Table of Contents
Introductory Reflection
Revision of Textual Analysis
Revised Edition
Reflection of Revised Edition
-OVE piece
Revised
Edition
Reflection of
Revised Edition
Introductory Reflection
Throughout this
semester, I feel I have grown as a communicator using the WOVE (written, oral,
visual and electronic) method. As an
engineering student, we are taught that communication is key in the advancement
of ideas. If we cannot effectively
communicate then the idea we are trying to get across will be in vain. Within the written section of WOVE, I have
learned to elaborate on ideas and explain them in more detail than I normally
do. I have typically wrote in short
concise ways that might not tell the whole story. Within oral communication, I learned to
prepare better for my presentations. I
learned to be more open during my oral communication, such as in more nonverbal
communication when giving a presentation and speaking in a clear, polite voice
during an interview. Within visual
communication, I figured how placement and presentation are crucial in
effectively communicating through visuals.
Finally, within electronic communication, there has been a stress on
blogs throughout this semester which has taught me about how to professionally
communicate through some sort of electronic medium.
Before taking this
class, I thought I had a good handle on the communication needed for the field
of mechanical engineering. After this
class, I am convinced that there is much more in the communication aspect of
engineering than people often let on. We
too often forget that communication is how ideas are passed on to finally have
them come to fruition. We all need
communication in order to spread ideas and thoughts around.
In order to spread
said ideas around, we must first figure out who we are communicating with. We do not talk to our friends the same way we
would talk to our grandparents and both of those are even different from the
way we might address our grandparents.
Knowing your audience is key in effective communication. You must be able to step into that person’s
shoes in order to figure out how they think.
In order to talk to an engineering major you would probably need to know
lots of technical manufacturing, science and math languages. Conversely, if you were talking to liberal
arts major you could not use such high technical talk but rather choose the
simplified version of what you are trying to get across. Knowing your audience is key.
Throughout the
semester, I have learned to draft and revise my own work before a final draft
is ready for others to read. I have come
to realize that it is best to get all those thoughts about an assignment out of
your head and get them on paper. It does
not have to be pretty as long as you understand the point you are trying to get
across. Once this is done, I would
organize my thoughts and reorder them to have coherence when read. This would be considered my first draft. I would reread the draft and consider what I
need, don’t need, what is important and what can I leave out. This is also when I realize that I need to
expand on some topics and condense on others.
After that I would have somebody proof read it and give me
feedback. This would then lead me to my
third draft and after another proofread it would be old enough to graduate as
my final draft.
Most, if not all,
communications can be categorized into the WOVE categories. This makes it a great strategy in teaching
undergraduates about effective communications because it covers all types and
exposes them to it. Within one major,
there is all types of communication, some more than others but still they are
all present. First, electronic
communication is big and becoming bigger.
I have grown up in the information age, so electronic communication is
something I am very used to and comfortable with. Written communication is a bit tougher for me
because I cannot always ascertain the correct words in order to convey my
thoughts accurately. I use multiple
drafts and revisions to accurately get the point I am trying to make
across. When put on the spot my written
communication is choppy and scatter brain.
When it comes to oral communication, I have work to do. I can do a presentation about engineering or
a topic I know very well with extreme precision. Although my spur of the moment
conversations need work. I often say the
first thing that comes to mind and then end up correcting myself. I am often nervous in front of crowds during
presentations so I fidget which is bad to do during a presentation. Out of all
of them, I would say visual is my strongest.
I can draw well enough to get a point across but not so good that I
should be an art major. I learn by
diagrams so I often refer to them when explaining something. I can draw a picture of a situation or what a
process is because I know I won’t leave any details out. Everything that the person needs to know is
right there.
Within this
portfolio, I will examine the different types of WOVE and revise and edit my
previous work in this class. This will allow me to think back about all the
communications that I have partaken in throughout this course. It is good to look back on your own work to
revise and correct it in order to improve upon your communication ability. After all, practice makes perfect.
Textual Analysis Revised Edition
“The Feasibility
of Friction Stir Welding” is the testing and application of a newer solid state
welding type. Most people do not
understand the methods that are involved in the manufacturing process. The language of the article also tells us
that the author has an intended audience of technical people in mind. From this we can conclude that this article
was meant for manufacturers, engineers and others who might take advantage of
this technology in the fields of creating objects. These two things together tell us that the
purpose is to inform and educate engineers and manufacturers about new methods
of welding metals. The article examines
the advantages and disadvantages of this newer process to demonstrate that
further testing still needs to be done but there is hope on the horizon for
this new welding method.
