Afsana Akter

Professor Clark

Engl 21007-B

18 December 2018

English writing for Engineers is a course which is about critical thinking and writing. Throughout this course, I got to meet with very talented fellow engineering major peers. I have learned different types of assignments, read chapters from the required book but my participation was weak because I was not confident enough to talk about the question my professor asked during in-class session. Every time I was thinking that I will take part of the class participation more to boost up my performance but I could not help myself enough. I have never wrote technical description and project before, this course allowed me to learn these assignments. As a foreign student, I felt a little overwhelming during this semester, this is because of the lack of my confidence about critical writing. At the beginning, I had very hard time thinking of how to write more because I was not able to write more than few lines. Gradually, my level of writing was getting bigger and better. My professor gave comments on almost every assignment. I tried my best to follow her advice to fix grammar issues and tone of English language. In the future, I hope I will be even better by using knowledge I have gained so far.

The very first assignment was a Formal Letter of Introduction, this assignment was about ourselves. I tried to express myself throughout this assignment. I was talking about my homeland and the major I was doing in my country. It was the very first assignment, that is why I had to think more to write more. All I could think of few lines of myself but then I have realized that I can write about my major and future goals. I wrote about my programming knowledge which my future involved.

The second assignment was Memo, during this project I was already having problem to write about a specific problem I felt at my college having at that moment. One of the main concerns of this assignment was to get my College President’s attention which needed to fixed at the college. I had to formal enough because I was writing this assignment to my college President. I tried to pick a problem which is mutual with other students too. This assignment taught me to write about an important issue in a polite way but not to harsh.

Third assignment was a lab report, which was an experiment on bananas reservation process. My professor asked to check bananas degradation rate in three different temperatures. I was surprise after finishing this assignment knowing that banana can preserved in the freezer. This assignment had some specific format requirements which is an APA format. I have mentioned that I am a foreign student, thus I have never learned APA format before. At the beginning, it was hard for me to figure out how to apply this format in writing assignments. My professor also mentioned to visit the college writing center which I did, and it was very helpful to follow their advice to organize my paper in a well and presentable way. I did mistake on my English writing tone, which professor mentioned on my draft copy and gave instructions to fix those issues. I hope I was able to fix my mistakes in a proper way.

Fourth assignment was a technical description, in which I had to write about a simple yet an object with few parts. I had to describe an object using proper pictures. This time I had to label those pictures, and I had to describe them as well. In this assignment, I have learned that a simple everyday use object can have tiny parts, not only that but also have inventors. This assignment needed references to guide and support technical explanation. This helped me for the last assignment as well.

Finally, I have done a group project. I was already amazed by my fellow peers but creating my project with some talented engineering major peers let me think of a specific thesis topic. Together we have done different types of job for this assignment. My one group member was a writer, and the other one created a power point slides for our presentation. I did research for references, I wrote conclusion, market expectations and some benefits. The major fact was collaboration with each other, which we have done through email.

Overall, this course helped me to think more about writing. I did mistakes on formatting which gradually improved. At the beginning, I was stick after writing few lines but day by day I came up with knowledge to drive writings in a broad way. During this semester, my professor also did a mini conference session with each student, by this I was benefit knowing that I have one major grammar problem because I am a bilingual. My professor said that if I will concentrate on that specific problem it will help me improve in both speaking and writing in English. I hope I did a little improvement on my writing skills which will help me further literal courses.