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Drew Taylor
Instructor Keaton
ENC2135
21 July 2016
Genre Research Paper
Engineering; the backbone of innovation and the future of technology. As of right now I
want to be a chemical engineer. Chemical engineering is much different than the word most
people think of as engineering. You may not know it but there are currently about 17 main
branches of engineering right now. What they have in common is that they all deal with problems
the world has right now and they, through research, experiments, and collaboration, try to come
up with solutions to help advance the world in their particular field of engineering. While the
chemical engineering branch has a wide variety of interest from utilizing plants in society to
transforming materials to a more useful structure, I chose to research the engineering field as a
whole. The reason the entire community seems more interesting to write about is because of the
dynamic of how each branch works with one another. Mechanical engineers would most likely
work on the architecture of a vehicle but a chemical engineer would work on the fuel resources
for the vehicle. In the engineering community there are many genres to use and focus on but the
three I found the most prevalent and useful are the lab reports, proposals, and case studies. For
those who dont know what each of those genres are, a lab report would be an in depth
compilation of all the research on the particular point of interest, many lab reports contain the
scientific method in that it has the hypothesis, the measures or charts, and the conclusion, but
thats a very basic description about them. A proposal is what you probably think it is; usually

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written by one of the engineers to his peers for review and it talks about an idea to solve one of
the problems, it usually has information to back up his proposal. A case study is a way of
researching in itself, in a case study for psychology, researchers examine one person or a small
number of people, often over an extended period of time (Davidson and Lazarus, 2007). Its
used similarly in engineering where its used to study one specific problem in depth; if a rocket
has troubles entering the atmosphere that would be a case study for a group of aerospace
engineers to research. In researching many articles and examples of each of these genres you
notice the genre conventions of each, how each genre relations to each other, and how the genre
is used in the community. In addition, the way the genres are used and discussed help define the
nature of the community.
The way the community is, it wasnt anything someone just created, its something that
exists because of the way that engineering is. For the best results and general success its best to
confer with not only your peers within the branch but also with other branches to see if they have
faced similar problems or to see if the problem could be solved through a solution in a whole
different way. Another way the community works together is to work on a joint project including
multiple styles of engineering so that their project could incorporate research and technology
from different ideas. While the community has most communication within the engineering
interest group, they also can make projects with other professions varying from architects to
doctors themselves. One of the main goals of the biomedical engineering profession is to
improve ways of surgery and procedures taking place in the hospital or ER setting and in order to
get best results the members are often active in the medical areas and consult the doctors for their
opinions or observations. There are currently 6 major branches of engineering (Riders). Within
each major branch is literally hundreds of subcategories of engineering. Engineering is a very

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vague term; but its necessary because even though branches like mechanical and geotechnical
are considered two different branches, they have similar steps in solving each problem and due to
that they are often intertwined within each other branch. In each branch of engineering, the styles
and genres used are often similar. Practically every branch and subcategory uses some variant of
proposals, lab reports, and case studies. While they are still used, case studies are a type of
research used less often because they encompass a very specific view and with a case study you
cant generalize your findings to the mass variety.
To go more in depth with each genre, you should know about their genre conventions and
how each is used in the community. One of the most important things you learn about while in
any basic science class is the scientific method, I personally learned about it in 1st grade and have
used it in one shape or another at least twice a year when doing science projects or any science
activity. The lab report in a nutshell is a paper documenting the scientific method for the current
project. In a lab report you generally write it in a manner that one of your peers would be reading
it to observe the findings in the paper. In a lab report by Aimee Lalime about the integrity of a
truss structure, she writes extensively about each test they did and the results from the
experiment, it also contains a few charts and graphical organizers to better show her results,
which is a common convention in the genre. For a lab report its often written so that the readers
can clearly figure out the tests, the way it worked, and how it relates to practical problems. A
proposal is similar to a lab report in that they generally include extensive information and
evidence about the problem. The proposal goes less in depth about the procedures leading to the
paper and takes it a step further by introducing an idea to fix the researched problem. All
proposals in the engineering community should have evidence supporting their idea and how the
said proposal would affect the existing problem. A company can request a proposal to solve a

