Portfolio

May 4, 2019

Dear Reader,

I have always struggled with writing; however, taking English 21007: Writing for Engineering class, my writing has evolved significantly over time. In this portfolio, I will specifically talk about my formal letter of introduction, memo, lab reports analysis, technical description, and Blackboard discussions because these assignments showed that I could achieve the course learning outcomes. For example, my letter of introduction and technical description essays exhibit that I fulfilled audience expectations with the conventions of the genre. My memo and Blackboard discussion reflect that I could formulate a stance in my writing. The lab reports analysis demonstrates that I could paraphrase quotes from the original lab reports. Throughout the semester, these assignments highlighted my strengths and weaknesses in writing particularly I could formulate a stance and provides sufficient evidence to support the argument; however, I failed to be specific.

In the formal letter of introduction, the task was to discuss about my major and dreams. The problem I had in the essay was grammatical errors especially run on sentences. Below is the example of a run-on sentence in the introduction letter:

I could resolve the flaws by using FANBOYS to join the sentence together so they can flow naturally. Therefore, my revised sentence reads that my dream is to reduce electricity problems around the world because it is a huge problem, and I had to encounter the electricity problems in Bangladesh. The strategy is effective because now the two ideas are connected with each other in the improved sentence. Furthermore, in this assignment, I was slightly personal because I mentioned a person who influenced me to pursue a career in mechanical engineering and my dreams to solve a particular problem in the future. In this way, I achieved the course learning outcomes my audience expectations with a letter of introduction because this assignment was about me, so they expected me to present personal stories.

The task of the memo assignment was to convince the college president to address one of the classroom problems. I specifically talked about the classroom furniture and I was trying to convince the college president to introduce swivel chairs in the classroom. However, the weakness I had is my thesis statement did not match with the remaining paragraphs. My thesis statement claims that students were unable to perform at their potential in three-hour classes because sitting on an arm desk they are less engaged and performed poorly. Below is an example of one body paragraph from my memo:

The paragraph above (Figure 2) diverted from my thesis because it talks about medical problems sitting on the arm desk. Instead, I could improve my memo by providing statistical information regarding students’ performance in the classroom after sitting on the swivel chairs. For example, if I provides statistical information like sitting on swivels chairs 87% of the students want to participate in class and they are willing to ask questions. Then the statistical info would add credibility to my argument and it connects with my thesis. Furthermore, the high point of my memo was I used a personal anecdote to support my argument. For example, I said after prolonged sitting on the arm desk, I receive a notification from my apple watch that “time to stand! Stand up and move a little for one minute”. The anecdote above makes my argument reasonable because I encountered the problem as well in the classroom. Also, the anecdote helped me to take a stance because the statement showed that I was in favor of introducing swivel chairs. Furthermore, in the future, I need better planning before writing an essay. I indicated in the memo reflection that I used a different tactic to enhance my writing strategies. Therefore, I escaped outlining and wrote down whatever comes to my mind regarding arm desk on my first draft. However, I realized that the writing strategy was ineffective because I could not stay within the scope of the thesis statement. Thus, the outline was an ideal writing strategy because it gave the overviews of each paragraph and I could delete a paragraph that does not flow naturally.

The lab reports analysis paper was about comparing and contrasts the three lab reports to identify what was goods and flaws in each section. However, there were flaws in my writing, particularly I failed to be direct and specific. The specification was a major problem in my essay because often times my audiences get confused about which lab reports I was describing. For instance:

