English 202
Dec 18th, 2022
Professor Stemberg
Special Reflections
Technical writing or English 202 is not another boring English class, yet it is intriguing and keeps our minds engaged. My first initial opinion about this course which I thought was just going to be another writing-intensive class, turned out to be a bit more than what I had imagined. At the beginning of the course, we were taught about appealing to our audience and formulating meaningful paragraphs that engage our readers. Yes, I agree that English 101 and English 110 have the same curriculum, but the professor of this course ensured that we understand in intimate detail what these aspects meant to our written document. Professor Stemberg explained how it enhances our writing technique and ensures that the information presented is received effortlessly by our audience.
I always thought I had good writing skills, but Professor Stemberg explained intricately that writing with a purpose will allow your audience to understand the information more thoroughly, it will keep them engage and they would also be willing to be more educated on the topic that you have presented to them. Professor also explained that whatever field of study you have chosen to pursue, these basic writing techniques will allow your work to be recognized through the industry that you are in and your audience would always look forward to your work. For example, the New York best sellers list always writes for their preferred audience which allows their readers to continue to purchase their books and other branded products.
These lessons that were taught allowed me to enhance my writing skills. For example, I had a basic understanding of the compare and contrast technique, which allowed you to compare information from two sources and find similarities and differences and compile all data into one document. This technique is used mostly for comparison essays and literature analysis. I used this technique to complete the rhetorical analysis of two lab reports. Professor taught us that we should assess both reports and highlight the similarities found in each document. We were then instructed to analyze the similarities and describe how each aspect suited the document individually. This not only allowed us to understand how to use this technique but allowed us to improve our understanding of scientific documents.
We were also taught how to provide meaningful feedback. With each assignment that was completed, we were instructed to provide our fellow classmates/ peers with feedback for the document they submitted. We were provided with a rubric grading system; this system was divided into sections that allowed us to grade each student accordingly. Sections such as grammar, the information provided, document formatting, etc. This allowed us to give necessary feedback to our classmates to boost their final grades.
We also learned how to cite our information when writing factual documents whether it is in American Psychological Association (APA) or Modern Language Association (MLA) format. These formatting styles are necessary and are preferred depending on the type of document being prepared or what is favored by the instructor. The difference between each style is that APA in-text citations include the author’s name, date, and page number while MLA in-text citations include only the author’s name and the page number. These key details seem to be insubstantial when writing documents, but it is highly recommended to use either style while citing sources because readers would like to follow up on the references you have provided in your document, and it is quite useful when your sources are organized in a simple manner.
The highlight of the semester was learning how to create an infographic and how to build a website. An infographic is a collection of imagery, data visualizations like pie charts and bar graphs, and text that describes the images of what you have chosen to present. This is useful because we often wish that we can create flyers and posters to describe any topic chosen, thus this is another innovative way to create such items. This along with website building allows us to connect with a wider audience which will bring more awareness to the topic which is not only beneficial to you but also to the audience.
Technical writing once again allowed us to appeal to our audience and enhance our writing skills and for that, I am grateful that I was able to take the class but also leave with a lifelong skill.
