way around the formal criteria. One of my peers critiqued my technical description of being too visually focused. I had to rearrange each section and added details about the reaction process of propane to work around this expectation. In my resume, one of my peers expected me to provide more specifications about the education section. I worked around this by adding in more information instead of over explaining things. This preserved my goal of keeping the resume and brief and the audience expectation of more details. This is the first time I faced the challenge of negotiation and I sure was quite new to it. My inexperience was visible on the lab report memo where I could not address the need for textual evidence. Although I did mention the purpose of each authors’ use of appendices such as “Nomenclature”, I failed to provide textual evidence about them. In my opinion the need for negotiation was not obvious which is why I preferred to ignore it most of the time. Nonetheless, more exposure to this strategy will help me improve on it.

Throughout the course I had established some strong social connections with my peers for writing. In my opinion the peer review was a great influence for this. It all started from the first peer review. There was so many critiques on my drafts that I was considering to rewrite the assignments. But as the semester progressed, we soon came to understand the critiques of our peers and took in consideration of peer reviews. For example, I would never attach the links of the sources to my first drafts. My peers would always critique me for it. So, soon I created a habit of attaching sources to the all drafts. The group project tested this skill as I had to communicate about a whole project with five other members. And I have to say, it went very flawlessly as we created out own platform of communication using Discord (app). Our constant plans about the project, such as the model of the traffic sensor and what statistical techniques to use for evaluation had built our connection as a group. This connection helped us arrange the presentation flawlessly. Although we were unable to collaborate in person, we shared presentation files with each other back and forth to keep the workflow going. At a point we even knew what comment (annotation) goes whereas the presentation had to be shared between several members. It is safe to say that I had enhanced my social connection for writing efforts drastically. There is always something to improve on, but I have had a good experience in gaining this skill.      

Multimodal and genre analysis are some unfamiliar grounds to me. But this exposed me to new plateau of analysis. Although I find it difficult to define what they mean, my business memo can act as an example of genre analysis. This was the first time I got to focus on company ethics. The lesson about code of ethics has taught me about the importance of details and specifications on a code of conduct. This allowed me to analyze the code of ethics from Northrop Grumman. My analysis concluded that Northrop Grumman should consider improvising their code of conduct on workspace safety. It was too generic and did not mention of any workspace injury prevention. It came as a surprise to me, but lab reports involve the with implementation of different writing strategies when it comes to address audience expectation. This means writers must go through multiple modes of writing to make their reports public friendly. I got the opportunity to analyze Pryce Paulson’s lab report on high powered rockets and how they work. I analyzed the background/prior knowledge section of the lab report to understand the value of considering the readers’ prior knowledge to a topic. How Paulson explained the different physical properties about rocket operation gave me a clear understanding about prioritizing the readers’ stance on a topic. My first exposure to genre analysis and multimodal composing had its ups and downs. My mistakes on the lack evidence clearly contradicts my claim of understanding the value of details. But moving forward I will be taking in account of this mistake.

My lab report memos reflect on my ability to formulate and articulate a stance on others’ writings. In my memo, I’ve claimed that Zhang Bojun’s lab report on vertical rocket landing does not provide any “statistical measurements (numbers)” to support their claims. But I did not provide any textual evidence to prove that to the reader. I’ve also claimed that his “Nomenclature” acts as a great reference for the reader to understand his equations, but I did not explain what the “Nomenclature” was. This shows that I have yet to learn how to make good use of textual evidence because being able to formulate my stances isn’t enough. Backing up claims and articulating them is also big part of analyzing scholarly writings.

Compared to the previous semester, my skill on using library and online resources have improved drastically. The process of gathering sources for the lab report memo was unique as I got use different websites. The CCNY’s ‘Onesearch’ platform enhanced my research skills with its useful tools to shorten search results. I was impressed on how it narrowed the search results from a several thousand articles to a handful. This was tested when I was assigned to search appropriate evaluation techniques for traffic sensors for the group project. I went through a series of websites such as U.S Department of energy, Department of Transportation and even Youtube. The project was involved with two different platforms when creating the presentation. It also exposed me to the comment feature on Microsoft Power Point. I have a lot of success in enhancing this skill and I hope to see the use of it in the future. My experience on Writing for Engineering has broadened my perspective about how far writing can go. Previously, I never put too much priority on format and professionalism in writing. Writing for Engineering has made me aware of where I stand with my skills in formal writing. I’ve gained new skills in audience expectations and enhanced my writing strategies. These new strategies indicate how others’ point of view can change my writing in so many ways. They also show that social connections can improve our writing. And I’ve fairly enjoyed implementing it.