The authors of
this article are listed as being members of a group called TWI, which they
state is the research group that is testing this new method. Their credentials are listed at the very top
of the article, which would indicate that this is a scholarly source and has
been peer reviewed. Credentials are very
important in verifying if it is a good source or not. They will tell the reader the author’s level
of education and sometimes where they got their education from. In this article, it tells us that “Dr. Thomas
is in the Innovation Unit and Dr. Threadgill and Mr. Nicholas are in the
Friction and Forge Processes Group, TWI, Abington Hall, Abington, Cambridge,
UK”. They are a group of three doctors
collaborating on this research together from Cambridge in the United
Kingdom. Within the same part as their
certification, it also states what date the manuscript for this article was
received on.
Scholarly articles
go through a peer review process in which a manuscript is submitted and
verified for originality and accuracy.
The peer review process is also another good way to confirm that this is
both scholarly and meant for highly educated people in a similar field as the
authors. The review process is done by
people who are also experts in their respected fields, which means that they
know the topics discussed very well. On
top of that, if you are writing something that you know is going to get peer
reviewed, your audience becomes those peers.
This allows you to know your audience and gear the article towards
them. They list the previous research
on friction stir welding and where the idea came from. This is to give background for the peers
reading this article. Although they are
considered experts in technical fields, they do not all specialize in welding
processes and the history of them. This
is to inform those who do not know about where the grounds for their research
came from.
Another way to
tell that it is a scholarly source is by the language that is used in the
context of the article. There are very
high level manufacturing jargon in this article to further prove that they are
talking to other academics. Welding is a
very specific skill and the techniques used in it are special to the industry
itself. The authors mention all sorts of
different attributes to steel by using the full name of the metals that they
are talking about. For example, they mention “work piece materials selected
were 12 and 15 mm thick low carbon steel of grade BS 970, Part 1, 1983 07M20(BS
EN 10083–1) and 12 mm thick 12% chromium alloy steel of grade DIN 1.4003
(X2CrNi12) (EN 10083–3) with the nominal compositions given in Tables 1 and 2”. Table 1 and 2 are lists of elements and their
percentages that make up each metal.
Metals in the manufacturing industry are classified by the size (length,
width and height), hardness, tensile strength, metal alloy percentages,
etc. Only someone who has dealt with
such specificity of materials would know why this matters. To the average person, 6010 aluminum does not
mean anything, whereas to a manufacturer this is a very specific metal with
specific properties. Depending on how
metals are mixed together can also change their properties. Different metals have different boiling
points and freezing points. This is
important because as you weld you heat up the material you are trying to fuse
together. Since there are two different
metals mixed together then one might end up melting first while the other metal
stays a solid underneath. Conversely, if
you successfully weld two pieces together, they might cool at different rates
and cause cracking or some other defect.
All of this information would make sense more to an engineer or
manufacturer who deals with this stuff in their own fields.
The purpose of
this article is to share information and research results with other academics
in the fields of manufacturing and engineering.
More times than not, the whole point of academic writing and scholarly
articles is to share the information you have discovered or found through
experimental ways. This article has many
features of scholarly articles which is one of the reasons to infer that the
purpose is to share results. Despite the
evidence that is associated with scholarly things and research, there can be
some bias thrown into it by the author.
This article seems to have very little, if any at all. The reason for this is due to the purely
statistical insight that this article brings.
From the very beginning, the authors state that this technique is more
good than bad but also has these bad things.
Throughout the paper they seem to be presenting their findings rather
than discussing why it is a good thing.
Although just because they present statistical data, there could still
be some bias because they could have chosen to leave out statistical data that
would make their results less impressive.
We will never be sure until the extent of their research has been published,
so for now we consider them to present only good information.
To conclude, the
article of “The Feasibility of Friction Stir Welding” done by W.P Thomas, P.L Threadgill and E.D Nicholas
was intended for the academic world of manufacturing and engineering based upon
the use of high level language to communicate ideas, its target audience being
an academic one and the fact that it is currently a research topic. These all come together to show that the
authors’ true intent was driven by research findings and sharing results that
were found during their study with other people in technical fields.
