This is my portfolio for Writing for Engineering 21700 class at CCNY
Self-Assessment Essay
School of City College of New York. I love running, playing volleyball, going to the gym, and coding. Another passion I like is writing. I try to write daily through journals and occasionally create poems and stories on topics that intrigue me. I am a recent immigrant from Bangladesh, so English is my second language. That is why I mostly understand and like reading and writing in simple English. I am constantly attempting to improve my vocabulary at every stage of my writing. Writing for Engineering class has been a bliss in improving both my comprehension and writing skills.
My experience with Writing For Engineering has been great. I have worked very hard and presented my writing to the best of my abilities. I have accumulated Peer Review and technical writing and reading skills from my high school English classes. But this class has helped me improve my skills even more. It made me more confident about my future writing journeys.
A strong introduction of oneself is the key to impressing people and future employers. The Formal Letter of Introduction has helped me set a perfect template for boldly introducing myself and providing my future employers with my goals and aspirations. Together, the entire class created an outline for the letter together. With the input of everyone, we created an outline that I utilized for my formal letter of introduction. This assignment taught me the best way to introduce myself through writing. Then we moved on to the Product Review Essay. For this essay, we had to find an item that we could review based on general criteria. This essay was necessary for learning how to compare, describe, and review items properly. As an engineer, evaluating items and technologies is a very important skill. I reviewed my alarm clock as it was an item I was familiar with for 2 years. I researched the item and provided factual information about the product and personal experience. The Product Review Essay has taught me how to negotiate my own writing goals and audience expectations regarding rhetorical situations. I had to evaluate my product based on generalized criteria that would help my audience decide and also remove biases from my writing. We wrote our first self-reflection memo for the semester on the PR essay. My memo had many mistakes due to my lack of knowledge in the structure and requirements of memo writing. However, I utilized this feedback to constantly improve my memo writing and perform better analyses of my essays. The Lab Report Analysis was my favorite essay. For this assignment, we had to choose a specific topic that included both a problem and a solution. Then we had to find 2 lab articles and 1 survey related article on that topic. In class discussions, I learned the methods of finding scholarly articles and lab reports. The lab report approval assignment was very crucial as finding qualified and relevant journal articles through various sources was very hard. This assignment helped me improve my research and analyzing skills. I engaged in genre analysis and practiced the usage of various sources through the Lab Report Analysis Essay. Lab reports are mostly technical writings that I previously faced problems with. However, in this class, Professor Rodwell reviewed and explained techniques that greatly helped me find and analyze lab reports. The technical description was the hardest writing assignment for me. It required a lot of research and descriptions of the product. However, I am a visual learner, and learning from examples is how I learn the best. The in-class review of previous TD essays has helped me form my own essay better. This was the first major assignment in the entire class which I received full credits. Both technical Description and Lab Report Analysis have taught me multimodal composition techniques. In lab report analysis, we analyzed the relevant usage of different visual data, and in the technical description essay, we used a mixture of pictures and writings to explain the complexity of the production of a product. Lastly, working on a collaborative project with a big team has improved my communication and teamwork skills. Creating an innovation from scratch and planning an entire business plan has encouraged me more than ever to pursue my desire to become an entrepreneur.
Besides the main assignments, I learned different writing strategies and vocabulary from my peers by doing multiple groups and open peer reviews. Through the writing process of creating several outlines, and drafts, editing from feedback, and producing the final draft, I learned to create better compositions. Overall, I have learned many things from this course and Professor Rodwell has supported me throughout this journey. I believe the experiences and improvements I made throughout the course will help me in my education and working career.