Introduction Letter/ Self-Assessment

Dear Future English 21007 Students, 

I’m sure most of you are majoring in computer science, engineering, or something of that sort and are just taking this class because you are required to. You must be wondering what “writing for engineers” even means, like I was. I had no clue what to expect walking into this class or what kind of writing we would be doing. I thought it would be more coding based like writing languages or programming, but it was not. I assume you also took English 11000 prior to this course like I did. Well this class is nothing like that class. In a good way! The material you learn in this class will actually be used in the real world and you’ll come out with many skills to help you in life. We got to write in genres that I have never written before, and papers about topics I didn’t even know I could write over 10 pages on. I wrote a 12 page paper about an Apple charger. Before this class, I probably could not even think of more than 2 sentences to write about a charger. This may scare you a little, but I promise that this class will set you up very well to be able to write about anything. 

I did not realize how much I learned and strengthened my skills until I started reading over the course learning outcomes by the end of the semester and was glady able to say that I achieved all of them. Each assignment we had to write reflections at the end of it and there was always a paragraph asking what course learning outcomes you have reached and I would always answer it with two or three and by the end of the semester I had included all of them in there without realizing! A few of the course learning outcomes relate to peer reviewing and teamwork. These two things are a huge part of this class. When you start the class you’re put into groups which are very helpful because you can ask questions throughout the whole semester and you end up doing some projects together. These groups are not randomized, they’re made by the professor taking skills and weaknesses we discussed in our introduction letter and then matching us with people she believes we will perform great with. Additionally, the groups are usually with people of your same major so you probably share other classes with them as well. I was very appreciative to have my group members support the whole semester and we all worked very well with one another. Other course learning outcomes were about learning elements of writing and how to compose your works effectively. This means learning about genre conventions, stance, purpose, etc… So through these, I was able to learn about different kinds of writing and what makes writing the most effective. 

Before this class, I always learned and practiced the same genres of writing for years. Which consist of narratives, informative essays, poems, persuasive essays, and a few others that I cannot remember at the moment. I thought this was what writing was. Telling stories, or writing essays. However, this class changed my whole perspective on learning how to write and what can be written in a school setting. The first major assignment we had to write was a memo. I’ve never written a memo before this. Yeah, I’ve written emails before but never have I called them “memos.” Plus, a memo has a whole structure that I was unaware of and learned through this class. After this, we had to write a lab report which was familiar in some ways to me because of all the science fair lab reports I had to write in middle school and learning about the scientific method. Out of all the assignments this one was the most comfortable to me but I did not like it the best since it was not brand new to me like the rest. After this was the technical description which is where I wrote the 12 pages about the charger. I had never heard of or written a technical description before which was very interesting to me. My dad would ask me what I have for homework and I would say I have an english paper due and he would say ooh tell the story about how you did this or that, and I said dad– I’m writing it about an Apple charger. And he paused and his eyes lit up intriguingly and thought that was the coolest, strangest thing ever! Then he went along to tell all his tech nerd friends about it and they all thought it was so interesting! After this assignment we worked in our groups to compose an engineering proposal. This paper included all of the other assignments inside of it which I thought was very cool because it all led up to this one. 

Through all of these assignments, I’ve learned how the audience impacts the content and purpose of the text. The first thing we ever learned in this class was what the “audience” really means and how to write to appeal to them and only them. Ever since then, the first thing I do everytime I write a paper is write down who the audience is and research them to make my content fit their style and needs. Well, we were kinda forced to do this by filling out audience analysis sheets which you will later learn about but now it is a habit for me to do that which I appreciate. Learning who your audience makes writing so much easier because then you know what they need to know specifically and how you can target them. For example, while I was writing my lab report on keyboard switches, my audience was people who already use a computer and keyboard daily so they know how a keyboard works, but they do not know how it works internally so I had to explain a lot of the technical sides of it. This affected the purpose because my purpose was to inform the audience on how keyboards work under the keys and show them which type of switch in a keyboard is the best. 

I hope that when you are a student, classes will be back in person at CCNY. My class this semester was completely remote. We met on zoom Tuesdays and Thursdays at 8 am which was great because I didn’t have to wake up super early to commute anywhere! Most people didn’t even have their camera’s on and could have been still sleeping for all I know. This made it really hard to get to know people in my class. I still don’t know what anyone looks like, I just know their nicknames on discord and some of their voices. However, being assigned into a group helped this a lot because we got to communicate a lot and I recognize them in my other classes now too. Although we were remote, it was still pretty easy to get all the assignments done and work in groups. My group would just chat in the discord and we would set meeting times if we needed to and have a discord voice chat where we would discuss. It was still weird not seeing my classmates face to face but it did not really put a barrier up for our work. Additionally, I believe learning like this is beneficial for real world scenarios because a lot of coders and engineers work remotely anyways and just hop on video chats anyways. 

Overall, this class gave me a new perspective to what writing in the real world is really about. Also, throughout this semester I have achieved all the course learning outcomes and learned about the rhetorical elements such as audience, stance, genre, media, exigence, and purpose. I am proud to say this course has improved my writing tremendously and sparked a new passion for writing within me even given the Covid-19 circumstances.

Wishing you the best of luck,

Lia Fikaris

Class of 2024