This Writing for Engineering class has been a great learning experience from the beginning of the semester. Each writing assignment has helped me become a better writer in different ways. Together, the three assignments have undoubtedly made me a better technical writer better suited for a career in the world of engineering. Below I have broken down some of the challenges I have faced writing each assignment and some of the things I learned from overcoming these challenges.
Technical Description:
The “Technical Description” assignment was the first major assignment that I had to write. In this essay, I was tasked with the job of choosing an object and fully explaining that object’s historical background, material makeup, and inner workings. Although the assignment itself seemed straightforward, there were certain challenges that I had unforeseen. One of these challenges which interestingly enough also is a course learning outcome was making my writing accessible to everyone (course learning outcome 1,3).
A technical description, even one of a BiC Pen, is an extremely detailed document, and it therefore includes many technical words pertaining to the subject that the general public might not understand. Some of these words that were a part of my first draft were words like “viscosity” “gravity-fed” and “diffusion”. Initially, I did not see a problem with these words as I wasn’t looking at the paper from the perspective of an outside reader with limited knowledge. I gained this perspective after the class peer-review session, where a classmate suggested that I explain what these words mean (course learning outcome 4). In accordance with their suggestions, I either provided a parenthetical definition of these words or removed them entirely. For example, I added the word “thickness” in parentheses to explain viscosity and switched the phrase “gravity-fed” with “ink flows down the tube due to gravity”. Other than that, the rest of the essay involved a lot of research both on historical and technical topics which was mostly done through google. Most of the sources were either paraphrased and summarized to maintain a smooth flow of writing or shown as pictures to provide graphical illustrations for parts or mechanisms (course learning outcome 7,8).
One course-learning outcome that deserved more time was course-learning outcome 2, “Enhance strategies for reading, drafting, revising, editing, and self-assessment.” In my writing process for the Technical description, I only wrote one draft which became my final paper after some of the changes described above. Writing a draft of the whole paper in a single day was very stressful. Ideally, I should have split up the paper into smaller sections and spread out the writing of those sections over the course of a week. By doing this, I would not only reduce stress, but also improve the revision process. When you take a short break from writing and come back to your paper, you often see the paper with a fresh mind and notice new mistakes (both grammar and conceptual) that you had not caught previously. I kept this in mind for future papers.
Lab Report Rhetorical Analysis:
The “Lab Report Rhetorical Analysis” essay as shown in the name of the assignment required a great amount of analysis. In this assignment, I analyzed through compare and contrast the structural layout two research labs and provided reasons for the differences or similarities that they shared. This assignment differed greatly from the “Technical Description” assignment as it was less about summarizing information, and more about analyzing information. The greatest challenge I encountered while writing this essay was learning how to write in a nuanced way.
When I first started writing the essay, I took a very black and white approach in analyzing the lab reports. If the author made a choice to deviate from the main structural layout, I either stated that that choice was outright bad or outright good. After reading a few of the lab elements, however, I realized it wasn’t a case of making a good or bad decision on the author’s part as much as it was making a deliberate trade-off. I first really noticed this in the titles of the lab reports. Both research articles had very short, and straight to the point titles. Initially, I thought this was a great decision on the part of both authors; however, I realized that by lacking specificity, their articles only provided a “surface level description of their papers” that would make it harder for other researchers to understand what the labs were about. As I wrote in my essay, “by using simple language, authors create an attractive, straight to the point title; however, in doing so, the authors must rely on the abstract to give more context.” In the end, a thorough and nuanced analysis of the lab reports lead to nuanced writing.
Regarding the course learning outcomes, I met all but one of the outcomes that pertain to this paper. Following what I had learned from the previous assignment about revision, I split this assignment into 8 sections that corresponded with the 8 lab report elements and spread out the work over 8 days (course learning outcome 2). Class peer-review helped develop my nuanced writing to avoid contradictions (course learning outcome 4). I formulated a loose stance through the idea that authors choose the layout of their paper based on the type of information they are trying to display (course learning outcome 6). The two lab reports were gathered from JSTOR, a well-known digital library of research articles (course learning outcome 7), and the sources were paraphrased and quoted throughout the essay (course learning outcome 8). The only course learning outcome that I thought I did not completely meet here was course learning outcome 1 and 2. Because this essay was more nuanced than the previous one, the sentence structures were more complex and harder to understand for those who are not as familiar with English as their first language. That being said, however, this essay is intended for a more knowledgeable audience, while the first essay was intended for pretty much any reader.
To summarize, the “Lab Report Rhetorical Analysis” assignment taught me how to see text below surface level and thoroughly analyze a document. It was through this nuanced analysis, that the assignment also helped develop my skills in writing a nuanced position.
Research Proposal
The “Research Proposal” assignment was the most research heavy of the three assignments. In this group-based assignment, my group and I were tasked with coming up with an innovation that was needed, describing the innovation, and analyzing the labor, monetary, and time costs of such innovation. This was, by far, and the longest and most complex assignment as it required the ability to effectively research, analyze, and summarize information. It required all the skills from the previous assignments. The most challenges were encountered in this assignment. Through multiple drafts and revisions, however, (4 in total) my group was able to overcome these challenges (course learning outcome 2) and write an effective research proposal.
The first challenge was research. My group and I decided that we would make a water filter pretty early on due to the water crisis that is currently plaguing the world. The problem was that there were so many different water filter designs available that we did not know where to begin research. Using the EBSCOhost database and searching by keywords, however, I was able to really narrow down the amount of research articles available (course learning outcome 7). It wasn’t long after that I found a research article that tested household water filter designs by a research team in South Africa. This research paper became the basis for our research proposal and was quoted and paraphrased throughout the paper (course learning outcome 8).
The second challenge was differentiating the innovation from background information. Our group’s innovation was to combine the strengths of two filter designs and combine them to create a superior filer; however, this was not made clear in the first draft as pointed out by both Professor Davidow and class mates during peer-review (course learning outcome 4). To fix this problem we added two paragraphs explaining how the filter designs from the background information fit into our innovative filter. Moreover, we also added modifications to our design to differentiate our filter from those already existing.
The third challenge pertained specifically to me. Since I was the group leader, I was responsible for putting everybody’s work together. This was challenging because different people have different writing styles, and visual preferences. When I first put everyone’s work together, it was clear that research proposal had no rhythm. I had to add consistency to the paper and decided to edit the rest of the paper to match my writing style since I had written the largest section of the paper (background information). Uniformizing the paper included maintaining consistent aesthetics, grammar, as well as vocabulary. One of the ways I added consistency was by explain any concepts that would be unfamiliar to general audiences (course learning outcome 1,3). Since I had done this in my section, that meant that this had to be done in every other section as well.
The greatest challenge overall, however, was working effectively as a group. This was accomplished through consistent communication and work division. I made myself group leader after seeing that others were prioritizing other classes and established clear deadlines for writing sections. Ultimately, the “Research Proposal” assignment was a fantastic learning experience. I learned how to research effectively, provide specificity, maintain consistency, and demonstrate leadership.
