Self- Assessment

I am pleased to say that this class exceeded my expectations for learning. What I really enjoyed about this class was that the assignments were all centered around something that we would commonly be doing in the real-world setting as Engineers.

1. acknowledge your and others’ range of linguistic differences as resources, and draw on those resources to develop rhetorical sensibility

This class definitely taught me a lot about teamwork and what a difference communication between a group can make. There were many times during the semester where we would peer-review each other’s work and help each other out with our assignments- whether it was helping to fix grammar issues, spelling, tone, design, or rhetoric, it was interesting to see another peer’s perspective on my writing. I found it very useful to read other people’s assignments as well because it gave me a different perspective on the prompt and ideas in which to change the way I wrote something. For example, in the Memo, I had originally just written everything in paragraph form and had not bulleted anything but after seeing my partners organized memo, I liked the way she formatted it and I was inspired by it.

• enhance strategies for reading, drafting, revising, editing, and self-assessment

This was a particular objective that was emphasized a lot in the class and I do not think I used it as much as I should have. I think that I should have had more drafts before submitting my final paper. This had to do with time constraints and issues as such. However, I definitely benefited from having peer-review sessions where my classmates could critique my work and really help me with what I needed to edit, because of course there is always room to edit and have more drafts.

• negotiate your own writing goals and audience expectations regarding conventions of genre, medium, and rhetorical situation

There were many different mediums and genre’s that could have been used for this class. All the different assignments required a different format that was different from any other English class that I had been in. The memo required us to be organized, persuasive, informative, and precise. The lab report required us to have citations, outside information, and create a real experiment. The technical description required us to be extremely detailed and precise and strictly informative. All of these skills will be useful in the career of an engineer.  

• develop and engage in the collaborative and social aspects of writing processes

I developed and engaged in the collaborative and social aspects of writing through the proposal and through the multiple peer reviews we had through the semester. I gained a lot of insight on the importance of listening to other peers. Meeting with my partners after class and discussing the proposal and presentation made everything go very smoothly and effectively. We bounced ideas back and forth to produce a strong and well-developed idea and paper.

• engage in genre analysis and multimodal composing to explore effective writing across disciplinary contexts and beyond

This objective came up in the proposal and presentation assignment. When we were asked to invent something, there are many different factors that go into the development of the product, including business and engineering. We also had to explain the disaster of forest fires in California, which was not really related to engineering. However, through our product design, we had to explain how it worked and the details of the mechanism which did include engineering skills. The business aspect of the proposal was for the marketing and the budget to be created and actually work for everyone.

• formulate and articulate a stance through and in your writing

I was required to formulate and articulate a stance in my cover letter. I needed to persuade my audience that I was right for the job which is vital for any job that you need to have in the future.

• practice using various library resources, online databases, and the Internet to locate sources appropriate to your writing projects

Although I did not use physical books or the library to obtain my sources for the assignments, I did use the CUNY online database which did help out a lot to find reliable and relevant sources. Although I did not use these in my technical description, I think my paper would greatly benefit from having better sources. I also learned how to cite in APA format for this course. I usually always cited in MLA format, however I need APA for my future career as an engineer.

• strengthen your source use practices (including evaluating, integrating, quoting, paraphrasing, summarizing, synthesizing, analyzing, and citing sources)

APA format was new for me in any course I had taken in college or high school so quoting and citing sources became a slightly different task, but not extremely significant. The lab report and technical description were 2 assignments where sourcing was important. I was also unfamiliar with citing my images which I ended up learning at the end of the course.