During my Spring 2023 Semester at the City College of New York I had enrolled in ENGL 21007 otherwise known as Writing For engineers. This class was different from how I envisioned it from being. I thought this class was going to be more about report writing, but I couldn’t have been more incorrect. This class dove into the nitty gritty details of writing and presenting technical pieces as well as a multitude of other writing elements. ENGL 21007 taught me how to properly write a piece as if it was more than just a normal writing assignment. That was eye opening to me and reflecting on the class now makes me think of a few answers to some leftover questions.

To what extent have I achieved the course learning objectives? Every assignment given to us was a means to test us on our ability to achieve the learning objectives. All assignments had us perform some type of research on them, while incorporating rhetorical elements, and properly citing as to avoid plagiarization. The job wouldn’t end there as editing and revising would also become necessary. There would be multiple peer review sessions for different assignments and our professor would give us back our work with revision critiques. Due to the nonstop research, writing, reviewing, and editing, I think I have achieved the course learning objectives. 

In what ways have my perceptions on what writing is and has evolved this semester? Before taking this English course I perceived writing as a means to express thoughts, share research, inform others, and debate issues. Every piece of writing felt like an assignment to me and nothing more than that. However, this course made me consider what my motivation to write was, how I feel about the topic I’m writing about, who I was writing to, and how people would see my writing piece. Those examples were some examples that are part of the rhetorical situation, and you always have to keep the rhetorical situation in mind when writing. With learning these elements and applying them to my writing, I’ve turned out some of my best pieces of writing. When you apply the rhetorical elements properly, your writing becomes more clear to those who are reading. With studying these rhetorical elements and the rhetorical situation my writing has evolved into something more professional than I’ve ever been able to write.

How does the audience impact the content and purpose of my text? Out of all the rhetorical elements we’ve learned about in this course, what could be considered an easy element has the ability to decide your entire paper. Audience is an element that can be summed up as “Who are you writing to” and more often than not if you have no audience, you have no paper. An example of where the audience is absolutely key is the engineering proposal. In this project we had to pose an idea to help against a natural crisis. You would need to have a specific audience for this proposal as they would either be the people helping fund you or the be the people you were going to help. If you had gotten the audience wrong or made it confusing on which group of people you were addressing this to then your proposal would lose direction. Here you can see how the audience impacts your content and purpose. Are you being descriptive for a simple minded audience who can’t understand much of what you’re writing about, or are you writing too little for an audience that needs more substance to care about your piece. Audience can also affect your purpose because without clearly identifying an audience you might be unable to identify why you’re writing the text. You might end up being more informative when you’re supposed to be more persuasive, or vice versa. Establishing an audience is the first and most important piece to the writing puzzle before ever starting to write something.

Was there a challenge in writing across genres and addressing specific audiences? Throughout this semester we write memos, reports, technical descriptions, and many other types of writing pieces. It was challenging to write across all these genres the first time you’re being asked to, but as time goes on it gets simpler to do so. Each genre of writing caters to a new style of writing and conveying information. The way you write a lab report is not the same way you’d write a memo. The topics and means of persuasion can seem similar but are often in many ways different. Writing in each genre requires a new way to write a piece and establish the rhetorical elements. Of the elements as mentioned before, the audience is the most crucial part of the elements. Establishing an audience across genres requires a different thought process each time. In a memo you want to persuade an audience to take an issue you have serious, but in a technical description you want to inform an audience on a topic they might have no idea about. Audience is important to establish across genres and as we moved from genre to genre, it got easier to identify and establish an audience each time. 

What happens to the other rhetorical elements when you change one of the elements within the situation? When changing a rhetorical element around it can throw off the entire paper. Each element has to have a relationship with another element. Each element should be able to connect with the previous and upcoming element. For example your stance on a topic or issue matters because your audience might be an opposing stance in a debate. If you change your stance throughout your assignment, it makes your audience hard to pinpoint. Another example of this is with exigence and purpose. If you have motivation to write a piece or no exigence behind your topic, then your purpose for writing it could be meaningless or not make much sense. Rhetorical Elements go with one another and changing them can make other rhetorical elements difficult to understand or change it entirely.