During the semester, we were able to acquire different skill on our technical writing class. There were many ways in which we were able to improve our writing skills and way in which we read and analyze documents. Technical writing is far more than just writing document, as a writer you need to consider many factors such as you audience, the structure of your document and even the way you cite your source might be different than what we are used to in our regular English classes. For many people technical writing could be a big challenge because it introduces advance method of writing documents, we use more of a scientific approach when it comes to writing these documents. Some of the assignments that I was able to analyze during the semester and which had the biggest impact on my learning were the technical description, the rhetorical analysis, and the infographic.

The first major assignment was the technical description, during this assignment I was able to familiar with what is a technical term & how we applied to describe objects. I learned that technical communication main purpose is to reinforces or change our attitude to take actions. I learned the importance of adding images to our documents and how these make the document more interesting and appealing to our audience. When it comes to writing our audience play a major role on what we are trying to communicate, we learned to analyze our audience that way we can communicate better our point across. The technical description played a major role in developing my paraphrasing and the way we cite our sources. Since we needed to include images on our technical description, I learned the importance of properly citing these images and making surer my sources were in the correct format, before this class the way I used to write and cite documents was so much different. Images are major part of any document I believe that by properly knowing how to cite them really make a major different in my future development as an engineer.

The second major assignment which had so much impact on my learning during the semester was the rhetorical analysis. I would say that this was the harder assignment as far as the class goes, the assignment first required for us to get familiar on what role each part of a scientific lab report structures consists of. Learning to identify what make a good abstract for example was beneficial for me. Prior to this class I was not familiar with what make a good and strong abstract. The abstract, which is a small summary of the entire report, in which each section of the lab report should be minimized to 1 sentence or two. More important the abstract should have information to maintain the reader interesting in the rest of the lab report. Getting familiar with the elements of the labs report was the key item on getting the rhetorical analysis done. This assignment was the most challenging, but it was also the one that helped the most. I learned how to use the library data base to find peer review sources for our analysis. The peer review process is super essential in science, is something that I would use over and over in my engineering career. In my rhetorical analysis for example I needed to compare two lab report by analyzing the 8 different components, these components consist of the title, abstract, introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion, conclusion, and references. In the process I learned that the credibility of the sources is essential for conducting this research. Therefore, the academic search complete database on our library site was essential for finding such articles.

The final assignment which impacted my learning the most during the semester was the infographic. This assignment expanded my skills on analyzing the roles that images play in any articles. An image can have so many meaning & help clarify the way we get our point across an audience. For our infographic it was important to keep in mind our audience. We need to keep in mind our audience background and even needed to go as far as considering how to make our article more accessible to anyone. For example, in my infographic I was targeting audience who weren’t as familiar with the different technologies we use to build bridges. Therefore, I made the adjustment of only adding the minimal information possible, that why I could get my audience to conduct a little more research on they own on the information that impacted them the most. Another major impact from this assignment was that we needed to consider the organization. For my infographics I decided to add number across each image to help my audience navigate my document better. An example of this can be seen below on figure 1.

Figure 1: Emilio Garcia Infographic

The audience on my infographic was mostly tertiary which consist of people who might take an interest on the information provided. The infographic helped me better think about the structure when it comes to writing a document or organizing the image. I learned the important that factor such as a website background color has on the audience and the people who read our document, using color with different contrast help us get our point across more effectively.

Overall, I was able to learn so much during the semester. The skills that I acquired during my time on this class really help shape my learning experience. Assignment such as the technical description, the rhetorical analysis, and the infographic expanded the way in which I conduct research, write and organize document, and think about the audience when writing an article. Everything that I learned during the semester has make me a better writer and has develop more of the person I want to be in the future.