Saul Mendez

ENGL 21007

5/23/24

 

Self-Assessment essay

 

             Prior to enrolling at the Grove School of Engineering, students must complete the course “Writing for Engineers.” My writing abilities have greatly increased as a result of this course’s several learning objectives. I have improved my reading, writing, revising, editing, and self-evaluation techniques during ENGL 21007. Particularly in Phase 2 of technical writing and presentation, my approach to drafting has changed significantly. This essay will discuss these advancements and how they will help me in my next writing projects with ENGL 21007. I’ve built a new strategy for when it comes to writing for this course.

           One of the learning objectives being the “Enhance strategies for reading, drafting, revising, editing, and self-assessment”  when it came to drafting for phase 1 and 2 but more specifically towards phase 2 of technical writing and presentation. When it came to drafting on those parts I would have an outline of what to put but in order but After drafting, I reordered my work to ensure a smooth flow, which is a technique I find effective which is something I like to do. I also had gotten a new strategy when it came to editing as I would use the “find word” option to see if i was using certain words that were just repeated over and over and wanted to see how i can change it and replace it with different words. However, with that being said, I don’t use that method as much as I should be doing . It would be down to the last minute of needing to hand in the assignment and therefore forget to do that method. I would also have better strategies when it came to this self assessment. I had also created an outline of the 4 course learning objective. I picked out the ones I wanted to write about and broke all of it down by doing one at a time and then choosing where they belong within the essay flow. It helped a lot having an outline for this self assessment as writing it one by one helps me balance everything out and fixing the 4 different paragraphs. 

           Another learning objective that’s been done with this course being the “Practice using various library resources, online databases, and the internet to locate sources appropriate to your writing projects”. Using library resources such as the CCNY online database which is found throughout the library website and only accessible towards any of us CCNY students, was very useful for a phase we had to do. Phase 3 was the phase where we needed sources for our proposal project and using the CCNY library database was the main source that was used when it came to finding sources. When using the database it felt confusing as the database contains so many articles and sources that could have been related to the project, however having a class lecture just for the library database, I remembered the lecture talking about using an advanced search. It helped a lot when it came down to picking articles and discussing with my group. I’ve learned a lot when it comes to looking for specific things and using advanced search bars to find what I was looking for. I liked the idea of our school having its own database which is going to help for future research papers. 

              Another learning objective that’s been done is “Negotiate your own writing goals and audience expectations regarding conventions of genre, medium, and rhetorical situation”. I had goals within this course for when it came to writing. Phase 1 was to write a cover letter to an internship within the engineering field. With that cover letter I had to have the goal in mind of making sure that I’m reaching the audience of being able to get this internship. While having that goal in mind I had you make sure to write in a format of not being too long but also not sure in order to reach my intended audience while also sounding professional. I also made sure that the cover letter had a genre in mind of getting to know me of why my interest is within engineering and for the specific internship. As well of the tone being something that is in the professional field of writing. 

             Lastly, “Develop and engage in the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes” is another learning objective that I’ve done for this course when it comes down to collaborative writing. Phase 3 was the phase we had to make a proposal for something that needs change. With that it had to be with a group of 3 people total which meant for different writing skills to be combined. While working with 2 other people on a project, I saw different ways that people write and how they write and getting feedback from those people that also did the project. I’ve definitely engaged myself to listen to different tips and ways to have collaborative writing, which has definitely helped a lot when it came to the project as it made it easier to write stuff onto the proposal paper and is something that is going to be useful for future projects when it comes to writing. 

           Overall the ENGL 21007 class has taught me a lot of new skills and new objectives then what I had learned from the freshmen composition writing class and I will take all of the new skills I’ve learned onto my future writing courses. This course shows a new growth that I’ve developed with the theme of the course of writing as an engineer and what abbities i was able to showcase during my time this semester and I see a big improvement from when I started this semester to now. This course is a course I won’t forget and will take all my works i’ve done and re-read them to see even more improvement when it comes to writing for other courses in the future semesters.

 

Early draft of phase 4