Writing in Engineering Classes

After enrolling into an engineering course, I realize that academic writing is not exactly what I thought it is. It is much more professional and various skills are required in order to write a good academic essay. Taking one of the engineering modules MLE 1101- Introductory to Materials Science and Engineering as example, I encounter a different kind of problems as compared to writing an English essay. In my opinion, the intended audiences for my writing in engineering classes are lecturers and tutors who already possess knowledge on the subject matter. The purpose of writing in engineering classes is mainly to evaluate our level of understanding on different topics and therefore minor grammatical errors are acceptable. Therefore, making a minor mistake is obvious enough to be noticed. One main problem that I encounter when writing for this module is the organization pattern. As most of the engineering processes consist of various stages and procedures; logically, a chronological order of idea organization should be use. However, a lot of them are of cause-effect pattern at the same time, where one outcome is a result of the other. Things are fairly complicated and ideas often get messed up due to confusion; as a consequence, the writing turns out to be unorganized and related ideas are scattered all around. To counteract this problem, I should cultivate the habit in doing brainstorming or mind map and get my outline done before I start writing. This would help me to get a better picture of how one process or procedure links to another, allowing me to organize my essay better and smoother. Besides that, this could also be improved by reading more frequently in order to familiarize with the content and to study the different approaches on the same task.