Before I took this course, I had no idea how technical writing is different from the rest of writing styles. Therefore, as a student majoring in mechanical engineering, I was really motivated to to learn new concepts and methods that distinguish technical writing, simply because I'm going to be using this style for the rest of my life.
First, I built a huge vocabulary of technical terms. These terms are very important to use in a technical document. Also, I learned how to construct a coherent technical essays by implementing the right transitions between ideas, and dividing the essay into specific parts that develops certain idea. Moreover, I discovered new genres of essays that can be used for specific objectives such as Memo ( convincing essay), technical description ( descriptive essay) and recommendation report ( both convincing and descriptive essay). More Importantly, over this course, I understood that my language should be clear and simple, because we're most likely addressing our documents to non-specialist audience.
Second, we went over techniques that help us to conduct efficient research and look for reliable sources. For example, www.Sciencedirect.com is one of the data bases that is widely used by technical writers to find trustworthy sources for their research. I extensively used this database and other sources this semester, and I was impressed by the amount of scholarly papers available in it.
Finally, I definitely learned numerous techniques that well help me to be a better technical writer. Besides the things that I've already mention, we emphasized the importance of giving credit to whoever provided data for us in order to avoid plagiarism. We went over the format that must be followed to write a good APA citations and the importance of paraphrasing. Therefore, my writing improved so much through all the assignments that we had during this course.
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