MWA #3 Postmortem

1.) I chose to do a journal critique for my third major writing assignment. I chose a journal critique because I am most familiar with this type of assignment.

2.) The most interesting thing I learned from this assignment is from one of the outside sources that I looked at for the assignment. I learned that the space program budget makes up less than one percent of the total annual federal spending.

3.) The most useful things in an editorial report are usually the content and structure comments.

4.) There is nothing I wish I had known before this assignment, as I am very familiar with the journal critique assignment. I have written and critiqued my own as well as critiqued another student’s.

5.) To edit and proofread my paper I first reread the article and then read my paper again. I reread the article first to check for consistency in my paper.

Editorial Report #1 Postmortem

1. I started and finished the editorial report assignment last night. It took me about 1-2 hours from start to finish. I had to reread the paper a few times to be able to make better comments.
2. I have not had to complete a review like this in a long time, so it was difficult to come up with suggestions to make the paper better.
3. The easiest part was summarizing the paper. The hardest part was coming up with specific ways to improve the paper in each category. There was not too much to edit because journal critiques have a 2-page maximum.
4. I wish I had a better understanding of the original article to be able to provide more insight when editing the critique.
5. Now that I have written and edited my own journal critique as well as edited someone else’s, I would be very likely to choose this assignment in the future. I would be very comfortable with this assignment because I am now very familiar with the project specifications.
6. I would work this assignment the same way in the future. I started off by reading the original article then reading the critique a couple of times. I then gave the critique another reading, this time making comments. I feel like this approached worked for me because I had a good understanding of the paper as a whole before I started to make comments.

Introductory Critique Assignment Rewrite

Introductory Critique Assignment Rewrite
Executive Summary
“Let’s Not Ruin Technical Writing, Too” is a critique of the stance that technical writing should be approached in the same style that English courses are traditionally taught.
The technical writing course should be taught by English departments because any other department would be wasting its time teaching this course.
Detailed Summary
The author argues that to teach technical writing in this fashion is to miss the only purpose that it exists, to “teach students to document information clearly, correctly, and economically.” The author then goes on to argue Harris’ point that the technical writing should fit Kinneavy’s Theory of Discourse, because to force it to do so does not provide any professional value for the student.
The purpose of technical writing is to provide students with the written and verbal skills that one might need on the job in real situations. English departments are less useful to this end than when the course is taught by another school that directly relates to the students’ field of study.
The author ultimately argues four main points: technical writing is dynamic, there is not time to devote to ethics and rhetoric in a technical writing course, English departments should show that they are useful for something, and that technical writing is growing in popularity.
Response
The ability to write technically is an important skill, but one that most employees and students are expected to have already mastered. Having faculty of other departments focus on technical writing would be a waste of their time because, faculty at universities focus on teaching courses where they have a specific expertise. Most professors in other departments are also involved in research studies as well as teaching courses. According to the Association of American Universities, “universities perform 54 percent of the nation’s “basic” research.”
Professors in other departments have greater obligations to their students, like participating in meaningful research and maintaining the university’s academic reputation, than teaching technical writing. English departments should teach technical writing because other departments have their own courses and research to focus on.