Difficulties in English writing for engineering classes

Like other academic writings, English writing for engineering classes requires students’ good writing skills, but also needs articles written in a formal style of writing. However, in addition, English writing for engineering classes in some way differ from other writing styles and it has got the unique characteristic difficulties. After entering the university, I start realize that it is really hard to write well for engineering classes.

First of all, English writing for engineering classes demands much more logic and analysis. It is usually to explain some scientific phenomena and even design process to manufacture a material given some properties in a rational way, rather than to simply express one’s idea and introduce a concept. For example, for course MLE1101, some questions ask students to design such a material which is flexible, light and has high strength. To answer such questions, we must get known of properties of each material, integrate all the information we have, and finally express the analysis process step by step. Therefore, students should pay more attention to the logic and rational organizations in English writing for engineering courses.

Furthermore, many engineering students are annoyed at those disgusting lab reports. I heard from my seniors that till a sophomore and above, we may need to write a lab report for up to 35 pages- long. To write such a long report, we must make it very well-organized and elaborate ourselves clearly. The target readers of the lab reports are the lab instructors who have read plenty of lab reports, possibly for the same experiment. The lab reports, which they are very impressed on, should be both written in a skillful and academic manner, but also creative and innovative. It means that students can use the current knowledge to deduce other possible phenomena and dare to make assumption.

All in all, engineering is not just about repeated theories and formulas. It is a branch of learning, which enables students analysis problems more logically and improve their senses of innovation. English writing for engineering classes is more about description and explanation. It is a special part of academic writing, which requires clear logic and creative ideas.

Summary for Provide access to clean water

Today, the demand of water use worries many people in many areas in the world. More deaths are caused by lack of clean water than war. Without clean water, diseases are spread consequently in some countries, for example, nearly 5000 children die from diarrhea-related diseases throughout the world each day. Globally, water is far more enough, but only 3percent of the planet’s water is fresh which is also in the form of snow or ice. Therefore, only a small amount of water is ready for human use which is unfortunately distributed unequally in geography. On the other hand, pollution in some developing countries affects clean water supply.

To solve the problem, engineers have historically been the main force to come up with methods. One way is to divert the flow of water from the plenty area to the arid area such as in China, India, etc. However, it is not a long-term, widespread solution which will not be able to meet agriculture need and lead some political issues. Another way is to extracting the salt from seawater. This is not a fresh idea and has already been used in many regions like Saudi Arabia and Israel, but the cost of building desalination plants is very high which are not suitable for many poor countries. Some new technologies such as nano-osmosis and nanotubes will reduce the cost but it requires engineers to continue to work on it for general and extensive use. There are some other ways to get more clean water such as: technologies which are being used to improve recycling of wastewater and sewage treatment; some new ways to reduce water use especially in agricultural irrigation; small decentralized distillation units.

In a word, engineers are demanded to work on new efficient ways to get clean water.