Dear Incoming Students,

Writing for Engineering was a class that I thought would be simple and easy like English Composition. I took this course knowing that I know everything there is to know about writing. I would like to say I was completely wrong about that statement. This course was very different from the other English course that I took. We had to focus on multiple rhetoric elements for all the assignments. Each assignment had its own learning objectives and by the end of the term, I was able to enhance my writing skills by a massive amount. My point of view about writing changed overall due to the topics that were involved in this course. 

First to what extent have I achieved the course learning objectives? I believe that I achieved all the course learning outcomes. From the memo to the engineering proposal, we had to do reading and a lot of research. We had to evaluate the audience, stance, and purpose and cite them later, so we don’t take credit for someone else’s work. Even after the work was done, we had to do peer review to revise and edit the writing to make it perfect. Since all the assignments was consistence with the course learning outcomes, I believe I achieved all of them.

In what ways have my perceptions on what writing is and does evolved this semester? During English Composition 1 my experience with writing was just writing about what I believe and expressing how I feel and myself. I never analyzed the audience and thought of them much when writing about a topic. I just wrote what I felt was right. The audience is not something I considered at that time. This course allowed me to analyze the audience and showed me how important is an audience when it comes to writing. One little mistake in writing can lead to multiple problems with the audience which can cause even more problems. This course not only showed the importance of the audience it also helped me consider all other rhetorical elements since all of it affect one another. This helped me have a clear mind on what I should write when I did each assignment. In the world of Engineering and any research-related work, the way you convey your writing and make sure its proper is key in success because it can lead to your downfall.

How does the audience impact the content and purpose of the text? The purpose and content would not change as much but I think the way the content and purpose are given to the audience would change. When writing your paper, you must understand what type of writing your audience prefers to attract their attention. The main thing that would change would be the media and the way of writing when talking about impact with an audience. During our memo, for example, we could have written in any other genre to deliver our information but by doing a memo we changed the way we would normally write to convey the issue in the campus. The purpose and content did not change much but the way the information was delivered changed because the audience do not want to read something long especially when they are too busy.

Was there a challenge in writing across genres and addressing specific audiences? There wasn’t really much challenge when it came to switching the writing and audience. It was more overwhelming you can say. We changed the amount of content we write and how we write it based on the topic and genre. For example, the memo was used as a brief way to relay information, so it was not very long. Right after the memo was done, we switched to the technical description, and this was pretty difficult to get used to because we had to cover much more information than the previous topic. As the course went on, the workload increased. The audience changed throughout the genre because each genre serves in different ways. The audience started off challenging and got easier over time, so it wasn’t much of a challenge.

What happens to the other rhetorical elements when you change one of the elements within the situation? When you change an element many of the other ones also changes. For example, if you were to change your stance on the topic the purpose of that topic might change. When you change your genre, the audience will also change. All of these will always be changing around because the rhetorical element corresponds to one another.

Finally, how has shifted to in personal classroom affected my educational experience? When the online class first started it was hard to get work done. Over time I got used to online. Even though I got used to it, I never liked it since I did not learn anything online. Information about a subject just isn’t interesting to be when online class was a thing. When I switched to in-person, it was a bit hard adjusting to the commute and each class but I learned much more than online when I started in-person class.

Sincerely,

Md Ahamad