Reflection of
Revised Edition Textual Analysis
The revised form
of this paper was necessary for a few reasons.
The first being that it was just poorly written, repetitive and
incoherent. The second being that it was
my lowest grade out of all my other papers during this course. And finally because I saw this as having the
largest room for improvement. In the
end, I rewrote most of it.
I have always found
revising my own work to be difficult because I knew what I wanted to say but
the words that I would write were the always the best way that I could phrase
it. This does not mean that it is the
best overall way but rather it was the best I could come up with. I am not particularly great at word choice
and properly phrasing things that would make the most sense to everyone. I know in my head what I am trying to say but
it does not always come out with the same meaning when I put those thoughts
into words.
I started by
taking the constructive criticism that others have given my about this
piece. I looked for it in my paper for
myself to figure out where they were coming from. Most of the comments I got about this paper
were that it was repetitive and hard to understand. After reading it myself, I completely agree
because I would begin a paragraph and state everything one way then move to the
next paragraph and restate it in a different way. This leads to the author no seeming to have a
point in the paper they wrote. I knew
this was the first thing I had to fix.
The second thing was that when I read it, it did not make a whole lot of
sense to me. I did not have constructed
paragraphs that flowed together and covered a topic as whole. I talked about the who, what and why all in
the same paragraph. I Knew I needed to
reconstruct the organization of my paragraphs as well.
I took my paper
paragraph my paragraph and just rewrote what was in each of them. This did not turn out too well because my
paragraphs did not work together to begin with.
I reorganized my thoughts into a few subcategories that would accurately
analyze the article that I was talking about.
I placed them into who the authors were, why they were writing this
article and what they were doing.
I ended up taking
each part that had to do with my subcategories from my original paper and put
them together in a new order. After a
little reworking to get the remaining kinks out, I ended up with a very similar
paper to the final edited form. One of
the things that was also brought to my attention was that in my original paper
I did not say where I was getting this information from within the
article. It was suggested that I put
references to how I came to the conclusions that I did in my analysis. After skimming my paper for places that I
would need evidence, I put in the appropriate parts and ended with the paper
that is a few pages ahead of this one.
Research
Presentation Revised Edition
Reflection of
Revised Research Presentation
This revision was
needed to help improve myself for future oral presentations. I have nervous habits when giving
presentations, which is the main reason for this revision. I wanted to be able to look at a presentation
that I gave and figure out what I can do better on. In high school, I had to give a few oral
presentations and every time I always knew that I would act nervous or not look
at the audience or something like that.
I knew I did less of these nervous habits while giving this presentation
but when you know that you still have bad habits in something it is good to
take a break and analyze them further and figure out where you are improving or
not improving.
While thinking of
how to improve my research presentation.
I determined that it would be best to watch my first presentation before
doing anything. While watching my video,
I took notes on certain things that I was doing. I noticed that I would not make eye contact
with the camera and I seemed overall anxious.
This does not make my presentation seem very good. Since I had nobody peer review my
presentation, I had to do it all myself.
It proved to be no easy task because when you know your own quirks then
it is harder to fix them or notice them in the first place. I gave the presentation knowing what I had to
accomplish, and looking back my major issues with it was not my information but
rather my delivery that needs work.
With knowledge of
my habits, I knew there was lots of room for improvement. Within my revision of the presentation, I
figured that I should not focus on the information that was delivered because I
felt as though I covered it quite well.
Instead, I would focus on how to improve the delivery of the
material. To do this, I wrote notes on
my power point slides. Thanks to
Microsoft’s newest version of Office, you can see your current slide along with
notes that you write about that slide and the next slide. I figured that I would be able to control my
thought more if I wrote out generally what I want to say first. This is often used as a way to help when you
are giving a presentation. Turns out the room I redid my presentation in did
not allow me to see my computer screen while I was giving my presentation. To compensate for this, I reread my notes
before giving it again. Some of the
smaller details that I changed were like dressing nicer and standing up more
straight and just more proper etiquette overall. These contribute to more of a professional
look when talking and people will take what you are saying more seriously.
Lastly, I’d like
to say that I am giving this speech to my friends because they nicely agreed to
film me do this. They are all engineers
so with that in mind, I feel as though my attitude might be different when
giving it. I tried to keep that same
tone and attitude when giving it a second time but it was much more difficult.
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