Dear Future Engl 210 Students,

As you embark on your journey through Engl 210, I want to share some insights gleaned from my own experience in the course.

– To what extent have I achieved the course learning objectives? 

I have achieved all of the course learning objectives with significant strides. I’ve gained valuable insight and experience in writing for engineering. My writing skills have improved, and I was able to develop many strategies, whether it was drafting, genre analysis, peer review, accurate feedback, or following and revising genre conventions. My experience was not shared alone, as my group of computer engineering majors also collaborated with me to make detailed projects such as the engineering proposal. I was also able to effectively improve on rhetorical situations in my writing, such as the audience and the purpose of my writing, to name a few. Each assignment had its own goal and topic, and from the start of the class, I’ve been learning strategies such as reflections, identifying audiences, and the formation of media in my assignments. Although there is still room for improvement, I can feel a significant difference in how I tackle engineering-geared writing in the future.

     -In what ways have my perceptions on what writing is and does evolved this semester?

My perceptions of writing In the beginning of the semester, I would say it was much more in the context of an essay or a novel and more straightforward. The papers we wrote in class, however, had much more elements that included diagrams and other elements. I was introduced to memos that were unfamiliar to me, and for the first time, I felt as though I was beginning to write a professional letter to a professional person of interest (even if the actual dispatch is more or less fabricated). By writing more and more and also with the genre analysis assignments where we analyze samples based on different genres, I was able to make distinctions between basic writing and writing for a purpose and more of an engineering career setting.

     -How does the audience impact the content and purpose of text?

Audience is a multi factored cause and effect. Audience effects intricate details in the content and the facet of the purpose of writing. For example, in a professional setting the audience would have to be very specific and characteristics and the demographic has to be taken into consideration. Many things such a as gender, race and age will impact the content included. If your writing to change something in your environment then someone who oversees policies is your person of interest. If your audience is not as professional or younger in age, you may need to simplify your explanation and the content you present in your text. Both the purpose and the content changes due to the audience being different and who it is your exactly writing to. Without an audience your writing may not have as much purpose as you intend it to.

– was there a challenge in writing across genres and addressing specific audiences?

There was certainly a challenge in writing across many projects because of details such as audience, purpose, and genre conventions. Such assignments include the technical description and engineering prososal. The technical description was a dating task mostly because who you were writing to had to be very specific, and addressing that person required you to be most informative and take consideration of many things, such as age and how your item was going to be used. The Samsung Solid State Drive, which was the item chosen for my description, had to be explained in a way that the processes could be understood by someone in the workforce who needs to use it for big tasks. Explaining why it was powerful and how it worked helps the viewer engage in the processes and learn more about the Solid State Drives. The engineering proposal was difficult for both the audience and the genre conventions. We had many factors, such as a boilerplate, mission statements, etc., that ultimately affected the direction of the proposal, and I had to revise these several times to accurately capture the essence and definition of these conventions.

     – what happens to the other rhetorical elements when you change one of the elements within the situation? for example, when you change media, do the other elements change?

The other elements affect each other in an interesting relationship. Each element of your outcome, such as purpose, will change the audience, and vice versa. Each element changes the purpose, theme, and goal of your writing. Changing media, which is how your writing is presented, such as digital, written, or oral, also changes other elements. For example, if you change your writing from digital to written, your audience may now target younger people or more of a community since if it has a public link, anyone with the link can view it. Your purpose can also change. When media is changed, your purpose may change from being informational to evoking emotion, such as if you go from a written letter to a public service announcement in an advertisement. Other elements that could be changed are genre since certain genres can’t be all written or certain genres contain pictures, which are meant to be shown or viewed rather than spoken.

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