Niamul Reza 

City College Of New York 

Writing for Engineering ENGL 21007 

Sara Jacobson 

May 22, 2022 

Over this past semester of Writing for Engineering, I have developed my skills as a writer and my past work proves it. When I first started college last fall, I took a FIQWS class and had no prior practice in college-level writing. I could not tell you the difference between MLA and APA formatting. In my last writing class assignments were a lot less time-based, and we only had smaller assignments such as discussion boards which led up to one final essay. My citing skills have also improved while taking this course. Before in English, they have always given us the texts we need to cite. Now I must format the citing and then put it in my reference section. I now always credit whoever took the pictures that I use in my work. In the past year, I was introduced to CCNY online databases through a library class, and it was used to research several credible pieces of work since it’s so difficult to find articles and labs on google that are always reliable and non-biased. In the class, we had drafted for 2 different assignments and even though I didn’t draft for the lab report analysis, the one I created for the technical description allowed me to review my work and see several mistakes with the assistance of my peers. When originally attending peer review, I was nervous my work wouldn’t be to standard compared to the rest of my classmates but then I realized that you will not always see your flaws alone. When reading over your work you tend to skip over the mistakes which others want to help you correct.  

During the group proposal project, we were assigned with 3 others to come up with an invention that has never been made before and isn’t worse for the environment. My group was great, I made several new friends who had similar interests to me when it comes to Aviation and that really allowed us to collaborate well together. I didn’t really have a new writing goal when coming into the class. I already knew my writing did not seem as professional as others and hoped to improve the flow of my writing since it often transitions into a different topic without explaining the previous one. But that has been my goal for a while and now that I’m possibly taking my last writing course, I feel that I have improved since the beginning of high school. In this class the only time I recall taking a stance while writing was during the group free write about the spring season. My group’s opinion about Spring was pretty negative and was surprised when other groups felt similarly toward our perspective of the season. I did acknowledge others’ linguistic differences when considering my audience, I assumed that I needed to phrase my messages toward my teacher and peer. Since the first few classes in the semester where we learned how to speak to your intended audience.  

Writing is a system that represents language using the alphabet and marks. It is another form of communication. It is used to express your emotions, feelings, and opinions. Or to express your knowledge on a certain topic. You learn it from a young age and use it your entire life. I have started to read a lot more creating writing pieces during the quarantine. Now over the past semester, I have improved slightly because of it but still, make a lot of mistakes in my own writing and have a lot of bad habits that I should have stopped as a child. I still have run-on sentences as well as grammatical errors. I overuse the same transitions when writing. However, my formatting has improved, and with spell check not nearly as many spelling mistakes. Over the semester we had peer reviews which I didn’t look forward to since there is usually a long list of mistakes I make. We also had a group project in this class and the writing for it was a lot easier when splitting it between 4 people since there was always someone to check over your work.  Even though this is my final writing class, I hope my writing continues to improve throughout the rest of my college career.