Welcome to Defne’s Web Portfolio

Hello, my name is Defne! I am a freshman majoring in biomedical engineering at City College. I hope you enjoy. 🙂

Defne’s Self-Assessment for Writing for Engineers

Coming into this course, I honestly did not know what to expect or what I might gain from the experience. As the semester progressed and I spent more time in the class, I realized that this course was geared towards teaching us, engineers, to properly present data and convey the implications that go along with it using proper citations and expanding upon the principles that were taught to us in English 11000.

Working with a diverse group of peers strongly helped my writing, because their perspectives help me convey my messages more clearly. When approaching writing assignments, I initially write my perspective solely but upon revision, I slowly consider other people’s perspectives and implement that in my writing. Through this, I feel my writing is more relatable and can benefit the reader in ways it may not be able to without such a method.

I have definitely utilized the “writing habits” of pre-writing, lots of drafting, and having my final draft. Sometimes when I feel really lost and cannot get myself to do a paper or when I do not know where to stop, I often look at the writing process worksheet Mr. B showed us. Don’t worry Mr. B, someone appreciates your effort!

When planning out an assignment, the genre, medium, and purpose were all considered. By me knowing what the purpose is and who the audience is, I can alter my writing so that it pertains more to the topic of the assignment. For example, in the introductory presentation, the audience was my classmates (from this, my tone was way more chill) and the purpose was for me to have practice connecting a data display to my everyday life – having a story. Knowing this information made completing the assignment far more doable for me and, in my opinion, resulted in a better outcome on the quality of my completed work.

In the class, we had groups, which are undeniably beneficial when the members communicate! Personally, I love being with groups and knowing I can rely on people for feedback and vice versa. Especially having the same group, because they can learn your writing and know what errors to look out for in every assignment to help me grow. I feel that group work is really iffy with everything online, but we have to make do. Even though my group was occasionally unresponsive, I always bothered Mr. B on his Q&A days for feedback on my writing.

In the class, we worked with several different forms of writing, such as essays, lab reports, resumes and cover letters. Although we did not write essays or lab reports, a lot of the sources/readings we had were essays. As for the lab reports, we had to read and understand the contents of them so we could create visual displays for the reports.

I have most definitely thought about my tone in my writings because that tone will either make or break my piece for any reader. If I am writing a report, then I am obviously going to have a more serious tone due to the nature of the report. As for a script for my introductory presentation, it was far more relaxed and I let my personality shine through in my assignment more than I could with a report. This also corresponds to the language in my writing. The language in the writing will help develop the tone for the reader.

We did use different types of sources for assignments, especially for the proposal. For my proposal, I used a ton of statistics from the New York City Department of Transportation, different blogs, and more. Whatever sources I thought would help reinforce my proposal of creating underground municipal parking lots were included in the final version of the project.

When researching for my proposal, I did evaluate the credibility of the sources. Some were not used because they were not credible enough to justify using to make a statement about the project plan. When I used the sources, I paraphrased or quoted them and then provided a brief explanation of why they fit with what I was trying to communicate to the audience. Also, the sources were cited whenever applicable, otherwise, that would be plagiarism.

Overall, I am glad that Writing for Engineers is required in any engineering curriculum. I believe my writing has improved from this course. I have learned to focus more on the story of the data and what I’m trying to show to listeners and readers rather than the data itself. Additionally, I have learned to embrace the mistakes in my writing and that it’s okay because ultimately that is the writing process itself. This class was extremely memorable, especially with it being taught by Mr. B. Thank you for everything. 🙂