summary response

In the past I have written summaries over many literary works through my high school English classes. Though similar to the one I just completed for this class, not one of them was over a scholarly article or any long non-fiction piece like this one. I found this one to be a little more difficult than previous summaries I had done because of the great abundance of information. I had to pick and choose what was relevant and what wasn’t. I started my process by reading through the article entirely. Then I reread it while taking notes on the main ideas of each paragraph and section. After taking the notes, I created an outline to what my summary would consist of, weeding out some of the extra information that was unneeded. Once all of this had been completed, I started my summary. I followed my outline, and the ideas and words seemed to flow much more easily onto the paper than if I wouldn’t have done so. Overall, this summary took more prewriting work to complete than any other summary I had done, but once I had my outline finished, everything fell together and I think I was very successful in summarizing the authors work.

            By completing this assignment, I definitely gained an insight into what type of writing I would do in my field of Construction Engineering. I discovered I would be writing a lot of work plans, which are explained in my summary. Work plans are essentially a lot of technical writing. I would be writing the “how-tos” on certain parts of the project, and every specification that goes along with it. I would be converting what the client wants with the project, into specific amounts of materials, the proper way to accomplish the task, how long and how much money it should cost, and what safety measures that need to be taken. In this writing, I would be using mostly technical terms and certain construction jargon, because it would be the site supervisors reading and assigning the workers their specific jobs.  The construction engineering field entails a lot of technical reading and writing that people outside of the field may not completely grasp.