Writing in engineering classes

In engineering classes, there are seldom some writing essays for students to finish, especially for first-year students who just begin their courses. However, in MLE tutorials, I do meet some difficulties in writing for some questions. After reading the questions asking for explanations to some phenomena, I sometimes just get lost. In these cases, I just get rough ideas about answers, which means I do not know exact terminologies associated with the answers. As a result, my answers are wordy and not accurate. For example, one question was that “Explain why no hole is generated by the electron excitation involving a donor impurity atom.” The rough idea was that this electron was associated with a foreign atom and thus no hole was created. However, this rough was not suitable for answering, as it was somewhat oral. After I looked through the PPT slides, I got the answer: each electron was excited from an impurity level, and no corresponding hole was created within the valence band. The key words are donor electron and hole in the valence band.
To solve this kind of problems, I think I should focus on the following points. Firstly, I should listen to lectures carefully and try to get key words and critical points. Secondly, I had better go through the textbooks and memorize important terminologies and concepts. Last, I would pay special attention to my learning in English language and especially the aspects on how to express ideas in a concise and precise way. All in all, English plays an important role in learning, especially for us international students whose first language is not English. Studying textbooks written in English and writing in English are quite challenging for us.