Self-Assessment Essay
My name is Minning Liu, and I am currently pursuing my academic interests in the field of computer science at CCNY. Although I am not yet formally enrolled in the CS major, I am eager to begin my studies in this field. Currently, I am enrolled in Writing for Engineering ENGL 21007, which has provided me with valuable skills and knowledge that I know will serve me well as I continue on my academic journey. When I started this class, I thought it was going to be tiring and stressful like my other writing class from the previous semester but I was wrong. Throughout the course, I found that the assigned tasks were manageable and not as challenging as I had initially expected. While there was a great amount of reading to do, I was well prepared in the beginning and did not feel overwhelmed by the amount of reading. Only problems I had in this class most of the time is following instruction. For example, there was one time I had to write a lab report about the accuracy of three different search engines in generating information based on the search phase I choose. Instead of writing the assigned topic, I got confused and went off writing about the search phase I had personally chosen, thus going off from the intended focus of the lab report. I went through a lot in this class so I could be well prepared for CS that I will take in the future. I know I have to write a lot in my CS in the future because of the video I watch about CS jobs and question I ask on social media about skills needed as a CS worker. While this class may not be the most crucial course that I take, I believe it serves as a great bridge between my current academic standing and my future studies in computer science.
The first half of my one phase was about technical writing, I thought we have to write very technical because of the word technical. But no, we were just learning what technical writing is instead of practicing of how to write it. Technical writing involves simplifying complicated topics into easily understandable words, even for those who lack expertise in the field. When I learn this I came to sudden realization that technical writing has been around for a long time, all of those books I read on science in elementary, middle, and high schools were all technical writings. During that phase I was assign to read 3 articles and find quotes in those articles that explain what is technical writing then analyze or explain them. For that assignment I feel I did poorly, since I was given the right of explain/analyze the quote however I want which made me focus on explaining/analyzing quotes that have may resemble my future job. While this assignment made me realize the significance of writing in the engineering field, as a CS major student I will most likely be about writing bugs and reporting about the current process to my boss or co-workers.
My second half of my phase one was about technical description, which is a very informatic description on a certain product. When using technical description it’s important to provide clear and accurate headings that reflect the content of the description. For example, when using technical description on the ingredients of a medical product, you should have a heading that state “Ingredients” and the actual list of ingredients stated beside or at the bottom, other sections of the medical products might include headings like “Dosage and Administration,” “Side Effects,” and “Warnings and Precautions,”. For this phase, I messed up in the first draft that I wrote, I did write a good description on the product but I wrote it as paragraph instead of writing it in the proper way. I was able to fix this after seeing my classmate’s work during the peer review in class which made realize that I just need use heading to clearly organize the different types of information. Fortunately, I didn’t get deduct by too many points and was able to fix my mistake in my final draft of writing a technical description on a cardboard box bought from Staples. I think I didn’t learn too much in this phase other than using headings when writing technical description because this isn’t the first time I seen a technical description, everything that I bought before had a technical description on it which I barely read but it isn’t hard to know how technical description should look like on other items other than a cardboard box.
The second phase involves writing a memo, which is similar to a letter that you might send to a friend. However, the focus is on discussing the main topic in a direct and straightforward manner. The beginning structure of the memo normally includes: : the recipient, sender, date, and subject. It is important to write the main topic you want to discuss in the subject part because a memo is straight to the point. Then the Memos should start by telling you why you reading this, giving them a clear understanding of the current situation. The middle section should give out all the information the reader needed, the information should be processed little by little and it should be easy to understand for the reader and don’t write anything unnecessary. The final section writes about what action the reader what action is required or requested of the readers. In this phase, I mess up the first memo I have to write. The first memo was about writing a message as a employee of a company who is checking does the technical description match the product of the company, the technical description that was being check is what I wrote in phase 1 and after finish checking I have to write a message back saying what’s the next step. So instead of writing this I wrote it as someone who was checking over the technical descriptions and replying to say what error you made on the technical description. I didn’t mess up on the 2nd memo which was stating a problem that you think the school has and write about you solution to that problem. In the 2nd memo, I wrote about some books in the science library at school that can only be loan out for 1 hour minimum to 7 days maximum unlike most of the books that can be load out for 8 weeks which the topic got me a max score. Memo was pretty easy to write, only 3 main points need to remember to write it, the short introduction, the purpose, and action to take immediately.
The third phase was about writing a lab report, which basically even the elementary student would know, it is reporting data based on the result of on experiment or test. In a lab report, the experimenter write about the objective of the experiment, the methods and materials used, the results obtained, and a discussion of the significance of the results. The report should also include any graphs, tables, or figures that help to show the data and results. A well-written lab report should follow a specific format and include all the necessary elements to enable readers to replicate the experiment and evaluate the findings. In this phase, I messed so much up in my first draft like I stated in the introduction. The lab report I was supposed to write was about how well the 3 search engines (Google, Google Scholar, and CCNY Database) assign to us work on giving accurate information using the search phase I came up and rate the relevance, authority, accessibility, currency, and expectations from 0-5 based on my opinion. My search phase was “Game coding lab report” which didn’t give me any lab report on all the 3 search engines so when I rate the relevance of the information provided by the 3 engines, it was all below a 3. But since my expectation wasn’t high to find a lab report on game coding so my rates on expectations were mostly high because I think I will mostly find articles/books on teaching game coding or about game coding. During this phase, I learned that using search phase like “Game coding lab report” which is an unpopular topic may not give you the information you wanted.
The fourth phase was about writing a rhetorical analysis, which is type of critical analysis that examines how language, tone, and structure are used in a piece of communication to persuade or influence the audiences. The analysis focuses on identifying the rhetorical strategies used by the author or speaker, such as ethos, pathos, and logos. This phase was the hardest one for me, it’s not because writing the rhetorical analysis was hard, I had help from the class on how to properly write a rhetorical analysis, it was mostly the article I was reading was hard. The article “Fake News Detection within Online Social Media using Supervised Artificial Intelligence Algorithms” which was super hard to understand for me. When I was first looking at it, I always wonder when I see some character in front of “et al” what does it mean but later on when I look at the reference, they use I realize it is something about the names but I still don’t understand how does it work. The article also has some advance words, even with explanation I still don’t understand what it means and what it does. Sometimes I have to use ChatGPT to translate it into easy words to understand which most of the time doesn’t work or use ChatGPT to check if what I write makes sense. Either way, the article I read made this phase much harder than it should be. If I say my only success in this phase that I’m proud of is finishing writing the rhetorical essay on the article because it was too hard,
In conclusion, as I reflect on my experience in Writing for Engineering ENGL 21007, I learned some new ways of writing in the first 2 phase since I have already learned the last 2 topic before taking this class. The reading and writing was a lot but it was manageable. Although sometimes I went off the instructions, I still was able to come back at it in the end and get a good score on the assignments. I believe this class would be really helpful when I start my CS major in college if there is writing involved.
