Dear incoming English 210 students,

During the semester of Spring 2022, I was a student taking the Writing for Engineering class with Professor Carr at City College of New York. I’d say that this class is very informative and definitely can be challenging at times. At first, I thought it would be similar to a course I took back in High School, but that wasn’t the case. The name itself is what intrigued me to join just to see what the class would be about. At first, my initial thought was that we’d would be learning about how to write as engineers as well as learn the different formats that engineers write in. However, as time progressed I was able to learn why in fact this is truly called “Writing For Engineers” and why it is a requirement for Engineering students. The rest of the website will give you a better understanding of what to expect in this class as well as the many assignments that is needed to complete. 

To what extent have I achieved the course learning objectives? 

After doing all of the assignments that are required to complete I was able to gain a better understanding of what the course learning objectives are. Most of our assignments required a lot of research and reading needed to be done in order to gain the information that is needed to complete the assignment. Eventually, this helped me enhance my strategies because I was able to learn how to use the library resources and the CCNY Database to find most of my research. After we completed our assignments we would even have it revised by our peers in our groups and once it was revised we would have to edit the assignments to satisfy our peers revisions. As a result, I believe that every single course learning outcome was achieved at least once in our required assignments. 

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

My idea of writing was just limited to mainly writing argumentative essays, persuasive essays and at times journals. I believe that the reason as to why I was limited to these three different types of writing is because I only took English class and it wasn’t an English class for a specific major/study. But, once I was introduced to many of these different types of writing I was just shocked because I haven’t learned about any of these back in High School. I have learned about rhetorical elements during my junior year in High School but I never learned about how to implement it into different types of  writing. I believe that I was able to improve in writing just by being able to learn the different ways engineers write. 

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

I believe that these three elements corelate with each other and I say this is because the content would change as a result of the audience. Meanwhile, for purpose I believe that there wouldn’t be any changes.

For instance, for the Technical Description assignment, the purpose of that assignment was to inform my audience of a certain object/item. Since my audience was targeted towards a High School student who is interested in anything related to art, I was able include the technical terms about the Sakura Pigma Micron Pen (.045MM). So, lets say if I changed my audience to someone who isn’t majoring in art then it wouldn’t impact the purpose of this assignment because I would still be informing them about the item. However, the content would obviously change slightly because I would need to use fewer technical terms and would have to explain it differently so that they would have a better understanding. 

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

I believe that there were a couple of challenges writing across genres and addressing our specific audience during our group project. Throughout this group project we needed to include what we’ve learned in our assignments and put it all in one document. In addition, we needed to include a PowerPoint that briefly demonstrates what we’re trying to propose and we needed to present for about 10 minutes

I’d definitely say that the proposal was one of the challenging out of the other assignments. This is because we weren’t sure what information is important enough to put onto the presentation. 

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? 

Well I believe that the rhetorical elements correlate with each other. Like I said before I believe that the content changes with audience but for purpose it would stay the same. Meaning that each element can have a slight difference to other elements. For instance, for the media, once the audience has changed or even expanded to a broader audience then the media would change to the current situation. Lets go back to the technical description I did, you see that the assignment was meant to the intended audience. But, if the audience changes then the overall content would change. 

How the shift back to the classroom has affected your educational experience? Conducting group work? Student life? Which do you prefer? Discuss your transition and experience. 

Well at first I’d like to say that transition from a High School to a University is challenging enough but in person to online and back to in person was a little concerning at first. I say this because taking online classes for me was easier to join but I just couldn’t focus on my classes because my whole room distracts me. But there were a couple of benefits on taking online classes and they were that I was able to get to work without being late, staying home with my family, and not risking getting Covid. However, going back to in person was way more difficult because I didn’t know how to get to school at first and not only I was nervous. This year was my first time going to CCNY and the environment of where it is located is different from what I am used to. Eventually, I got use to waking up at 6 am to go to school and take the bus every Tuesday’s and Thursday’s. But, going to class in person was different from High School. I say this because most of the times I see my classmates open their laptops and take notes on their laptops. In addition, it was my first time ever being in a lecture this year which was a little weird to me because normally during my classes in high school there would be some classmates making a lot of noises but it’s different in college. Overall, I just found the transition of online to in person a little difficult because its a hassle having to commute. 

Sincerely, 

Ryan Sarco