ENG1133 OL96 Specialized Communication for Technology Students, Fall 2021

With the Thanksgiving Holiday coming up, I am posting this week’s lecture and writing assignment early.

After watching this week’s lecture, write a draft of your research report’s historical background and context section. In the comment box on this week’s Weekly Writing Assignment, create a memo header (TO, FROM, DATE, and SUBJECT: Draft of Background Section of Research Report) and copy-and-paste what you’ve written for your background section by next Wednesday. Include quotes with in-text citations in APA format and APA-formatted references for those quotes at the end of your draft. As I point out in the lecture, this memo is a way of showing me your work up to this point and you should not format your research report using these Weekly Writing Assignment memos. Write in the your research report document and copy-and-paste what you’ve written there into these memos which memorialize the writing that you are accomplishing in your separate research report document on Google Docs.

As discussed in this week’s lecture, post your research report’s introduction paragraph with a memo header into a comment made to this week’s Weekly Writing Assignment. Please remember that your introduction should be a single paragraph written in complete sentences and it should be between 250-500 words in length. If you use any quotes, please include a list of references. Some of the example sentences from the lecture are included below.

First sentence should establish the purpose of the report and its topic. For example:
- This report is a design review of Apple’s ARM-based M1 system on a chip (SoC).
- This report investigates the effectiveness of several different team collaboration services, including Slack, Discord, and Microsoft Teams.
- This report investigates the causes behind the personal computer video card shortage of 2021.

The next sentence or sentences should elaborate on the report’s topic--giving brief historical context, useful details, discussion, etc.

Conclude the introduction with a “road map” sentence that guides your reader through the remainder of the report. 
- In the following, the report presents a historical background of Apple’s computing architecture, Apple’s design process that led to the M1, comparisons between Apple’s M1 and other popular microprocessors, and discussion of the M1’s applications.
- This report is organized around a discussion of typical features of team collaboration services and software, comparisons of the features offered by  three popular services, namely Slack, Discord, and Microsoft Teams, and discussion of the economic considerations of each service discussed.
- This report examines the current video card shortage by first, presenting a history of personal computer graphics and video cards; then, discussing the sources of demand and constraints of supply in the video card market; and finally, concluding with suggestions about how to solve this dire problem.

After watching this week’s lecture, write a memo of at least 250-words that discusses what sections and their order in your research report. Use the Technical Background Report section in David McMurrey’s Online Technical Writing Textbook as a guide. Write your memo someplace safe and then copy-and-paste it into a comment added to this post. Use the model below to begin your memo:

TO: Prof. Ellis
FROM: Your Name
DATE: 11/17/2021
SUBJECT: Research Report Organization

Brief sentence explaining the purpose of your memo. Remember to mention your research report topic. Write complete sentences about each section and what you might discuss in relation to your topic. Arrange your sentences in the order you plan to organize your research report.

As discussed in this week’s lecture, continue your research for the Research Report and create a brief annotated bibliography for three new sources following the model below. Use APA Style for your in-text citations and references for each source. Use any source that you find through the City Tech Library, NYPL, BPL, The New York Times, or books through Archive.org. Copy-and-paste your memo into a comment posted to this Weekly Writing Assignment. Look at the Week 8 Weekly Writing Assignment for helpful links on APA Style.

TO:        Prof. Ellis
FROM:        Your Name
DATE:        11/10/2021
SUBJECT:    Second Partial Annotated Bibliography for Research Report

The first article is about fabricating fault-tolerant microprocessors. An important quote from the article is: “Besides the higher clock frequencies, such trends have made the IC more vulnerable to faults, especially those faults caused by radiation-induced effects or also electrical noise” (Bastos et al., 2009, p. 1062).

Bastos, R. P., Kastensmidt, F. L., & Reis, R. (2009). Design of a soft-error robust microprocessor. Microelectronics Journal, 40(7), 1062-1068. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mejo.2008.10.001

The second article is a literature review of nanolithography. An important quote from the article is: “Besides the higher clock frequencies, such trends have made the IC more vulnerable to faults, especially those faults caused by radiation-induced effects or also electrical noise” (Seisyan, 2011, p. 1061).

Seisyan, R. P. (2011). Nanolithography in microelectronics: a review. Technical Physics, 56(8), 1061+. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A360680245/AONE?u=cuny_nytc&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=47695af8

The third article is about fabricating fault-tolerant microprocessors. An important quote from the article is: “Besides the higher clock frequencies, such trends have made the IC more vulnerable to faults, especially those faults caused by radiation-induced effects or also electrical noise” (Bastos et al., 2009, p. 1062).

Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C. (Year). Title of article. Title of Periodical, volume number(issue number), pages. https://doi.org/xx.xxx/yyyy