Francesca Knier

Dr. Sindelar

ENC 3250

3 December 2023

Reflection Essay

When comparing my current writing to my writing at the beginning of August, I can most

definitely see an improvement in my overall writing skills and application. More specifically, I

can see an improvement in my technical writing and the overall clarity of my writing. Coming

into this course, I feel my writing consisted of run on sentences and an overload of information

that wasn’t always needed. Throughout this course, I’ve had the opportunity to practice my

technical writing and heavily focused on writing in concise, plain language, which has helped me

tremendously. Additionally, this course has helped me organize my writing better. Coming into

this course, I had basic organizational skills when it came to writing; throughout the progression

of this course, I could clearly see an improvement and an ease in my ability to organize writing

assignments in a way that is more comprehendible for not only me, but my reader as well. All in

all, I can see an obvious improvement in my writing throughout this semester.

I decided to take this course, ENC 3250, because I wanted to take a course that I felt

would really help me once I graduate and find a job. With this course’s focus being on

professional communication, my goal going into this course was to build up and strengthen my

workplace communication skills. Right from the beginning of this course, I could already see my

goal being met as we completed the Job Application Materials assignment. While this is not

necessarily workplace communication as you are not technically part of the workplace just yet, it

is a very important step in getting hired, and ultimately gave me a solid foundation for when I do
graduate and will need to utilize documents like these. As time went on and the course

progressed, we kept practicing technical writing as well as completed assignments such as the

workplace correspondence packet (the memo and the email), which were exactly the type of

skills I wished to learn about in this course. Additionally, I found the text for this course, “A

Concise Guide to Technical Communication” by Graves and Graves to be extremely helpful.

More specifically, I like how this text was not overwhelmingly long, yet was detailed enough so

that I could get what I needed from it. Overall, I feel that the assignments we completed and the

text we read from this course has helped me fulfil my goal of strengthening my workplace

communication skills.

The assignment that I am most proud of would have to be my White Paper. I am most

proud of my White Paper because it is the assignment that I put the most time and effort into this

semester (out of all my courses, not just ENC 3250), and I am very pleased with how the final

product turned out. I enjoyed this assignment because it allowed for some choice, meaning I had

some wiggle room with what I could choose as the topic to write about in it. While it was time-

consuming and by no means easy, I am very proud of this assignment and the tremendous

amount of effort I poured into it. If I was able to edit an assignment in this course, I would most

likely edit the engagement project assignment. This assignment was not one of my favorites, as it

included many different pieces and requirements from numerous other apps. Ultimately, I didn’t

feel it fit best in this course and I feel I did not get much out of this assignment. Lastly, if I could

add any assignment to this course, I would choose to add an assignment about creating

presentations/PowerPoints. I feel that well-constructed presentation material is a needed skill and

a large part of workplace communication, and I feel that a lesson and assignment relating to that

would be cool to see.