Dear student of the future,
This last semester, Fall 2020, I took Writing for Engineers (ENGL 21007) at City College with Professor Danielle Carr. If you are reading this, you are either curious about my experience, or you were forced to do a genre analysis, using my website as a sample. Either way, I do have some things to say about this class and my experience.
I am a freshman in college, and this was the first and only English class that I have to take in college. I took AP Language and AP Literature in high school, which satisfied my ENGL 10100 requirement. In addition to satisfying that criteria, those classes were very serious about writing. Rhetoric and its effectiveness are what we studied almost every day. When we learned about a new rhetorical element, we practiced using it in our writing.
Compared to my high school classes, Writing for Engineers really focused on audience and its partner “purpose”. Audience was never a really big factor in my writing, since I was always writing just for its own sake. It would be graded by test proctors and teachers and that would be it. However, as soon as I stepped foot into the zoom call for our first-class session, I understood how much important information I will get from this class.
Being an aspiring engineer, I was excited to read and learn about how to write instructions, or lab reports, or technical description. I read these sorts of documents before and was eager to take a shot at composing one. I instantly saw how useful this class would be, and I applaud Professor Carr, an English teacher, for understanding and communicating to us the importance and the effect this class has on our future as workers in the field.
Most of the course learning objectives (CLOs) were well focused around the class, such that it was easy to meet them, if you were willing to put in some effort. The social aspect of one of the CLOs, was really important, and vital in producing documents that were effective and were submitted on time. Using platforms such as Discord, to communicate with your team, allowed us to simulate an environment that was forgotten due to the pandemic. Working in a team is one of the most important skills an engineer should have. Being able to properly communicate information between a project manager, to an employee, back to the manager, and then to a client, is the standard in the engineering field. Professor Carr recognized this and planned the group work in a way that allowed us to practice this sort of social behavior.
Prior to taking this class, I thought that being a good writer was only important if you were an author or journalist. I thought that being a good engineer mean that you were good at physics and math and that you are able to solve problems in a creative way. However, an important piece of the puzzle that I was missing was being an effective writer. As the semester progressed, I understood that writing is a thinking tool. A person that is an effective writer, is deadly, in hitting you with their ideas and arguments. They can make a genius look like a fool. They can bring people up and put them down. In essence, it is about taking all that clutter in your brain, and putting it on paper, or into spoken words. You can be the best math and physics student in your college, but if you don’t know how to write, you are going to be a lousy engineer. I now firmly believe that all people should learn how to write and practice it constantly.
The purpose and the content of any document that you write in this class is fundamentally determined by your target audience. Each person is different, and when you are an engineer you have to communicate with many different people. You have to be able to talk to your project partner, that knows all the jargon and specifics that you know. You have to be able to talk to your boss, who might not know all the technical language, but is responsible in talking to the client and is in charge of your salary. You have to be able to talk to the public and high government officials, that are in charge of providing permission and funds, and frankly have no idea what a reverse osmosis PVC cartridge filter is. In each scenario, thinking about the audience is important before you start typing. They indirectly determine what kind of language, vocabulary, visuals, level of detail, you are going to use. Sometimes there are multiple audiences that you have to consider. For example, the lab report that I was writing was addressed to the Head of the Department of Transportation, construction workers, and the general citizens living in the area where the experiment took place. As an engineer you have to consider all of these people and what they have to get out of your document.
The three main documents that were covered this semester were the lab report, technical description, and the engineering proposal. The lab report is a method of communicating complex experimental data, in order to convince your superiors to continue funding your research. You have to persuade them that what you are doing is beneficial and not their money is not going to waste. Being persuasive in a lab report might seem odd at first, especially if you just came out of high school writing lab reports for AP Chemistry. However, I assure you that it is very different in the world of engineers. Most lab reports begin with an abstract, that provide a small summary of the entire document, including background information, problem statement, hypothesis, procedure, results, and discussion. You need to be able to take all of those things and shrink them to a paragraph or two for the reader. Most people won’t have enough time to read through the entire document, and you need to be respectful of that. That is why table of contents is another important element in all of the documents listed, including the technical description.
The technical description aims to help the reader understand everything there is to know about an object, system, or combination of both. This document requires a lot of research about specifications, history, inner-workings, and design of the thing in question. An inclusion of a set of steps that help the reader understand the process of using the object or system, is very important. Businesses or people need to know the details before they spend money on something, and it is our job, as engineers, to give them everything they want to know and more. If you look on Amazon, there are product details and specifications; information that is valuable in this world and information that is communicating in a technical description.
The last document is the engineering proposal. Funny enough, it actually includes a technical description, if need be. The whole point of a proposal is to propose something, obviously, but it is also to convince someone that your project is worth the funds. If a mayor of a city is looking into upgrading the city’s filtration system and has asked you to help him get it done, an engineering proposal is a very common communication tool. Sometimes there are no clients and you have to convince potential clients to make a deal with you. That is when you have to describe a problem that you aim to fix, and the needs you have, as they pertain to your audience. This kind of document is very extensive and will require you to work in a group, in which each person has an equal part in composing the proposal. Therefore, you need to have a good outline, great communication and a strong sense of purpose.
Lastly, it is important to address this pandemic and how it affected our learning experience this semester. I remember the first day of class, Professor Carr mentioned that engineers have to work in teams with members all across the globe, and they communicate the same way, using Zoom or Skype. This put me in the right mindset; I was eager to simulate the environment that I might be in when I work as an engineer. This was also my first semester of college, and starting it online was obviously not what I was hoping for. However, engineers adapt and problem-solve and that is exactly what we did. We put in the work and effort, both in individual assignments and in group work. After experiencing 2020, I am ready for pretty much anything that I might encounter working as an engineer.
Overall, I want to thank my classmates and Professor Carr. I had a great time and I learned a ton. Who knew a writing class would be fun for an engineer? 🙂
Best regards,
Michael Bartsevich
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