It’s not easy for me, as an engineering student, to write articles.
First of all, bad handwriting always discourages me from writing with a pen. Therefore, the computer becomes the only tool for writing. This is probably a common phenomenon for most engineering students. You may find it surprising that we don't feel comfortable to use a pen anymore. That is very sad, isn’t it?
Bad handwriting could be easily solved by simply using a keyboard. There is no big problem with that. However, a more serious difficulty is how to write an article. If not trained, most engineering students may not have a clear concept of how to write an academic engineering essay. Because writing an academic essay is much too different from writing your blog diaries. When writing a diary, it would not matter if you are using the right punctuations, good transitional words or correct grammar (most of the time, broken English sentences and phrases are quite "fashionable" in blogging.). With these bad writing habits, there is no wonder why engineering students are not good at writing. In contrast, this is not the case for some other students (arts students). They also have their blogs, but these blogs are written in a different way. And their course requires them to do more in-depth reading and they might also be the type of person who likes reading and writing through out their education. (That’s probably the reason why they choose arts majors.)
In the future, as an engineer in real world, we do occasionally need to write different types of articles. It could be a disadvantage if we are not equipped with writing skills. You don't want to say: I am not a competent engineer because I cannot write. Therefore, the best solution is to study EG1471 and the subsequent EG1413 Critical Thinking and Writing with our heart even though it is more challenging to write an article than solve math problems.
