My theory of writing is just another way to express yourself and your beliefs. The ENGL – 21007 course gave students several critical skills to improve engineering writing. Over the semester, the projects we have done helped us understand the various skills we need and improve upon communicating with colleagues, professionals, and targeted audiences. After completing each assignment, students were asked to reflect upon their responses, understand what was done well and the things that need improvement in future assignments. The students were also asked to reflect on the learned techniques, which will come to great importance as future engineers. In every area, communication skills are essential, and suitable communication methods help engineers and students achieve their goals.

The first assignment that tested our skills was the Letter of Introduction—introducing ourselves to the professor outside of a technical writing style—teaching the student the difference between technician Written and the standard written. In each class, we started with free writing to put our thoughts together for the assignment, express our flaws, and then review each other’s thoughts.

The next assignment was the technical description. The Rhetorical Analysis assignments applied techniques such as task and audience analysis to lab report or a device and rewrote our description as a paragraph. Doing the assignment gave the students the chance to understand a description that relied heavily on technical language, as it is not the regular type of writing one would in an English course. These were excellent assignments as they taught us to use the rhetorical situation to describe the components of any situation in which you may want to communicate, whether in written or oral form, especially in the engineering field. This was to understand better what is being described without relying on the technical language used.

Throughout both assignments, students learned techniques for revision, including the process of peer revision. The students annotated a sample Rhetorical Analysis before writing our own, which helped us understand the annotation process for revising our work and our peers’ work. Before submitting our final draft, the peer-review process gave students insight into how our audience might interpret our writing. Learning to write an Analysis that includes sections such as a title page, abstract, introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion, conclusion, acknowledgments, references, and appendices helped prepare us to write standard Rhetorical Analysis academic and professional careers in the future.

The technical description assignment offered further opportunities for students to analyze the purpose of our writing and the audience we intend to reach. This assignment also incorporated supplementary materials such as charts and diagrams and taught students the proper methods for introducing supplemental materials in our writing. The inclusion of citation and references in both assignments helped students practice citation styles for including outside information in our writing without committing plagiarism, which is an essential skill. Papers I submitted throughout the semester followed APA-style formatting and citations.

The proposal project, after all these assignments, straightened the skills learned throughout the learning course. The tools for collaborative projects, such as the Gannt chart, were introduced to teach students to use the tasks amongst our group members and to meet deadlines in an organized way. Further formatting standards were taught to students, who then worked with our groups to produce a clear, professional, and convincing project proposal. An asynchronous presentation supplemented the written Rhetorical Analysis and exposed students to an alternative method of communication. The presentation gave us experience with more diverse styles of writing we may be exposed to throughout our careers, such as the visual style used in the slideshow presentation. Throughout this assignment, structural and citation conventions were reinforced, allowing students to practice what we had learned and worked with each other to produce a professional proposal. In addition to working within our groups for the revision process, groups also offered feedback on each other’s respective drafts, allowing us to understand better how an audience may interpret our proposal. Properly introduced diagrams and images supplemented the written material in the proposal. The research was more intensive for this project than for the prior assignments and offered students a more significant opportunity to supplement our writing without outside information.

Throughout this course, the students studied and applied the strategies that validated my writing ability and as an engineer. I am now more prepared to tackle several writing assignments that I will face in the future, with the assurance that in writing will be planned, clearly submitted, and delivered professionally. Communication is an essential skill for engineers, who frequently must talk to different audiences. This class taught me the skills I need in the engineering field to succeed and have been an asset.