The picture above (Figure 3) shows that my audience gets confused because I used vague words like “when psychologist discuss the results”. I found a new strategy to fix specification problems by answered who, what, why, when, and where (Five Ws) in sentences. My improved sentence reads: when Carnagey, Uhlmann, and Hasan performed experiments on teenagers in the laboratory, they found that violent games increase aggressive behaviors; thus, they provided past theories in the discussion section to explain whether their results parallel with it. The strategy is effective because my revised sentence has more specificity and details. On the other hand, strengths in the essay was I used multiple evidence to support my argument. For example, I paraphrased the actual quotes from Hasan’s lab report to convey that “Hasan findings were parallel with the cognitive neoassociative theory, script theory, and attribution theory”. Thus, I had strengthened my paragraph by used paraphrasing quote because it supported my earlier statement that Hasan included theories to match his results. Consequently, I achieved the course learning outcomes strengthened my source use practice such as paraphrasing. In the future, I should continue to use Venn diagram to write compare and contrasts essay because earlier in the class one of the problems I had was I did not have better writing strategy to stay within the scope of the assignment. Below is the example of a Venn diagram that I created for the introduction section to enhance writing strategies:

 I indicated in the self-reflection that the strategy was effective because creating the Venn diagram I could see the similarities and differences between the three lab reports visually. The technique was useful to stay within the scope of the assignment because the task of the assignment was to find the similarities and differences between qualities of each section of the lab report. Therefore, the Venn diagram is an ideal strategy to write compare and contrasts essay.

The technical description was about explaining each component of Bazic Diamante 0.5 mechanical pencil and persuade my audience to buy and invest in it. The peer review in this class was helpful because my peer was able to identify serious flaws in my technical description and she was able to give me thoughtful advisement to fix it. Below is one example of flaws my peer found:

My peer identified that there was no in-text citation but there was citation in the references page. Then, she immediately told me to cite the paragraph with the author last name and year from the website. The advisement was essential for me to avoid the accusation of plagiarism because I did not give credits to the original author. Therefore, it would consider as plagiarism although I did not intend to plagiarize. Also, the CCNY has a strict policy regarding plagiarism; thus, I was able to get essential feedback from my peer. The high points of my technical description were structure and organization because images were clear and the parts were clearly labeled with numbers. At the same time, paragraphs were a label with the same number as the parts number. This makes my essay good because paragraphs were chronologically organized and ideas were flowing consistent and logical pattern. Thus, the assignment helped me to achieve the course learning outcomes my audience expectations with technical description because they expected clear images with labels and paragraphs in a chronological pattern. Furthermore, my growth in the technical description was I established a new writing strategy. Below is the visual demonstration of a branching diagram:

I mentioned in the reflection that the strategy was effective to stay within the scope of the assignment because the task was to identify each component of the Bazic Diamante pencil. As a result, I could determine the top, bottom, and interior parts of the mechanical pencil in my essay. For example:

The image above (Figure 7) demonstrates that the branching diagram helped me significantly to breakdown each component in my essay because I could visually see which component belong to the which subparts. Therefore, the branching diagram is a major take away from the assignment to write a better technical description in the future.

My strengths on the Blackboard discussions were I took a stance while commenting on other posts. For example, when I commented on other posts then I indicated whether I agree or disagree with them then I shared my points of view. In this way, I could formulate a stance in the writing. Furthermore, when I answered Blackboard discussion questions I always keep Five W’s in my mind to be direct and specific. Below is the example of my response to Blackboard discussion questions:

Based on reading my response one would easily understand which innovation I selected, why I selected it, what was the innovation about, and where the innovation might be effective. Therefore, Five Ws strategy was helpful for me to become specific while writing because answered those questions brought lots of clarity in my response.

The English 21007 helped me to learn new things such as how to write correspondence in workplaces such as a memo, lab reports analysis, and a technical description. Specifically, I have learned important skills like how to write a paper in APA style which is I was unfamiliar with. Furthermore, the technical description helped me to learn the APA style in-text citation. Also, I figured out two new effective writing strategies to write better such as Venn and branching diagram. At the same time, this class helped me to master my previous skills particularly used evidence to strengthen my argument.

Overall, I put a great deal of time, best effort, and personal reflection into each assignment. However, I struggled with few things in this class, at the same time, I am pleased with my overall performance because I have done exceeding well on the technical description, reflection essays, blackboard discussions, etc.

Sincerely,

Abu Sayeed