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Chapter 14 communication skills
College course reflection
Course reflection college
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Recommended: Chapter 14 communication skills
Introduction
The purpose of this document is to give a reflection on the course and assignments I have done, and what I have learned in the process.
Course Reflection
In this five-week technical writing class I have learned that technical writing refers to documents done in the workplace, and also helps you to effectively communicate with co-workers and patients. Whereas, I thought that technical writing had to do with computers only before taking this class. On the contrary, in this class I have learned that it has to do with so much more than technology. In fact, this class gives you the necessary skills to write properly and professional documents. For instance, recognizing the primary and secondary audiences, and analyzing the audience’s background and their education is something I did not know how to do before taking this class. Now I know that this
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Furthermore, the assignments we were assigned throughout this course has helped me put all these new skills I have learned into practice.
My Learning Experience
The assignments assigned from week 1 to 4 consisted of writing memos, application letter, resume, instructions, and a description of a technical object. As I did each assignment I learned something new that I didn’t know before, and also what I needed improvement on. As stated before, I never knew how important it was to analyze an audience prior to writing any type of document. This is an important technique to be aware of as it allows for effective communication in the workplace. I also learned how to write a proper application letter and resume. Although, I already have my own personal cover letter and resume, doing this assignment has helped me improve my sentence structure,
Sam Dillion wrote “What Corporate America Can’t Build: A Sentence” for an audience of college students, employees and corporate people. In his article, Sam points out that companies are spending a lot of money annually on remedial training. According to Sam, the writing problem appears in e-mails, reports and texts. He is informing his audience to brush up on writing skills before entering the corporate world, in order to avoid remedial training. Companies like to hire employees with excellent writing skills but many of employees and applicants fall short of that standard.
Another valuable attribute I obtained after taking this course is the importance of turning assignments in ahead of time! Assignments are due at 11:59 and no late submissions will be graded.
I’m convinced that much learning has occurred in this course, both on your part and on mine. So I’m most interested in your telling me what you have learned, rather than asking questions on this exam that require you to demonstrate your learning. So, look back over the course and compose a page each on what you have learned about each of these course objectives.
My development as a writer has flourished throughout this semester. The first week of this fall semester started out with writing responses from our readings in the textbook. Looking back through and analyzing my reading responses at the semester to now; I noticed a substantial improvement in not only my grammar skills, but also my summarizing, and in-depth studying of writing adeptness. Another way I have progressed this semester is the vocabulary of my writing has significantly improved and become more scholarly. Another advancement I noticed was that the content of my work has matured, along with my organizational adeptness.
Throughout this semester I have learned many ways of writing through two main essays literacy narrative and comparison and contrast. These two essays have taught me how to correctly fix my comma splices, thesis statements, and capitalization. I have engaged in numerous learning material during this summer class. Many times when I thought it would be hard to work on those three developments I never gave up. I gain more positive feedback from my teacher because he pointed out most of my mistakes I made on both literacy narrative and comparison and contrast essays to help me understand what is it that I need to work on. My development as a writer became stronger.
I believe it is important for any student who wants to do their best in a class to take a moment to evaluate their own work to determine the rate their writing is progressing and how they can continue to advance their writing. When I looked through my own work I asked myself “what have I learned this semester?” and “what do I still need to learn in order to improve my writing?”. Answering both these questions will help me with my last step of my self-evaluation, developing a plan to learn new skills.
...on-technical and technical audiences can be a challenge for a programmer as they have to switch between a programming mindset and a writers mindset. Learning to do these writing tasks for multiple audiences will most likely start out with using information gained about writing in the classroom as a basis and slowly attempting to develop writing style for each audience. Technical writing classes attempt to give students a feel for the writing done at professional jobs; however, each job will vary on the type of writing, quantity, and audience. No matter how much writing is learned through education, no one can be perfectly prepared to write for any professional job from college courses alone. Obviously, writing technical documents can be difficult for new professional programmers, but over time they will learn the task by a trial and error procedure or practice.
During the course of this semester; the variety of writing styles and essays assigned to me in my communication skills class encouraged the development of my writing skills, as well as provided me with more self-assurance in my abilities. My writing, research, and presentation abilities enhanced through practice, determination, and the understanding I gained during this course. With every single writing assignment, I learned new innovative approaches and skills, which enhanced my abilities to improve my thoughts logically, enabling me to write more clearly, and to organize my papers more effectively. At the beginning of this semester; despite the fact that I already knew the terminology MAP: message, audience, purpose; I never really understood the significance of MAP. For this reason, my writing lacked clarity, organization, and my writings appeared less focused on the topics. As a result my research papers and essays did not flow as smoothly from one passage to the next. Furthermore, I was unaccustomed with the precise procedures used when writing an essay. For instance, my previous classes before college, although requiring a reference page, did not require me to include proper citations in my writings. After evaluating the quality of my writing toward the end of the semester, I recognized vast improvements in several areas of my writing. By concentrating on the beginning stages of my writings, I could distinguish ahead of time my audience and my message. As a result, my essays are clear, and I remain on topic. In addition to that using transition phrases efficiently also helps my writing to flow smoothly. The proper use of transitions makes my writings easy to follow from one topic to the next. I also learned that pre-writing...
After completing seven assessments for this module, I do feel that I have learned a lot, and will discuss this in-depth.
As far as assignments in this course, my absolute favorite was the definition essay and my least favorite the research essay. Figuring out exactly what lookism was, as I had never heard of it before, made this my favorite project, and writing style. Explaining ideas and processes is something I enjoyed, not only because it a form I will utilize in the future and have used in the past, it also taught me the meaning of something I would have never known had I not taken this
The course also challenged me and allowed me to think critically. Whenever I am faced with an issue I know that I should take steps to formulate an opinion. It’s always good to ask questions to clarify anything. Once all the facts are established, I know that I should assess them. Finally I am able to assert a carefully thought out opinion (3). After taking these steps can be sure my opinion is right and not just for me personally, but regarding others too.
While selecting my major for my epic return to college, one genre of writing that would have never crossed my mind for consideration is that of a technical and scientific nature. It is so easy for the general public, as well as myself, to understand and appreciate writing that serves to entertain. Often, when we consider technical writing, we find ourselves yawning before even opening such a document. However, after interviewing Kaye Borchers, a technical writer for Choice One Engineering, I realized just how wrong this preconceived notion truly is. While Kaye also moonlights as an editor for her peers and a creative writer in her spare time, I was most intrigued by her professional career choice and found it surprising that technical writing shares a great deal of qualities with other styles of writing. Her insight on this particular style indicated that it is a necessary and fascinating genre that requires a multitude of versatile writing skills.
What do you expect to learn from this course that will help you develop in the areas you’ve identified?
This chapter discussed the reflection on the project and the wider implications of the project, and demonstrated the reflection on the MA experience. In a word, the major project and the MA experience gave me an extraordinary chance to carry on the higher education and learn new and advanced learning skills.
When I first enrolled in Technology and Society, I honestly did not know what to think of this class. I thought I was going to feel awkward because maybe it was going be a class full of nerds, which there wasn’t, and all we would talk about was different kinds of inventions and how they effected society. After completing the course it was pretty much true, the class discussed many inventions and how they have effected society throughout the years, even how society has effected technology. One of the main topics that was covered in the class was how many different definitions there was of what was considered technology. The biggest lesson that was taught was how technology and society have been linked so closely throughout history, and now today you cannot have one without the other.