Hello reader, welcome to my Writing for Engineers Portfolio.
The first day I entered the Writing for Engineering course, I heard that it was a difficult class, but it was required, so I initially thought it was a boring writing class. However, after a week, I found the class not as boring as I initially thought, but rather beneficial and interesting, and I began to look forward to what I would learn from this class and how it would help me in my future academic writing and career.
Through this semester’s course work, I completed 7 learning outcomes, and the only one I did not complete was Course Learning Outcome #7(CLO#7), “Practice using various library resources, online databases, and the Internet to locate sources appropriate to your writing projects.” The technical description, lab report, and group proposal research articles were all found on Google instead of using CCNY Library resources to find them. I should use the CCNY Library database to find resources to support my articles in future courses.It is a long uphill battle to complete these learning outcomes because understanding and becoming familiar with applying them in writing takes a lot of time. In last semester’s ENGL 110 course, the six rhetorical elements were only defined in general terms and were not explored in depth. Because of this, it took me several attempts in this class to understand and easily use the 6 basic elements in my essays. It is a long and hard fight to complete these learning outcomes because it takes a lot of time to understand and become familiar with using them in writing. In my last semester of ENGL 110, the six rhetorical elements were only defined in general terms and were not explored in depth. Because of this, it took me several attempts in this class to understand, at the end I can use the 6 rhetorical elements in my essays easily.
There are several points to understand about writing. One is to analyze who the audience of the article is. Only by understanding who the audience is can you write an article that makes it easier for readers to understand the meaning of the article. Before this lesson, I had never considered who the audience of my article is, which makes the article not easy for readers to read and understand, and I am ashamed of it. Secondly, I understand that there may be sensitive words in the article due to cultural differences, making some of the audience angry. I need to pay more attention to this aspect in the future to avoid making mistakes. Thirdly, I should pay attention to the structure of the article, and the reasonable organization makes it easier for the writer to convey the message they want to convey to the audience.
The following are evidences showing that I have developed as a writer. First, I plan the amount of time it will take to complete the assignment and subsequently invest time in self-critical checking of the essay for grammatical issues. Second, I checked that my thesis statement was clear and specific and organized in a way that was easy for the reader to understand. Third, I have done research to find sources that support my topic. Fourth, I have cited the citations in the text well using APA format. Fifth, there are 6 rhetorical elements to think about, to find out who is the audience of my article, and to understand the cultural level to avoid sensitive words.
I have effectively revised my first three major papers. The first essay was Memo, and the topic I chose was the requesting to improve the quality of locker rooms and bathrooms. I fixed two grammatical errors in the article. In addition I found that I mistyped “To” as “Two”. The second essay is a technical description. For this assignment, the biggest problem for me with this assignment is that I used Wikipedia as one of my reference materials. I removed all of these Wikipedia references and re-found the correct research article to re-write. Another problem that arose was not trying to put it in my own words. After my revision of the article, I tried to include my own words and will definitely put in this part of effort to not make this mistake again. The third essay is lab report, the subject is using the feeling of being in a noisy environment for a short time to reason about the harm for people staying in a noisy environment for a long time. I fixed the grammatical error, because the experiment is already completed, so you can’t use the present tense, but the past tense. Revised some of the vague statements into clear ones. The fourth essay is group proposal, it is one of the worst essays I’ve ever done. It doesn’t follow the proposal document well, the project applies too broadly and requires an audience shrinkage. I will use this article as a model for my mistakes and remind future articles not to make similar mistakes. My revision of this article is to abandon the revision because it needs to be replaced with a more appropriate topic and explore a detailed issue that works on a specific regional scope. So I think it would be better to rewrite one.
My portfolio design is effective and appropriate for digital audiences. Digital audiences can search my portfolio online. My website is very organized and the audience can easily see the menus divided into 4 columns, “Introduction”, “Rhetorical Elements”, “Course Learning Outcoming”, and “Assignment”. The audience can easily find what they are looking for. The key sections are also highlighted in different colors. In addition to this, the consistency is maintained from page to page.