Technical Writing by Erashey

Technical Writing by Erashey - June 2018 Scholarship Essay

The elective that I've decided to write about is Technical Writing. When my advisor first told me that I had to take technical writing, I was confused because for one, I had already taken all my required English courses for my major and two, my degree falls under Kinesiology, which is in the health field. At that point, I had switched my major from Nursing to Health Studies so I figured it was because of that. When I first started taking the class and doing the assignments, I thought it was going to be easy because it's just writing and using common grammar skills. Well, boy was I wrong. The books that were required for purchase were strange but I felt that it would come in handy. The class required us to do various assignments, such as writing out directions on how to pump a tire. Starting from the point of driving to the air pump all the way to putting the cap back on the tire. We also would have quizzes that had sentences and we had to use the best fitting word to complete the sentence. Once again, I thought common sense would be the way to go. But once I saw my score after the first quiz, I knew there was something wrong.

There are certain words and conjunctions that you use for different scenarios. Whether you are writing an email to a friend, or you are conducting a business email for a trade for your company. This class was designed to help prepare you for conversations, various emails, etc in the REAL WORLD. This class changed English as a whole for me. It made me realize that the way I used to conduct emails as a freshman in college or even as a senior in High School, wasn't going to be okay when I would have to send business emails. The format of business emails is far more different than regular emails. There's a certain way you have to make your point come across in the body of the text, in the closure. To make sure that you're answering all questions that were given to you or you are asking the right questions in the correct way and it is getting across. Having fluff in emails as a filler is no more and people don't understand that. This class helped me also write papers correctly in other classes. I believe everyone should take this class or it is required because communication is #1 in any job that you will equip in the future. The way you talk to someone, the way your words are used, is very important.