In this course, writing for engineering 21007 in City College in New York, I have been through a lot and learned many things. I improved my skills and I could know my weaknesses and do better at what I could not understand before. As an international student and English is my second language, I had more difficulties than everyone writing long assignments. Moreover, I am not a good writer myself even in my first language (Arabic) and I think that gave me even more problems than I already have. But this is my second English class in City college and as I did well in the previous class I can do better in this class.
In this class, I have learned strategies to make writing easier like when I wanted to start writing about something, I write all the ideas that popped up in my head in a separated paper, and then organize it and write it down, that helps you shape your stance and goals of the essay because you already have your thoughts. One of things that also helped me change my way of writing is the online database sources, when I write about a subject and I look into the databases and read it all and then summarize it in my own words, it effects my genre of the writing and make it more floating with the subject.
As any writer, I have my strength and weakness points, the most thing I suffer from and is my biggest weakness is my imagination. I do not have any imagination and that makes it much more difficult to write stories, essays, and my thoughts, but in this course most assignments were about facts and descriptions of tools and solutions so it was not affecting me that much. But I wish I had more time to practice and over this annoying weakness. My only strength in writing is that I’m flexible with writing, and I consider this as a good thing or my strength because I can read as many sources as I want and choose whatever tone I like without any trouble writing. But I didn’t need it as the assignments were almost toneless.
My essays this semester were good and show the hard-work put into it. Because I love mechanic tools, I think I was doing alright without thinking what I was doing. It still my first time to mechanically describe a tool, so I need to improve that not all audience are engineers or know about mechanic and I have to explain everything to them. I want my work to improve me and show me every point that could be better.
As I said before, I’m not a good writer, and I don’t write anything by myself, it has to be a homework or assignment or something I have to do so I start writing. But that does not deny the fact that I can improve my writing and try my best to be a good one. In my previous class I was getting lost in the middle of the writings not knowing what the next step is and sometimes stop writing so I can go and read more about the subject I’m writing about. But now I don’t stop writing until I’m done with my idea. That because I did not know about taking notes of what I’m writing and build the structure of the essay before I even start. So that let me go through the essays like I already wrote before and I’m rewriting it.
My least favorite assignment was the lap report, even when it was a group assignment, I did not like to do it maybe because I didn’t get the idea of rewriting a report and explain it. Not like the group proposal, I loved writing it and even read more than what I had to do, just the idea that you choose a problem and try to solve it is great, I don’t mind writing it again and again.
I liked this course because I did not need any help or more work to understand it and do well ,even when I had no time this semester because of my job, not like my other English class where I used to go to the writing center for dome tips. A thing that helped me a lot in this course is the professor’s drafts, she let you write the whole assignment and then comment on your mistakes and the points that you have to change, this is the main thing that improved my writings.
improving in writing and how much i shaped my skills is the purpose of this reflection. also showing the differences between how i was and how i am right now. A whole semester’s work is described and summarized in one page with my struggles and feelings. This is the conclusion of the conclusion.