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particular problem they have been having, and they usually get a few and can decide which
proposal would be most cost efficient or which could most accurately solve their problem. In a
sample proposal about a deep brain stimulator the author includes their tests about how certain
voltage of electricity affects the brain, and provides the goals that the researcher would like to
achieve, in this instance he believes he could slow the effect of Parkinsons using his program.
The case study is one of the main ways we research something, but it takes one instance of a
problem occurring and thoroughly studies how and why it happened in hopes to not only solve
that one problem but also too possibly apply the knowledge to other similar problems. In the case
of railway catenary sections, the research involved full-scale measurements, operational modal
analysis, pantograph-catenary interaction; all complicated measures in research and for the sake
of this essay I will just say that they are very in-depth and not performed often unless studying
something very deeply. Case studies contain the research about the specific case and why its
important to use a case study in the scenario rather than a wide research situation. Each genre is
used across many different sciences and the engineering community also uses many other genres
such as correlational designs or experimental designs. The importance of the three genres though
is that they are the main connections throughout the engineering community, each genre is used
to explore a problem and track the progress researching the problem. While that doesnt seem
like much, the papers are passed throughout their occupation and sometimes to other branches of
engineering. They organize and elaborate enough have multi branch research and projects
throughout the engineering community.
The way each genre is connected to the community is integral in the structure of the
community and how successful it can be. Of course the goal in the engineering community is to
improve our way of living in many different ways, that vague goal may not be accomplished as

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quickly as it is with the use of the genres and the connection within the genres. All the genres
covered in this essay have similarities and because of that they are often used together. Most
closely connected; the lab report and the proposal are used together more often than not. The lab
report is a research method and a proposal uses research to not only come up with the idea for a
solution but it often times uses lab reports for evidence supporting their topic. Lab reports and
case studies are used similarly and their conventions have them looking similar, but the small
key differences are what connect the two and what makes it able to use both in conjunction. Both
genres are ways of researching and so using both makes your argument even stronger. The
juxtaposition of lab reports being generally focused on the big picture and case studies being
very specific and focused on the one particular situation make it so they can be used jointly. Case
studies alone dont make for a good generalization so using a lab report with it can greatly
improve the practicality of the finding. The relationship between case studies and proposals is
similar to the one between lab reports and proposals because in a case study you aggregate your
information on the topic which can then be used in the proposal. The relationship is different
however, because the way case studies are used the proposal should rarely be about generalizing
the research into the idea within the proposal. The lab report being a very thorough writing
containing diagrams and tables show how the community is, in that the occupation of an
engineer is very meticulous and elaborated. This is due to the fact that the field is a very
scientific community and also it has ties into many important pieces of technology or innovation
and the slightest error can be crucial to the integrity of the project. They also peer review
practically every paper to check for said mistakes. Proposals and their conventions also show
how the engineering community is always looking to improve whatever field they are studying
and to properly do that each proposal is checked by superiors and peers to ensure that only the

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best work is being presented by their company. The case studies are interesting because they tell
a different story than many of the other genres. The fact that you cant really generalize your
findings but its still a popular form of research shows how everything matters in engineering. If
one Holmes tower fan isnt working, they want to make sure that a Dyson tower fan couldnt run
into the same problem. It introduces an interesting dynamic because working for different
companies may alter your motivations but you generally want the best or most profitable
innovation as possible. The fact that all of the genres have conventions being very scholarly,
elaborated, and often contain a lot of evidence and examples show how the community needs the
papers to be. Differently, you couldnt write about research to your boss or to your peers through
a poem because that would be very unorganized and overall would alter the meaning of each
observation. The way proposals are used in engineering is made to be because of how the
community works, for example how they can send a proposal request to a whole different
department of studies and it still be relevant to their solution. Even going back as far as the A.D.
time period engineering and some of its genres were used. When the wheel, one of the greatest
inventions ever, was being invented it had to go through many of the same steps and was
included in genres similar to the ones weve been talking about in current times. The wheel
started out as an idea and while a written proposal most likely never occurred, the people with
the idea had to talk to the other smart people of the tribe or civilization before a useful wheel was
ever created. They also had verbal lab reports beforehand about the problem of transportation
and figured to investigate possible solutions. The first mechanical engineers worked a lot
different than how current ones do, a medium we havent talked about are programs like CAD
which are 3D designing software to help visualize a solution. Often times in physical engineering
sciences they include a proposal with a CAD or CAD equivalent design. The engineering

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community basically created the software for use to communicate within their groups. CAD can
also 3D print which is a fairly recent practical innovation which basically creates a whole new
genre in the community.
The engineering community however boring it may seem to the non-mathematical
oriented mind, is useful in our everyday lives. The earliest engineering can be traced back to the
mechanical engineering of the wheel, the creation of weapons, and any architecture. While
engineering has existed in some shapes or another for thousands of years, the conventions of the
now common genres didnt exist until around the industrial era. Proposals, lab reports, and case
studies have been used at the earliest verbally, and more recently through papers. The
conventions of each genre are fairly similar, and they all connect to help further the engineering
community. The cool thing about the advancements in engineering technologies is that we can
use what we created to write more and to continue improving the way we work in the
engineering community. Before computers existed you had to write a lab report completely on
paper but thanks to the inventions from many different engineering groups, we can now type our
lab reports and proposals.

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