Over the course of the semester, my theory of writing has changed significantly in a positive way. Taking a Writing for Engineers course helped me learn a lot about the different styles of writing that I am going to need as a mechanical engineer. From simple engineering assignments such as technical descriptions or lab reports, to more complex group projects such as technical innovations. All these papers focused on different aspects and had different purposes but thanks to the self-reflections that I had to do alongside them I could see how my writing improved and what I had to fix.

            English 21007 was not like other writing courses I had taken before. It didn’t focus on prompts, themes, or lengthy essays. It was about learning how to write different types of papers that engineers use the most. But even so, by doing these papers, it helped me improve the fundamentals of writing such as strong thesis statements, thorough research and explore rhetoric elements in my papers. This is something that I struggled with in high school, but I feel much more confident about now that I have worked on it extensively and received positive feedback from peers.

Technical description

For my technical description paper, I used a combination of research, personal knowledge, things learned in class, and instructions from the Mike Markel Textbook in order to write an effective description of the internal combustion engine. I have a good understanding of how engines function and since it’s related to my major, I thought it would make a good subject for the technical description. Most of the research was for the “Background and History” part of the paper, since I had to use definitions of other machines, as well as the inventor’s life.  This part was the most challenging because I had to explain things that aren’t as familiar.

Mike Markell’s Technical Communication was also extremely helpful when writing this paper because it provided information, guidelines, tips, and examples of both the technical description and the parts that it contains, such as sentence definitions and extended definitions. I used several techniques highlighted in the book to make my description better, some of these include graphics, examples, partition, and principles of operation. Details like the use of headings and subheadings, as well as constant formatting are things I remember from class.

Overall, this assignment was successful in helping me practice some of the class learning outcomes, such as “enhance strategies for reading, drafting, revising, editing, and self-assessment”, because I feel these abilities have improved after writing this technical description, and will continue to grow after I learn and complete different styles of  writing pieces throughout the semester.

Two Lab Reports

            For my rhetorical analysis of lab reports, I compared two different lab reports that I found on the ASME database. This specific database is all about machinal engineering, so it is a perfect place to find sources related to my major. As expected, both labs were formatted correctly, and my job was to compare both of these and see if they followed the guidelines that we learned about in Mike Markell’s Technical Communication book.

            The 8 elements that I was comparing were title, abstract, introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion, conclusion, and references. What I found most difficult was deciding which of the two did a better job when they would take a different approach to an element. But I felt like I did a good job with research as well as backing up my stances with evidence, two aspects that were crucial for this assignment. Writing this paper wasn’t easy but I feel like it was a success because I learned a lot of things that are going to help me in the future as well as using some of the course’s learning outcomes.

Technical Innovation

For the technical innovation, my group and I decided to create a machine that could clean and disinfect phones quicker, more efficiently and at a lower price than similar machines that are already in the market. We decided to divide the work based on our strengths to get the best work out of everyone. For example, I’m not the best at writing introductions or doing thorough research, but I’m good persuading and arguing my opinions, which is why I was responsible for comparing our technical innovation, the SaniPhone, with a similar product that’s one the market.

            I did this by looking at what the competitor had to offer, how efficient it is, and how much it costs. I then pointed out flaws that our product could fix in order to make our product stand out and become more popular. I also had to think about the situation the world is going through right now with the coronavirus and how our product would have to be functional and helpful during this crisis. It was not an easy process because I was not responsible for the design of our invention, so I had to imagine how it would work and what qualities would make it unique. The person responsible for the conclusion wasn’t able to finish their part until I finished mine, so it was clear that the project needed a lot of communications between us. This was my first group project for an English assignment, so I learned a lot of things like making sure everyone in the group is up to date and learning how to combine individual work into one big project. We had a group chat where we could ask questions and help each other out. Overall, I think it was a success because we were able to come up with a functional phone cleaner and we managed to combine individual pieces to form a group project.

Conclusion

            Even though I’m not going to take another writing course, I’m glad English for Engineers was part of my college experience because it helped me see just what to expect as a mechanical engineer. It also made my research much better, as well as my descriptive skills which are highly in my field of work. Even though I didn’t feel like I mastered some of the course learning objectives such as #3 “negotiate your own writing goals and audience expectations regarding conventions of genre, medium, and rhetorical situation” I still feel like I used most of them or all without noticing, and that they’ll help me out in the near future.