This essay had me analyze all my previous work and helped me better understand how far I have come as a writer. It also made me beg the question of what writing is and what goes into writing. I had to analyze my time throughout the course by looking back on my previous work/essays and see what I succeeded in and what I still needed work on.

 

 

 

Self Reflection Essay

Daniel Dagnatchew

Professor Sara Jacobson 

Engl 21007: Writing for Engineering

 

During the duration of this course I have both hit roadblocks and strides with my writing. I realized many things about my writing, my thought processes with my writing, and how to write in the context of engineering. During the course of this class and group project I really was able to grasp many things and understand where I should stand when writing a paper. The papers I had to write for this class also helped me understand many concepts of writing for engineering. Due to the essays in this class I really feel like many aspects of writing, and my understanding of what writing is has improved.

 

One of the biggest takeaways from this writing course was how I strategized my writing. Before this class when I went from first draft to final draft, there was nothing in particular that I would make myself aware of, and had a lack of strategic purpose in my writing of a draft and mainly worked off peer review for my final paper. During this class however I was really able to strategize my writing, drafting, revision and editing processes, and being able to reflect on said writing. This is best exhibited through my lab report analysis, as I had to plan out how I wanted to tackle that paper because that paper was the first of its kind for me and I was not really used to the type of work I needed to analyze. This forced me to strategize and plan out my writing, which helped me get to my first draft. After the peer review and having others look at the paper, strategizing my revisions and editing became very easy. With the comments made from others it was easier to spot what I had done wrong in the first draft and allowed for my writing in said paper to improve dramatically. The drafting and editing process allowed me to mindfully search for those errors and therefore I was able to tackle the issues better than I had in previous classes.

 

Another way I improved in writing in this course was collaborative writing. Before this course I had only collabed with my peers on projects with a presentation and nothing else. So when the Engineering Proposal and presentation came around I was slightly nervous as it was

New territory for me. However, despite my reservations, the group essay actually went very smoothly. The group and I were able to coordinate very efficiently and were able to finish the essay within a couple of days. The work was evenly split and because of our communication skills and how we assigned tasks efficiently it was actually the quickest paper I had written the entire semester. This helped with the social and collaborative aspects of writing because this was the first real time I had to work collaboratively on an essay and it was a complete success. We also drew on each other’s linguistic differences to help each other to make a coherent paper, for example when someone in the group could not find the correct words to describe something, they would draw on other group members to help them.

 

A new skill I learned as well was using databases for my writing. In other English courses I had to use databases, but I usually just used the google research database. However during the Lab Report Analysis paper, we had to use the ccny database to get the lab reports. Admittedly, there was a learning curve to using the database, and I had some problems when having to find a topic that interested me. I could not fully grasp the filter system at first and truthfully I ended up choosing the lab reports I wrote about out of necessity and not out of interest in the actual topic. I found it difficult to find a fitting lab report as well, as it was hard for me to grasp the database’s filters completely, and many of the lab reports I found did not meet the criteria of the lab reports that needed to be analyzed in class. However, since this was the first time I have used a database like this, I feel like with more time my literacy within this form of research will only improve over time. Overall my experiences with databases is still in its infancy but with more time learning and understanding this system my skill will only grow. 

 

Another skill that I improved on was formulating a stance in writing. In the lab report analysis paper we had to compare and contrast many aspects of the report and had to see if it met the satisfactory parameters for each section. This required me to analyze each section and make a stance on how well each section performed. Knowing this, I had to articulate my stance elegantly and make sure that I had a firm stance in my writing. I had to form my stances based on the information of the lab report as well as the criteria we were given for each lab report. Forming a stance in writing is something that I have much practice with and something that I have done much of my academic career. In this class I was able to strengthen my skill with Stances more with my lab report analysis paper and like always I wanted to create a strong stance that’s backed up with my evidence.

 

Another skill that I exercised in this class is understanding and recognizing the audience in my writing. Understanding your audience is very important in writing as it shifts how you write in your entire paper. Knowing the context of your audience and what information they know is important to how you frame your paper, what you write in your paper, as well as the language used in your paper. This aspect of my writing was challenged the most by the technical description essay. The topic I chose to describe in that essay was something that I built myself, meaning I had to be more mindful of how I discuss each component. Because I had made the device myself I had to put more thought into describing it as I had to know that my audience would not have as much experience with the components as I had, meaning that I would have to describe things in greater detail than I would be used to. Throughout the entire paper I had to

keep in mind my audience and use simple language in the paper to ensure that my audience would understand each of the components fully. With this in mind I feel like I have grown to understand the audience because it was something that I hadn’t taken into account that much before this class. Originally, I would write from an explanatory standpoint in most of my papers, but after this class I really felt like my understanding of the audience and being aware of what they should know/what tone you should speak with depending on the audience grew greatly.

 

I also had to engage in the analysis and multimodal composing throughout this course as well. In the lab report analysis paper I had to analyze the effectiveness of each of the papers and how well they were able to write a cohesive paper. This meant I would have to do heavy analysis on each section of the paper to see if it meets the requirements needed by lab reports. This was important in my writing journey as it had analyze a genre of writing I did not have a lot of experiences with, forcing me to read a little deeper and have my analysis in a different context. I have always felt like I did a good job with analyzing work and understanding how to know if work meets certain objectives, and I felt like my skills have improved over this course with projects like the lab report analysis. With analysis in mind I feel like I have grown in my composing and effectiveness in my writing as well. I have found that I have used the steps in multimodal composition more, not just in my writing but in other areas of my life as well. I feel like I can now analyze and collect content and process my writing more due to the multimodal composition system. This process and my improval of general analysis has made me more effective writer overall and has made me think of how effective I can be in my writing.

Throughout this course, the thing that advanced the most was my answer to the question of “what is writing?”. Originally, I believed that writing was just a means for you to convey certain points and to explain. I now understand that writing can be much broader than that, as well as the aspects of writing can have many other contexts. Writing can involve whole other factors like an audience and what they know and their own biases, meaning that you will have to change how you write based on them. Writing can also have many different processes like the steps of planning to write your paper as well as multimodal composing, where each process and how well you follow them will impact your writing. Writing also deals with a very high amount of analysis, and you must have an in-depth analysis of what you are writing about to have an effective paper. Writing can also be a description of something advanced with many moving parts, where a stance is not needed, but instead you must delve into the complexities and purpose of what you are discussing. Writing can also be a collaborative effort with many different people and combining their understandings with language to create a cohesive paper that plays to everyone in the group’s strengths. Other elements like cohesion and evidence are also extremely important to what writing is, as how your writing flows as well as the evidence you present your stance with is important for your writing to make sense and become persuasive. Essentially not only did my understanding of what writing is grew, but also my understanding of what goes into writing did as well.

 

In conclusion, I feel like I have really grown as a writer throughout the course of this class. I feel like the thought and time I put into the planning process of my writing has grown and I now feel more confident in the concept and drafting stages of my writing. I feel like I have grown in working communally on projects and papers overall and learning on how to play off people when it comes to writing as well. These concepts are very important in group projects and

I feel like I will only use those skills more as time goes on. I also have broadened my understanding of the complexities of what goes into crafting a stance and describing complex concepts and machinery. Overall, not just my writing skills increased over the course, but also my understanding of what writing is/could be  excelled as well.